Monday, September 05, 2005 | By: Unknown

Fed's guilty of criminal neglect.

When there are people dying in the Superdome 6 days after Katrina hit there is something wrong with our heads of state. When an emergency management employee gets calls daily from his elderly mother trapped in her own home and he tells her daily that yes someone is coming to save her and they dont, and she drowns in her own home Friday nite, four days after the hurricane went through,there is something seriously flawed and fucked up about our heads of state. When our president can entertain the IDEA of going to a baseball game or sit and strum a guitar while people are dying in their own homes in our own country..there are seriously some screwed up and out of touch heads of state. When 200 of the 1500 police officers of New Orleans walk off their job and 2 of them commit suicide because they are over whelmed by the enormous pressure of trying to do their jobs in the face of hopelessness waiting for the federal assistance that took their sweet ass time getting there..we got some seriously apathetic and grossly negligent heads of state.The horror stories are mind numbing. There are some folks that believe this is blown out of proportion and that the residents of the Mississippi Delta got what they deserved for living in a flood plain or below sea level or not leaving when they were originally told to go prior to Katrina's arrival. These people do not take into consideration various factors. Factors such as 1. The levees have held up for more than a hundred years. Yes, they needed rehabbing, but W rerouted that money to the Iraq debacle. 2. The elderly and poor had very little at their disposal to get them out of harms way. If you do not own a car or you make minimum wage, its hard to get the fuck out of the way of a hurricane. I could go on and on but why??? The people that do not have a vested interest in the Mississippi Delta area and view it as "not their problem" can and will rationalize their view of this atrocity committed by our heads of state.I call it an atrocity because that is what I see the lack of reaction by the federal government..aka our heads of state, as. Its sickening to me to think about the hundreds of people that died days after the hurricane went through that did not have to perish. The people that died in their own houses waiting for someone to rescue them. The fishermen that tried valiently to save whole neighborhoods with nothing more than a dingy. Do I point a finger? Yes..I do..they mobilized faster for 9-11 and the Tsumani relief effort than they did for Katrina. New Orleans was home for over half a million humans. Whether they were fine upstanding people doesnt matter, they deserved better than they got from our government. In the words of Denise Bottcher, press secretary to Gov. Kathleen Blanco of Lousisana:"We wanted soldiers, helicopters, food and water. They wanted to negotiate an organizational chart." She was speaking of the assclowns at FEMA. These horror stories are just now coming to the surface, the ones where our heads of state play head games and ego trip at the cost of hundreds of lives. The officials from the Mississippi delta states are talking now on national TV and to big news agencies and sista its gonna get real ugly. I think its important to figure out who,why and how people in positions of authority in Washington screwed these people over so that it can never happen again. I want that jackass Mr. Chertoff and the FEMA director, Michael D. Brown to be publicly humiliated and never be allowed to hold any type of public position or office again. I think they should be charged with a crime of negligence, they are directly responsible for the deaths of many of the citizens of the Mississippi delta who died AFTER the hurricane went through the area. There is a good article in, what else, NY Times about what the Governors of three of the states affected have said so far about the bullshit they had to endure to get the feds to move their ass. One example is how FEMA kept water,diesel and food from being delivered from PRIVATE companies or individuals to the affected areas merely because they had not asked for fucking approval from FEMA to enter the oppressed areas. GIVE ME a FUCKING BREAK.... a direct quote from the article: "Far from deferring to state or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse, Mr. Broussard stated on "Meet the Press."When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish's emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said". dear god in heaven this just isn't right and those bastards should be made to pay. The link to the NY Times article is here.

3 people gave us their .02 cents:

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Nice to have you stop by and glad to see you're an RL fan.

The Zombieslayer said...

Dusty - The elderly and poor had very little at their disposal to get them out of harms way. If you do not own a car or you make minimum wage, its hard to get the fuck out of the way of a hurricane.

Well said. As someone who's been through two, we had warning and if you're broke with nowhere to go, it's not so easy to just pack up and leave everything. I was doing fine financially when those hurricanes happened, but that's not the point. I knew a lot of people who lost everything.

Whether they were fine upstanding people doesnt matter, they deserved better than they got from our government.

Well said. Good quotes about FEMA too. Whomever is running that agency needs to be fired, as well as most of the top management.

Joel said...

A comment about Walmart: For all its self-trumpeting about how much money it has given to help hurricane victims, the mega-chain has failed to impress me. First, the amount it gave didn't even come to 1% of its annual earnings.

Second, it put out the word to employees in the devastated area that if they wanted to keep their jobs they had to drive until they saw a Walmart that wasn't affected by the storm and report for duty.

Think about it: three tanker trucks of water is piddling when you realize that they are being delivered by a corporation which could have sent a fleet.