Property Rights vs. Human Rights in the USA

Icono Clast
I'd bet that even if Bush lifted all those individuals out of New
Orleans and gave them new McMansions you would still find fault.

Basic problem was that an incompetent Mayor and City fathers who issued an
evacuation order and did nothing to insure that it happened. Another factor
is one of an apparent population that is too stupid to take responsibility
for their own lives! They expect someone else to take care of them and if
they do something stupid and get hurt they blame someone else.

From what you are espousing Icono it sure sounds like you fit in this
category.

Frank

FLiP wrote:
Icono Clast
I'd bet that even if Bush lifted all those individuals out of New
Orleans and gave them new McMansions you would still find fault.

Basic problem was that an incompetent Mayor and City fathers who issued an
evacuation order and did nothing to insure that it happened. Another factor
is one of an apparent population that is too stupid to take responsibility
for their own lives! They expect someone else to take care of them and if
they do something stupid and get hurt they blame someone else.



A good explanation for part of the problem:

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/sho...le.php?id=1026

Hatunen wrote:
One of the reasons for repairing the levees is the very real
possibility of another storm; with teh levees already gone even a
Category 1 might be a problem.

In other words, the sort of preventive care that wasn't taken before
must be now. Of course I agree but I still think the greatest
urgency, and therefore the first priority, is getting the people in out!

Icono Clast said:
[Helicopter p]ilots and assistants could be the lightest-weight
people available to do the job thus allowing the weight saved to
be used with supplies.

When you need a chopper pilot you pretty much have to take what's
on hand.

You can still select the lightest on hand

I've heard of nothing of the sort being done. (We can live a
while without food, but not water.)

It's an interesting dilema: do we send the choppers out as quickly
as possible to rescue people clsoe to death in attics or stranded
on top of roofs, or do we spend a lot of time loading them up with
food and water and taking it to elevated freeways?

Do both simultaneously: Take the helicopters in with supplies and,
after distributing them, take them out with rescuees.

No matter what you decide, someone will bitch.

Icono Clast said:
2. Communications are out. They have not equipped aircraft
with loud speakers that could inform those on the ground on
what's goin' down.

Hatunen said:
What, exactly, do you expect them to tell the people on the
ground?

Icono Clast said:
Oh, things like "Help is on the way" even if it isn't true.

Ah. Lie to them. They already were assuming help was on the way,
though.

Yes, lie to them. Give them hope; with hope comes strength.

Or "If you can go toward (a landmark) you can get some water
(food, transportation, etc.)".

Another lie?

If they could have gone anywhere they wouldn't have been crowded
onto those elevated freeway sections.

I didn't have those people in mind; I was thinking more of those who
were isolated in homes and on roofs, etc.

We certainly don't want a lot of Jean Valjeans being hunted down
by Javerts, but in any case the authorities had already said that
people taking food and other necessities weren't to be stopped.

True. And those stealing electronics would, in the end, have to leave
the ill-gotten goods behind anyway.

But I reckon we can safely assume that after two days all the
neessities were gone and the looters were reduced to stealing boom
boxes and computers.

Yes.

I'm saying, and today it's being said by commentators, too, that
had the stranded victims not been poor and Black, things might
be different.

I'd be far more surprised if it weren't being said by black
commentators.

You've seen me. You know what color my skin is.

And it's rather a leap to claim that the rich would have been
treated differently, since it appeared all locally available
resources were in use trying to help the black people. The problem
was there weren't enough local resources.

The non-poor had resources of their own, such as personal transportation.

Well, looks like we'll be spending tens of billions because they
weren't spent.

maybe. or maybe not. We'll see.

And in a month or so we'll learn how many people died because
they weren't when they shoulda been.

Already beign done. The test, though, is the question how much
resource should be spent to protect what level of risk, knowing
that Murphy's law will surely apply.

You're the professional best qualified to answer.

Not to mention that everyone likes to call flood control
projects "pork barrel".

Many are, I don't deny. Some aren't.

Egen the ones that aren't are considered that by anyone not in the
pork area. Can YOU make a clear distinction between which are pork
and which are necessary?

