quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r Actually America is set up to help those that help themselves and give people a handup not a handout. Who wants to support a nation of pan-handlers and loafers unless you'd like to live in a communist / socialist country?

Hmm, must be why the poverty rate keeps rising.

Wait...

quote:

There's no progression when the last on the totem pole is always coddled and holds back the rest of the class...

Well gee, I guess since considering these lazy bastards have all the same amenities and chances as everyone else, they do deserve to be treated like shit, right?

I'm with you man, fuck 'em!

Or maybe it's not as easy for those on the bottom to move up, as you would like to believe:

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...ty&pagenumber=1

If it were, we sure wouldn't be needing such social programs like Social Security around, right? I mean, these elderly folks, for example, prior to the creation of SS, some 70% of them or so living below the poverty line sure created that situation all on their own, right? I mean, who cares if the poverty rate for the elderly is down some 60% to about 10% today. That full-on type of capitalism that we had prior to the Great Depression was just a real hoot, wasn't it?

Ah the days of old.....

quote:

So the statement is pretty much spot on unless we consider all the organizations created to help those poor and despondent that were there before tragedy hit.

I'll try to stear back to topic here, but I want to make sure you do not misunderstand me. The last thing I'd advocate is people feeding off the government and refuse to help themselves in any way. But making blanket implications about the poor and African Americans not helping themselves is a bit shortsighted in understanding their situation altogether. Undeniably there are those that are like that. But in my experience in working with the homeless, for example, it becomes pretty obvious that many if not most folks in these dire situations couldn't get a leg up on their own whatsoever. Many, of course, share a great deal of mental ailments. We estimated about 70% or so of the homeless that we fed this summer likely had mental impairments of some sort, but I'm digressing a bit.

As a society, I cannot help but feel compelled not to ignore those that need our attention the most. Our country and our society is only as good as our weakest link. Or more importantly, we are only as morally strong as we treat our weakest link.

quote:

Besides, the very notion that Bush doesn't care is wrong. If he really didn't care, he wouldn't have sent anybody at all.

But keep in mind that the levee broke on Monday. Warnings from LA about their levees breaking and fucking BEGGING for federal help was sent out last SUNDAY:

http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%2...f%20Request.pdf

Response from our federal government wasn't until WEDNESDAY, right about the time when our dear president interrupted his fucking banjo playing vacation and decided it might be worth his poll numbers to get off his ass and pay attention. Of course that didn't stop Condi Rice from buying 3,000 shoes, watching a Monty Python Broadway show, and play tennis with Monica Seles on THURSDAY (she woke up and got going on Friday back to WA), nor has it stopped our Vice President Darth Cheney from halting his vacation in Wyoming.

Bush is getting criticism all around, and he fucking deserves it right smack between the eyes. Christ, even the Wa Times editorial ripped him one yesterday. The AP is right on the money here:

quote:

The Iraqi insurgency is in its last throes. The economy is booming. Anybody who leaks a CIA agent's identity will be fired. Add another piece of White House rhetoric that doesn't match the public's view of reality: Help is on the way, Gulf Coast. As New Orleans descended into anarchy, top Bush administration officials congratulated each other for jobs well done and spoke of water, food and troops pouring into the ravaged city. Television pictures told a different story. "What it reminded me of the other day is 'Baghdad Bob' saying there are no Americans at the airport," said Rich Galen, a Republican consultant in Washington. He was referring to Saddam Hussein's reality-challenged minister of information who denied the existence of U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...-09-02-18-43-26

But I don't just blame Bush - the FEMA director, a Bush appointee who was fired from his previous job:

quote:

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows. And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position. The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA. The agency, run by Brown since 2003, is now at the center of a growing fury over the handling of the New Orleans disaster. ...Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures. ``He was asked to resign,'' Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night. Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign. http://business.bostonherald.com/bu...rticleid=100857

This is fucked up from head to toe, and the buck has to stop at the top for once in Bush's life.

