Would you donate to a private charity if it handled a disaster as poorly as all levels of government handled Hurricane Katrina? About the only way that charity could get money out of you would be through force. The government has got you figured out.

The federal government is neither All State nor the Red Cross. But it likes to act as if it is from time to time. Specifically, when tragedies hit politicians enjoy playing savior. It's beneficial for election season, you see. The $52 billion federal relief package for Hurricane Katrina approved by Congress will cast politicians of both parties in a charitable light, but it's not charity. There's already a word for giving away other people's money without their consent. Doling out large sums of other people's money also correlates with a lack of concern about how that money is spent. The 9/11 relief package went to loans for day-care centers and golf courses in Georgia and Dunkin Donuts franchises in Pennsylvania. Who knows what unrelated purposes this enormous sum of taxdollars will subsidize?

The precedent set by this income distrution scheme is dangerous. After witnessing the post-evacuation-order spectacle of able-bodied citizens blaming their city government for failing to taxi them out of New Orleans, and then the city and state government blaming the federal government for failing to save the city they themselves refused to save, the federal government has in effect validated these take-no-responsibility complaints. The buck, in effect, has been passed to (or grabbed by) the federal government. But the federal government is the least eqipped level of government to deal with local disasters--even local disasters of a huge magnitude. The embrace of responsibilities smartly not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution will surely compound the effects of future disasters, natural and otherwise.

If 9/11 inspired a $20 billion federal subsidy to affected areas, and Hurricane Katrina inspires a projected $100 billion federal subsidy to affected areas, what will be the federal pricetag for future catastrophes? The one-upsmanship embraced by political figures, motivated by the fawning media attention acts of "public" charity generate, will certainly continue. Like education, health care, and other domains forbidden to the federal government in the 10th Amendment, disaster insurance is now yet another federal endeavor that will not go away. The toothpaste just doesn't go back in the tube as easily as it comes out.

New Orleans looters last week helped themselves to DVDs, flat-screen televisions, and cartons of cigarettes. Washington, DC looters on Thursday helped themselves to $52 billion. They'll be taking more, they assure us. The New Orleans looting is chump change compared to the DC variety. Shoot the looters, commanded a multitude of voices in the wake of Katrina. Can't these same voices muster even a weak call for taxpayers to withhold support from the elected looters who will transfer more than $1,000 per tax return to federal schemes in the name of hurricane relief?

The DC looters have the gall to label their acts "charity." The Big Easy looters were at least honest enough to concede their smash-and-grabs constituted theft.

So, are you trying to say that you HATE Black People?

Check out the August 29th cover of Time mag. It features a picture of Kanye West with the promo "Hip Hop's Class Act".

Inside, the article waxes poetic about the rapper who they consider "the smartest".

I suppose a $100 billion kiss from the feds might convince he and his fellow race baiting whiners that GW does in fact love black people. But, probably not.

All couldn't be more disgusting.

We should expect that the Federal Government would rise above the fray and take control of this situation without buying into the politics of chaos that has followed the disaster in Gulf.

Instead of standing up and assigning the proper blame for the irresponsible way this crises was handled at the local level, they will try to sooth their image with a minority of the public by providing a monumental distribution of our money.

Furthermore, they have the audacity to ask us to donate to the relief effort. Sorry, I gave at the office, and the gas pump and the grocery store and....

I wouldn't provide one penny for a group of incompetent locals who worked toward nothing but the institution of total chaos and disorganization and not the common sense to save themselves.

Dan
I don’t understand your point.
Are you saying because some 911 funds were misused we shouldn’t help the Hurricane victims.
Or
Are you saying that since the relief effort so far has been mismanaged, we shouldn’t help The New Orleans people?
Or
Are you saying that since politicians of both parties will take political benefit from it we shouldn’t rescue our bayou neighbors?
Or
Are you saying because some low life people criminals are looting flat screen TVs then all of New Orleans should take a walk?

This is not charity or a handout. This is why we should be paying our taxes - for protection (rescue), not just from foreign military attack. This is not income redistribution.
Are you as upset about the upper class tax give back while we have deficits as far as your grandchildren can see?
FYI – I live in NYC

Rc,
I think Dan's point is that the Constitution does not delegate the power to rebuild homes, streets, businesses, et cetera, when bad weather strikes a city. Those powers not delegated to the federal government are retained by the state governments. Therefore, in Dan's view, Louisiana may rebuild NO if they so choose.

I think Dan is offended by the air of magnanimity affected by the politicians who distribute money we have earned as though they had earned it, as though they are being generous lovers of man. It is a false posture indeed.

