Posted on 9/7/2005, 1:05:27 PM by StatenIsland
We failed you? No, oh brilliant creator of Exit to Eden, you failed. You might not think of it this way, but: Your leaders failed to upgrade the levees. You elected a bunch of weepers and blame-shifters who lost their head in a crisis.
Over the past decades, your elected officials have let a criminal element incubate and grow until they ruled the streets, instead of the forces of law and order. In pop culture, a New Orleans thief is always a charming rogue with a devilish smile. In reality, they’re a bunch of thugs.
If the number of residents who are looting thugs were such a “tiny minority,” we wouldn’t have seen this widespread, relentless anarchy. Madam, a noticeable number of your neighbors saw this disaster as an opportunity to smash a window and run away with a television, an act that reveals much about the inadequacies of the local school system, since that thief won’t be enjoying that television with any electricity anytime soon.
I would also note that this is one hell of a police force your local officials hired and that you and your neighbors tolerated. 50 percent turned in their badges during the crisis and quit. Your police superintendent is conceding that some cops were looting. Just want to refresh your memory — four years ago, New York and Washington, planes falling out of the sky, thousands dead, no idea what the hell is coming next… and the cops, among others, showed up to work.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
To Ann Rice:
Look to your local government who are like the characters you portray in your books. ;)
Definition of Vampires= blood sucking vermins.
I LOVE this article. LOVE it.
Good job Jim G.!
"Just want to refresh your memory — four years ago, New York and Washington, planes falling out of the sky, thousands dead, no idea what the hell is coming next… and the cops, among others, showed up to work."
With many loosing their lives as well!
BTTT!
People in the US seem to expect federal disaster relief effort to be flawless, no mater the circumstances.
Federal emergency relief plans for hurricanes assume that the local and state governments would be competent, and that the federal government would play a supporting role at the request of the local governments. That model worked fairly well during 9/11, for last year's four hurricanes in Florida, and for the Mississippi and Alabama gulf coast regions during hurricane Katrina.
However, federal plans apparently do not provide for the contingency that the local and state governments would be worse than incompetent, and would, in fact, actually hinder response to the disaster. It took too long for the feds to adjust to the required change in role from "support of local efforts" to "primary responder" in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina.
Nevertheless, the US public expects the federal government emergency response to be flawless, no mater what the circumstances. Therefore, President Bush is, in effect, being bashed for not anticipating the inadequate performance of the New Orleans mayor and the governor of Louisiana.
At the risk of being flamed, that particular criticism may have merit. Federal emergency response, in the broad sense, should not depend on the competence of first responders. We need to rethink our model for federal disaster relief.
Right now, the feds are the third tier, following local and the state response. There needs to be the legal and structural mechanism for the feds to jump into the primary role quickly when it is apparent the the local and state governments are unable to act, or incompetent in their ability to act.
Another great commentary in a list of about a million from National Review. Loved it!
This is too rich!
Fat chance.
Baton Rouge Bump...
Did you know this same women writes hard core smut....no surprise she hails from LA.
She wrote a series of books under a different pen name, something like Ann Rouqluaire, that was the sexual S/M adventures of sleeping beauty.
No I didn't, I only heard of her Vampire books. And I had heard she was from New Orleans.
The only reason Anne lives in New Orleans is soo she can walk out of her million dollar gated mansion sometimes and walk past the old cemetaries dressed in black and feel very "goth".
I don't anticipate a resolution to this beyond making state and local governments agencies of the US government. Our constitution is simply not built that way, and in most cases it is a good thing. The answer is to elect competent leadership. I don't see us doing even now. The Republicans (and I voted a straight R. ticket last November) are busy lining their pockets and those of the farmers, the credit card companies, etc. rather than resolving SS and Medicare. I'm very frustrated, but I see Louisanan incompetence as the canary in the cold mine.
Anne Rice lives in San Diego now. Like a typical liberal pointy-headed type, she lives in a fancy, exclusive place where she doesn't have to deal with the unwashed masses, but retains her claim to NOLA citizenship because of the artsy-fartsy, gothic, cultural eccentricity that it lets her lay claim to.
Hey, bankruptcy reform was important to get done, not a headline grapper but it did need to be fixed.
Do you mean that they were living loosely? Or that they were losing their lives? When we use bad grammar and spelling it just ads fuel to the DUers who try to claim that we are ignorant.
I agree. Great article!
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