Bush is certainly not responsible for a natural disaster like Katrina.
He is responsible for removing the safety net that used to be available
to cushion the blow. Bush has this country running on the edge of solvency to fund his war
& reward his friends. All we need is one good push and this
country's economy will crash taking the rest of the world with us. If
Katrina is not that one good push that puts us over the edge the next
disaster will be.
The
stories of the fleeing residents, however, paint the picture of an
America where many people struggle. As Treasury Secretary John Snow
noted recently, the fruits of economic growth are not being shared equally. In New Orleans, many such low wage earners have congregated at the Superdome. Their stories reveal the conditions faced by the poor in America:
"No funds,"
a 41-year-old woman surrounded by four children, ages 2 to 14, said
when asked what brought her to the shelter. The woman didn’t want to
give her name as she waited with stacks of bedding and a few children’s
toys resting on the sidewalk.
Eighty percent or so of New Orleans is under water right now, and word
came from an aerial survey that the southern peninsula of Plaquemines
Parish is gone, as in "reclaimed by the water."
The Mayor of Biloxi was right - this was their tsunami.
I saw on CNN that the rest of the Louisiana National Guard will return from Iraq in eight days. According to this news report,
Gulf state National Guardsmen stationed in Iraq are devastated by the
news of Katrina, however this is disturbing and the man who said it
must have had a gun to his head as we all know that you don't sign up
for the National Guard if you want to fight wars overseas:
Asked
how his troops felt being in Iraq while their state was in such
difficulty, Jones replied: "Well, we all know our primary mission is
the federal one."
"The secondary mission is to serve at the pleasure of the governor in disaster-relief and other missions," said Jones, 44, who works for a company managing the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
I read that US Agencies are slow to respond
to major US health threats such as botulism, anthrax, smallpox and
bubonic plague. Of 19 public health agencies in 18 states, only two consistently met
federal guidelines to return calls from physicians within 30 minutes.
Three agencies didn't respond at all to the first five calls they
received. This is bad news as the areas ravaged by Katrina,
particularly New Orleans will soon be a petri dish of disease
as bodies from cemeteries may emerge, the sewage system has overflowed,
there are chemical spills and I see kids swimming in the flood waters.
Oh baby, we're talking about cholera, tuberculosis, malaria, West Nile
virus, and dengue fever. US agencies had better get their acts
together. This is a tremendous catastrophe.
If you'd like to help agencies who work in the field of emergency response to this disaster, check out networkforgood.org.