In regards to race, however, how's this then?:

quote:

Guard members reported that the massive evacuation operation for the most part had gone smoothly Friday, coming after days of uncertainty, violence and despair. Capt. John Pollard of the Texas Air Force National Guard said 20,000 people were in the dome when evacuation efforts began. That number swelled as people poured into the Superdome because they believed it was the best place to get a ride out of town. He estimated Saturday morning that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were left at the Superdome. But it remained a mystery why the buses stopped coming to pick up refugees and shuttle them away. Tina Miller, 47, had no shoes and cried with relief and exhaustion as she left the Superdome and walked toward a bus. "I never thought I'd make it. Oh, God, I thought I'd die in there. I've never been through anything this awful." The arena's second-story concourse looked like a dump, with more than a foot of trash except in the occasional area where people were working to keep things as tidy as possible. Bathrooms had no lights, making people afraid to enter, and the stench from backed-up toilets inside killed any inclination toward bravery. "When we have to go to the bathroom we just get a box. That's all you can do now," said Sandra Jones of eastern New Orleans. Her newborn baby was running a fever, and all the small children in her area had rashes, she said. "This was the worst night of my life. We were really scared. We're getting no help. I know the military police are trying. But they're outnumbered," Jones said. At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday. "How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage. The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. The Hyatt was severely damaged by the storm. Every pane of glass on the riverside wall was blown out. Mayor Ray Nagin has used the hotel as a base since it sits across the street from city hall, and there were reports the hotel was cleared with priority to make room for police, firefighters and other officials. Conditions in the Superdome remained unbearable even as the crowd shrank after buses ferried thousands to Houston a day earlier. Much of the medical staff that had been working in the "special needs" arena had been evacuated. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto...a_superdome_hk1

Nice, huh?

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Oh come on Bush has to care about minorites half his family is hispanic/brown. What the media does has nothing to do with GWB opinion on blacks etc.

Its like that one time his father called his nephew and niece "Wetbags" the media took it out of text and ended up calling him a racist.

quote:

Originally posted by Lepanto THE BLACK GUY HAS A HUGE FUCKING BAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE GIRL HAS A LOAF OF BREAD! WAKE UP!

It's obvious the chick was on a diet. Get it straight.

Now that I think about it a bit more, I think I need to be a bit more clear. Right off, I don't necessarily think racism is at issue here. There just isn't any reason to think Bush is a racist (what would that make Powell and Condi in his eyes?). If I sounded like I think that is the issue, that's my fault and I apologize.

To me I think racism is more an aside to a class issue. The fact that these people were almost all African American is only a side issue to the fact that they were poor and unnoticed. Again, let's think about instead of having 20,000 lower class individuals trapped in the Superdome without food or water, we have nothing but corporate execs. and CEOs trapped in there.

Now think about it - you honestly think our government would have kept them in there for almost 3 days without food or water? Fucking get real. These are the forgotten people in our society. They are the ones that our government wants little to do but sweep them under a rug as if they never existed, especially when comparing themselves to other governments. I'm sorry, but I can't help but think things would have been a tad bit different had these people been the affluent.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

quote:

Originally posted by Fir3start3r First off we're comparing two different news reports from two different reporters... To make a blanket statement saying the media is biased against black people based on two entirely different sources is really reaching and smacks of someone looking for an excuse to play their racist card. I have no love of the media either but lets be logical about this. Whoever the dumbass is that tried to make such a lofty connection should really go work for Michael Moore in his editing room...

quote:

Ready made opinions can be distributed day by day through the press, radio, and so on, again and again, till they reach the nerve cell and implant a fixed pattern in the brain. Consequently, guided public opinion is the result, according to Pavlovian theoreticians, of good propaganda technique, and the polls [are] a verification of the temporary successful action of the Pavlovian machinations on the mind. Political demagoguery is, to some extent, a problem in our country. The particular form this demagoguery takes is only a passing phase, and when our current dragons and inner phantoms have been laid to rest, the eternal demagogue will arise anew. He will accuse others of conspiracy in order to prove his own importance. He will try to intimidate those who are neither so iron-fisted nor so hotheaded as he, and temporarily he will drag some people into the web of his delusions. Perhaps he will even wear a mantle of martyrdom to arouse the tears of the weak-hearted. With his emotionalism and suspicion, he will shatter the trust of citizens in one another. Joost Meerlo, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing

___________________

In my opinion on poverty in the US as whole is its all about social reproduction. Basically poor people are always going to be poor because their schools are below standards of other more affluent districts, single parent homes, and low paying jobs, and high unemployment rates all contribute to social reproduction.