No.

When it comes down to it, your beloved home town has many
similar problems when it comes to spending for worst possible
case events.

Yes, it does. My disgust has turned to anger and, in a not quite
abstract way, fear as, at any instant, San Francisco or Seattle
or Anchorage or Los Angeles or New Madrid could be hit with a
Great 'Quake. It's also possible that, when El Niño returns to
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley, levees there could break. If
they do, crops will be lost and water supplies to populated
places will get contaminated.

Yep. So how much should you spend on protection? What is a
reasonable level of protection and what isn't? Seismic retrofit of
all the structures subject to another New Madrid quake is probably
out of the question (the last New Madrid quakes knocked down
scaffolding at the Capito building in washington, then
a-building).

I have serious doubts about San Francisco's (and the Bay Area's)
survivability after another 1906, despite the constantly upgraded
building codes, especially after 1957.

That's the one that terrified me and made me profoundly understand
our insignificance to Mother Nature. We are no more noticed by her
than the ants we kill as we walk down the street.

Loma Prieta was nothing, a mere blip in comparison to another 1906

Unquestionable.

Ed Jay said:
The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the
agency that handles the infrastructure of the nation's
waterways, said the damage in New Orleans probably would
have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts
been fully funded over the years.
http://tinyurl.com/bynbc

Yep. But how many California congresscritters will vote on
protecting New Orleans? And, of course, you come head to head
the the old problem of poltical philosophy: why weren't the
New orelaners taxing themselves heavily so they could improve
the flood control themselves? And should they have been?

Valid points, of course. Will the lesson have been learned?

Which lesson?

Ben Franklin's.

to depend on yourself and not the feds? And there is the law of
unintended consequences. I've seen it said that one protection New
Orleans once had was the long expanse of delta leading to the
Gulf, but all the flood control works along the Miississippi and
Missouri, along with the flood control dams has altered the silt
deposition in the delta such that the delta is disappearing.

Unintended consequences are always a risk. The above was apparently a
losing bet.
__________________________________________________ _________________
A San Franciscan in (where else?) San Francisco.
http://geocities.com/dancefest/ - http://geocities.com/iconoc/
ICQ: http://wwp.mirabilis.com/19098103 --- IClast at SFbay Net

Windcat wrote:

A good explanation for part of the problem:

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/sho...le.php?id=1026

Oh, right, quote the Washington Times. That's an unbiased source.

On Sun, 04 Sep 2005 05:22:43 -0700, Icono Clast
wrote:

Hatunen wrote:
One of the reasons for repairing the levees is the very real
possibility of another storm; with teh levees already gone even a
Category 1 might be a problem.

In other words, the sort of preventive care that wasn't taken before
must be now. Of course I agree but I still think the greatest
urgency, and therefore the first priority, is getting the people in out!

Arguable, certainly. but in any case that is what they are doing;
they still, today, Sunday, have all rescue equipped choppers out
pulling people off rooftops and out of attics. And in case you
haven't noticed, those people standing around hopelessly in
large clusters are being transported to other parts of the
country, including here in Tucson.



************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

wrote:
Windcat wrote:

A good explanation for part of the problem:

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/sho...le.php?id=1026

Oh, right, quote the Washington Times. That's an unbiased source.


It's as unbiased as the NYT or WaPo is. When you get down to it, they're all
biased, some more than others, with some leanings more prevalent than others
across rags. How you see this depends on whether they agree with *your* bias
or not, and how far from a reasonable
mutually-agreed-upon-from-different-vantagepoints truth they generally are.
Hard to decide where that is exactly; the more extreme the example the easier
it is to determine. Successful bias is often at its best in the subtleties of
the way an issue is reported.

The Washington Times is roughly in the same league of bias as the two
aforementioned rags.