Charity is voluntary giving to those in need. So you are right when you say this is not charity. Those giving, the taxpayers, are not volunteering. Otherwise this would be charity, not a dirty word. The people in New Orleans are in need and they are receiving assistance.

The constitution charges the government with protecting the citizens. The USA is a country, not 50 republics. When NY was attacked on 911 all America pitched in to help. In New Orleans It is not only Louisiana’s responsibility or decision to rebuild. As an American I want my great city of New Orleans rebuilt, hopefully better than before. As I said before, This is why we pay taxes, in case of emergency like this one. Politicians may act magnanimous but they are just doing their job. I hope one day to visit, for the first time, a rebuilt New Orleans. That is what made America great, not this each state and every individual is on his own libertarian view.

I pay taxes b/c I don't want the government incarcerating me.

I don't think the founding fathers were thinking of bad weather when they wrote "the common defense." I am no constitutional scholar, so perhaps there is some other applicable to hurricanes part? I might think our federal government should do this or that, but without constitutional direction it is merely my direction, worth no more than that.

RC says: "The constitution charges the [federal?]government with protecting the citizens." Really? Where?

Just to be explicit: that the federal government has the job of "providing for the common defense" does not mean that the federal government is "charged" with "protecting" the American people from everything and anything (rumors, weather, sexual transmitted diseases, the common cold...) Rebuilding a particular city from a hurricane is not "common defense" in the sense that any sane person (and the founders themselves) would understand "common" and "defense." A tree once fell in my back yard, obliterating a fence --- repairing it via taxpayer "charity" would fit RC's construal of "common defense."

Skeptic
To be so literal with a document written in 1776 is to encourage chaos. This is 2005. If we couldn’t have applied the constitution to our lives today the document wouldn’t have survived. I wouldn’t stoop to compare a tree falling in your backyard to Hurricane Katina and the destruction of one of our great cities. Some conservative are so concerned with taxes/money they are losing their humanity.

Rc,
When the document is found to no longer address present day needs it wants amending. This is a process the founders created to keep it up to date. If the political support for amendment is not present, the amendment fails and the people's will carries the day. It's a well wrought process to make certain that we the people rule and not I the person.

"To be so literal with a document written in 1776 is to encourage chaos."

I would say you have it absolutely backwards. Not to be literal is chaos. To act without regard to law (i.e., to not be literal) is to do whatever an individual or group of individuals feels like at the moment. This is a chaotic, random, and unsound basis for public policy.

To be literal is to remain under the constrictions set forth in law, that is to be under control as opposed to chaos (pardon the Get Smart dynamic). The process for amendment is available when there is political support for change. If change does not have the political support, then it is unwarranted, improper, and inadvisable. After all, do we not want to work the will of the people?

RC--Oh, that's great, instead of responding to my reasoning (i.e., according to your logic the government should repair my back fence), you indulge in changing the subject: my a-nalogy was "stooping." Well, it was insensitive, but it's also a valid argument against your position. If the federal government is charged with protecting the American people from storms, what are the limits of its power/responsibility? And lest you think I lack "humanity," let me add that insisting on law-limited government is also humane.

There are no limits to what government can do for Rc. He illustrates well why liberalism is a totalitarian political philosophy. The use of the royal "we" above is sadly standard nowadays. I am referring to his identifying "we" and "us" with the government and its decisions.

If we are going to reduce political philosophy to a fight over who is the sweetest and gentlest person, as Rc wants to appear to us as; I would make the claim that decentralized, federated (as in we ARE 50 Republics), power is much more humane than his lawless vision of government.

Rc does stumble into something interesting above of which he is clearly unaware. He criticizes the "upper class tax give back while we have deficits as far as your grandchildren can see" but yet thinks that the federal government apparently has an extra 100+ billion dollars lying around to rebuild N.O. The money being spent in this relief effort is all simply going to be deficit spending, so that money only exists in so far as people (mostly foreign govts actually) buy up the U.S. debt as bonds. Some of the posts above that talk about paying for the relief effort "at the office, and the gas pump and the grocery store," meaning through taxes, are slightly inaccurate for that reason.

Btw, I know the song says "this land is my land" but that song really sux. We actually are supposed to be 50 republics. N.O. is not "your" city Rc, nor is Des Moines or any other city or town of which you aren't a denizen. Your nationalism is the exact equivalent to that of those on the right who like have never met a foreign war they didn't like.

"We absolutely should rebuild!"

-Mayor of Atlantis

I didn't mean to sound like a valley girl just above, the first "like" is a typo. :)

Brian,

the truth will out.