Basically there are always going to be stories of a small percentage getting out of the hood life and making in society, but on a whole the odds are against these people to make it. It’s the same reason why rich people always stay rich and there kids are rich. It’s a combination of who you know, social upbringing, quality of schools, etc...

A potential solution to part of the problem is change the way public schools are funded. If the affluent school got the same funding as the poor school then they can at least compete on the same level. Its a shame when they pay teachers shit in poor neighborhoods and don’t have money to buy adequate technology like PCs or projection screens which are prevalent throughout any high school in the suburbs of America.

I know this is somewhat off topic of the hurricane and New Orleans, buts it more about how in American Society we have a huge problem of social reproduction.

/dj

___________________

Last edited by dj on Sep-03-2005 at 23:11

quote:

Originally posted by ierxium It's obvious the chick was on a diet. Get it straight.

LOL made this thread funny..something it should've been from the begining.

___________________
My SpaceMySpaceMUSIC
Anti-Purple Alliance.

quote:

Originally posted by dj In my opinion on poverty in the US as whole is its all about social reproduction. Basically poor people are always going to be poor because their schools are below standards of other more affluent districts, single parent homes, and low paying jobs, and high unemployment rates all contribute to social reproduction. Basically there are always going to be stories of a small percentage getting out of the hood life and making in society, but on a whole the odds are against these people to make it. It’s the same reason why rich people always stay rich and there kids are rich. It’s a combination of who you know, social upbringing, quality of schools, etc... A potential solution to part of the problem is change the way public schools are funded. If the affluent school got the same funding as the poor school then they can at least compete on the same level. Its a shame when they pay teachers shit in poor neighborhoods and don’t have money to buy adequate technology like PCs or projection screens which are prevalent throughout any high school in the suburbs of America. I know this is somewhat off topic of the hurricane and New Orleans, buts it more about how in American Society we have a huge problem of social reproduction. /dj

whats funny to me about the whole shitty schools argument is that being at a shitter school its far easier to get a good GPA than at some better funded more competitive public school. i had a friend who transferred from a very competitive school to some shit school in the ghetto and he went from getting a 3.0 gpa at the good school to a 4.0 at the shit school...anybody can WORK HARD regardless of how shitty the PCs, the classroom projectors are. Shitty textbook and equipment is not an excuse to not even try in school.

quote:

Originally posted by Erotic Buddha whats funny to me about the whole shitty schools argument is that being at a shitter school its far easier to get a good GPA than at some better funded more competitive public school. i had a friend who transferred from a very competitive school to some shit school in the ghetto and he went from getting a 3.0 gpa at the good school to a 4.0 at the shit school...anybody can WORK HARD regardless of how shitty the PCs, the classroom projectors are. Shitty textbook and equipment is not an excuse to not even try in school.

that's right. i have a friend in my college (a private one so just imagine how much it's a semester) and he's from coney island projects ( a very shitty 'hood in brooklyn, equivelant to bed-stuy, jamiaca-queens, east new york, harlem almost), anyway he's a very bright kid and went to a high school that was one the top 10 worst in the city for many years. yet he worked hard, raised his GPA and got out. now he meets richer and w/e else kids and he's going to most likely make it. so point being no matter where you go if you WANT to you can do anything. on the other hand, i went to a pretty shitty high school and i know kids there don't have any dreams or focus, they are content with just getting a job and working instead of going somewhere in life.

___________________
My SpaceMySpaceMUSIC
Anti-Purple Alliance.

quote:

Originally posted by Erotic Buddha whats funny to me about the whole shitty schools argument is that being at a shitter school its far easier to get a good GPA than at some better funded more competitive public school. i had a friend who transferred from a very competitive school to some shit school in the ghetto and he went from getting a 3.0 gpa at the good school to a 4.0 at the shit school...anybody can WORK HARD regardless of how shitty the PCs, the classroom projectors are. Shitty textbook and equipment is not an excuse to not even try in school.

you kinda reinforced my argument. When these guys who get 4.0s in a shitty school go to college they get a culture shock and cant compete with there peers. Thats if they can afford college.

