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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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WHO WASN’T PREPARED WHEN DISASTER STRUCK? WHO…....?

When it comes right down to it, my libertarian tendencies were reinforced by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. (By the way, you can FIND OUT if YOU are libertarian, too by taking a simple quiz.)

Despite the ravings of the German Chancellor, what is needed is NOT more and bigger Government!!

Listen, for example, to volunteers who prepared 92 boats to help evacuate people from the rooftops of New Orleans. They were ultimately kept out by Federal Emergency Management Agency bureaucrats because, among other things, they didn’t have life preservers. Or listen to the volunteers who organized 100 doctors to treat 400 sick people at a converted Baton Rouge warehouse—until they, too, were told by the government to shut down, reopen and then shut down again. Or to the hundreds of firefighters who, according to the New York Times, responded to a nationwide call for help and were then “held by the federal agency in Atlanta for days of training on community relations and sexual harassment,” while women were raped and lives were lost in New Orleans. Compare their frustration to the joy experienced by 8-year-olds across the country, washing cars for the Red Cross.

There’s more…lots and lots more:

By the same token, consider the effectiveness of the relief strategies so far. With great fanfare, the federal government announced it would distribute debit cards to Katrina victims. The result was chaos, anger and expectations of fraud. Quietly, the Red Cross has been paying evacuees’ hotel bills. The result is that 57,000 people have time to plan what to do next. Massive government efforts to get people into massive shelters have led to dissatisfaction, delays, long lines and frustration. But private initiatives—ranging across the political spectrum from MoveOn.org’s Hurricanehousing.org, which is advertising space in thousands of private homes, to First Baptist Church in Athens, Tex., which has just installed six new showers—are helping people find better housing faster. Over the longer term, it’s also pretty safe to bet that people who relocate thanks to a church, find a job thanks to a charitable Web site, and get by thanks to their extended families are going to do a lot better, economically and psychologically, than the people who hang around waiting to be helped by a government jobs program and a government trauma counselor.

READ the whole thing.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/21 at 12:19 PM

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