I'd say a bit less but then we'd continue wrangling, so I'll just say the
same, as nothing's to be gained from thrashing this out. Nex

Top posted intentionally: The probable ****er in all of this is that
according to an article in today's paper 231 million was authorized to build
a bridge in Alaska to an island with only a handful of residents, while it
was estimated (at least at one time, don't know how current the estimate is)
that it would have taken only 42 mill. to repair the levees. David Brooks
on the Lehrer Report gave about half a dozen historical examples of sea
changes in the US political scene that resulted from atrophies like this
one. Maybe some changes for the better will come from this.
"Icono Clast" wrote in message
news:1125836642.06e46ca4c59e4dc372431460c6d321b1@t eranews...
Hatunen wrote:
One of the reasons for repairing the levees is the very real possibility
of another storm; with teh levees already gone even a Category 1 might be
a problem.

In other words, the sort of preventive care that wasn't taken before
must be now. Of course I agree but I still think the greatest
urgency, and therefore the first priority, is getting the people in out!

Icono Clast said:
[Helicopter p]ilots and assistants could be the lightest-weight
people available to do the job thus allowing the weight saved to
be used with supplies.

When you need a chopper pilot you pretty much have to take what's on
hand.

You can still select the lightest on hand

I've heard of nothing of the sort being done. (We can live a
while without food, but not water.)

It's an interesting dilema: do we send the choppers out as quickly
as possible to rescue people clsoe to death in attics or stranded
on top of roofs, or do we spend a lot of time loading them up with
food and water and taking it to elevated freeways?

Do both simultaneously: Take the helicopters in with supplies and,
after distributing them, take them out with rescuees.

No matter what you decide, someone will bitch.

Icono Clast said:
2. Communications are out. They have not equipped aircraft
with loud speakers that could inform those on the ground on
what's goin' down.

Hatunen said:
What, exactly, do you expect them to tell the people on the ground?

Icono Clast said:
Oh, things like "Help is on the way" even if it isn't true.

Ah. Lie to them. They already were assuming help was on the way, though.

Yes, lie to them. Give them hope; with hope comes strength.

Or "If you can go toward (a landmark) you can get some water
(food, transportation, etc.)".

Another lie?

If they could have gone anywhere they wouldn't have been crowded onto
those elevated freeway sections.

I didn't have those people in mind; I was thinking more of those who
were isolated in homes and on roofs, etc.

We certainly don't want a lot of Jean Valjeans being hunted down by
Javerts, but in any case the authorities had already said that people
taking food and other necessities weren't to be stopped.

True. And those stealing electronics would, in the end, have to leave
the ill-gotten goods behind anyway.

But I reckon we can safely assume that after two days all the neessities
were gone and the looters were reduced to stealing boom
boxes and computers.

Yes.

I'm saying, and today it's being said by commentators, too, that
had the stranded victims not been poor and Black, things might
be different.

I'd be far more surprised if it weren't being said by black commentators.

You've seen me. You know what color my skin is.

And it's rather a leap to claim that the rich would have been
treated differently, since it appeared all locally available
resources were in use trying to help the black people. The problem
was there weren't enough local resources.

The non-poor had resources of their own, such as personal transportation.

Well, looks like we'll be spending tens of billions because they
weren't spent.

maybe. or maybe not. We'll see.

And in a month or so we'll learn how many people died because
they weren't when they shoulda been.

Already beign done. The test, though, is the question how much resource
should be spent to protect what level of risk, knowing that Murphy's law
will surely apply.

You're the professional best qualified to answer.

Not to mention that everyone likes to call flood control
projects "pork barrel".

Many are, I don't deny. Some aren't.

Egen the ones that aren't are considered that by anyone not in the
pork area. Can YOU make a clear distinction between which are pork
and which are necessary?

No.

When it comes down to it, your beloved home town has many
similar problems when it comes to spending for worst possible
case events.

Yes, it does. My disgust has turned to anger and, in a not quite
abstract way, fear as, at any instant, San Francisco or Seattle
or Anchorage or Los Angeles or New Madrid could be hit with a
Great 'Quake. It's also possible that, when El Niño returns to
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley, levees there could break. If
they do, crops will be lost and water supplies to populated
places will get contaminated.

Yep. So how much should you spend on protection? What is a reasonable
level of protection and what isn't? Seismic retrofit of
all the structures subject to another New Madrid quake is probably
out of the question (the last New Madrid quakes knocked down
scaffolding at the Capito building in washington, then a-building).

