-- Download On Katrina...by Greg O'Keefe as PDF --
A humorous take by Mark Steyn:
Consider the signature image of the flood: an aerial shot of 255 school buses neatly parked at one city lot, their fuel tanks leaking gasoline into the urban lake. An enterprising blogger, Bryan Preston, worked out that each bus had 66 seats, which meant that the vehicles at just that one lot could have ferried out 16,830 people. Instead of entrusting its most vulnerable citizens to the gang-infested faecal hell of the Superdome, New Orleans had more than enough municipal transport on hand to have got almost everyone out in a couple of runs last Sunday.
Why didn’t they? Well, the mayor didn’t give the order. OK, but how about school board officials, or the fellows with the public schools transportation department, or the guy who runs that motor pool, or the individual bus drivers? If it ever occurred to any of them that these were potentially useful evacuation assets, they kept it to themselves.
So the first school bus to escape New Orleans and make it to safety in Texas was one that had been abandoned on a city street. A party of sodden citizens, ranging from the elderly to an eight-day-old baby, were desperate to get out, hopped aboard and got teenager Jabbor Gibson to drive them 13 hours non-stop to Houston. He’d never driven a bus before, and the authorities back in New Orleans may yet prosecute him. For rescuing people without a permit?
More from my site
October 29, 2014 On Ghomeshi
May 2, 2011 PoliticsRespun.org Election Night Liveblog, maybe
April 11, 2011 La lutte continue: Vancouver pulls pay-for-democracy bylaw, but a new one’s coming. (cue ominous music?)
April 8, 2011 Charging $1,200 to democratically assemble, Vision Vancouver looks to China for advice on (anti) free speech laws.
April 7, 2011 I’m voting for the least offensive candidate to try and avoid the most offensive government. I wish.
June 29, 2010 Campaign Stops Corporate Voting in BC Municipalities, Probably
Stephen Elliott-Buckley
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i believe what Mark Steyn overlooks in his broad condemnation and resentment of “welfare trained” looters [who are strangely resourceful as looters] is the sheer humanity of it all: the 30 names per page, now at over 4000 pages:
http://www.familylinks.icrc.org/WFL_HKT.NSF/bottin?OpenView
i continue to be amazed at the depth of cynicism Steyn rolls in [and of course the luridness with which people read his diatribes as he continues to be published in so many papers]:
“The spirit of the week was summed up by a gentleman called Mike Franklin, taking time out of his hectic schedule of looting to speak to the Associated Press: ‘People who are oppressed all their lives, man, it’s an opportunity to get back at society.'”
Steyn shows no understanding of how a person could feel this way.
“Unlike 9/11, when the cult of victimhood was temporarily suspended in honour of the many real, actual victims under the rubble, in New Orleans everyone claimed the mantle of victim, from the incompetent mayor to the “oppressed” guys wading through the water with new DVD players under each arm.”
what WOULD Steyn consider valid oppression i wonder.
“Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it’s bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness.”
looting seems quite resourceful to me. but perhaps that’s what Steyn is talking about: no more welfare state, no need to blame any level of government, no society at all…survival of the fittest.
if Steyn wants people off of government’s tit, wouldn’t the looters be his ideal citizens? or is that too simplistic.