___________________

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Hmm, must be why the poverty rate keeps rising. Wait... Well gee, I guess since considering these lazy bastards have all the same amenities and chances as everyone else, they do deserve to be treated like shit, right? I'm with you man, fuck 'em! Or maybe it's not as easy for those on the bottom to move up, as you would like to believe: http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...ty&pagenumber=1 If it were, we sure wouldn't be needing such social programs like Social Security around, right? I mean, these elderly folks, for example, prior to the creation of SS, some 70% of them or so living below the poverty line sure created that situation all on their own, right? I mean, who cares if the poverty rate for the elderly is down some 60% to about 10% today. That full-on type of capitalism that we had prior to the Great Depression was just a real hoot, wasn't it? Ah the days of old..... I'll try to stear back to topic here, but I want to make sure you do not misunderstand me. The last thing I'd advocate is people feeding off the government and refuse to help themselves in any way. But making blanket implications about the poor and African Americans not helping themselves is a bit shortsighted in understanding their situation altogether. Undeniably there are those that are like that. But in my experience in working with the homeless, for example, it becomes pretty obvious that many if not most folks in these dire situations couldn't get a leg up on their own whatsoever. Many, of course, share a great deal of mental ailments. We estimated about 70% or so of the homeless that we fed this summer likely had mental impairments of some sort, but I'm digressing a bit. As a society, I cannot help but feel compelled not to ignore those that need our attention the most. Our country and our society is only as good as our weakest link. Or more importantly, we are only as morally strong as we treat our weakest link. But keep in mind that the levee broke on Monday. Warnings from LA about their levees breaking and fucking BEGGING for federal help was sent out last SUNDAY: http://gov.louisiana.gov/Disaster%2...f%20Request.pdf Response from our federal government wasn't until WEDNESDAY, right about the time when our dear president interrupted his fucking banjo playing vacation and decided it might be worth his poll numbers to get off his ass and pay attention. Of course that didn't stop Condi Rice from buying 3,000 shoes, watching a Monty Python Broadway show, and play tennis with Monica Seles on THURSDAY (she woke up and got going on Friday back to WA), nor has it stopped our Vice President Darth Cheney from halting his vacation in Wyoming. Bush is getting criticism all around, and he fucking deserves it right smack between the eyes. Christ, even the Wa Times editorial ripped him one yesterday. The AP is right on the money here: But I don't just blame Bush - the FEMA director, a Bush appointee who was fired from his previous job: This is fucked up from head to toe, and the buck has to stop at the top for once in Bush's life. In regards to race, however, how's this then?: Nice, huh?

Tell me how Bush is responsible for local State government issues again?
Obviously he's going to step in, in a time of a major crisis such as this, but this fiasco of an evacuation had absolutely NOTHING to do with Bush so let's stop trying to blame him when we really should be pointing fingers at the locally elected state governer and local mayor.

Besides that, New Orleans has been under the water line for how long? I'm dumb-founded how there couldn't possibily be an emergency blue-print for exactly this kind of situation especially with the possibility of such a catastrophy staring them right in the face every single day...
But I supppose that's Bush's fault too...

As far as the poor and helpless; what I'm refering to is exactly what's reflected in the Mayor's rant and what the article below has to saw; we're dealing with a welfare state filled with people who lost nothing and care about nothing, hence the lawlessness and chaos that has errupted.
Mother nature has kicked over the log of the democratic welfare hive and now everyone is going to pay; including the innocent, sick and downtrodden.
Last I checked (and please correct me if I'm wrong) but last I checked, welfare is a State matter.
Maybe Kathleen Blanco(D) should have done more to take care of that particular issue before it became an albotross around her neck.
But hey, let's financially support the drug dealers, crackheads and sloths cause you know, a country is only morally good as it's weakest link...

quote:

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005 by Robert Tracinski It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild. Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting. But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster. The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state. For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country. When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11). So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire.... "Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. " 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' " The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad. What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them? My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.) What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa. There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves. All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency. No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism. What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men. But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them. The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting. Source: TIA Daily -- September 2, 2005

>>Source<<

___________________
"...End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path...one that we all must take.
The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glass...and then you see it...
...white shores...and beyond...the far green country under a swift sunrise."