I have serious doubts about San Francisco's (and the Bay Area's)
survivability after another 1906, despite the constantly upgraded
building codes, especially after 1957.

That's the one that terrified me and made me profoundly understand
our insignificance to Mother Nature. We are no more noticed by her
than the ants we kill as we walk down the street.

Loma Prieta was nothing, a mere blip in comparison to another 1906

Unquestionable.

Ed Jay said:
The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that
handles the infrastructure of the nation's waterways, said the damage
in New Orleans probably would
have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts
been fully funded over the years.
http://tinyurl.com/bynbc

Yep. But how many California congresscritters will vote on protecting
New Orleans? And, of course, you come head to head
the the old problem of poltical philosophy: why weren't the
New orelaners taxing themselves heavily so they could improve
the flood control themselves? And should they have been?

Valid points, of course. Will the lesson have been learned?

Which lesson?

Ben Franklin's.

to depend on yourself and not the feds? And there is the law of
unintended consequences. I've seen it said that one protection New
Orleans once had was the long expanse of delta leading to the
Gulf, but all the flood control works along the Miississippi and
Missouri, along with the flood control dams has altered the silt
deposition in the delta such that the delta is disappearing.

Unintended consequences are always a risk. The above was apparently a
losing bet.
__________________________________________________ _________________
A San Franciscan in (where else?) San Francisco.
http://geocities.com/dancefest/ - http://geocities.com/iconoc/
ICQ: http://wwp.mirabilis.com/19098103 --- IClast at SFbay Net

wrote:
Windcat wrote:


A good explanation for part of the problem:

http://tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/sho...le.php?id=1026


Oh, right, quote the Washington Times. That's an unbiased source.

It's the typical right-wing approach. Before the event, starve the beast
so that no money can be spent on preventive measures. After the event,
blame everyone except the right-wing officials, who in this case failed
the area utterly.

Icono Clast wrote:

Nile wrote:

The Republicans


Well that didn't take long.
For the record, New Orleans has a:
1) Democratic mayor
2) Democratic city council
3) Democratic governor
4) Democratic representatives
5) until recently, 2 Democratic senators.


So, what?

The hurricane's strike was predicted days in advance. Much could have
been done, and was, prior to the storm's arrival, to prevent the tragedy
we're seeing but everyone (meaning official agencies as well as we, the
people) knew that thousands were left behind because they hadn't the
means to leave (and a few who were too stupid to go).


Of course more could have been done and by the local idiots. How many
busses did the mayor leave in Orleans parish to flood out instead of
using them to take folks out of the city?

What I don't understand is why, the instant the levee broke, the ****in'
Idiot in the White House didn't order every emergency agency within,
say, 200 miles of New Orleans to get their asses down there with
whatever they had to do whatever they could. We don't yet know how many
people have died as a direct result of the post-break negligence.
Certainly hundreds. Possibly thousands. I blame the current occupant of
the White House.

My disgust has turned to anger and, in a not quite abstract way, fear
as, at any instant, San Francisco or Seattle or Anchorage or Los Angeles
or New Madrid could be hit with a Great 'Quake. It's also possible that,
when El Niño returns to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley, levees there
could break. If they do, crops will be lost and water supplies to
populated places will get contaminated.

One helicopter ride and you can identify the high ground and
routes out of the city.


If you're in a helicopter, you don't need to know where "the high
ground and routes out of the city" are.

Any idiot knows the routes out. Why did the mayor leave his
constituents and busses there to flood?

FLiP wrote:

Icono Clast
I'd bet that even if Bush lifted all those individuals out of New
Orleans and gave them new McMansions you would still find fault.

Basic problem was that an incompetent Mayor and City fathers who issued an
evacuation order and did nothing to insure that it happened. Another factor
is one of an apparent population that is too stupid to take responsibility
for their own lives! They expect someone else to take care of them and if
they do something stupid and get hurt they blame someone else.


Nope the idiot mayor and shrub get to share the award for idiocy this year.

From what you are espousing Icono it sure sounds like you fit in this
category.

Frank