If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!
Posted on 09/14/2005 3:32:33 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Sorry but I don't know how to do a hot link using html so here they are using the straight posting method.
Article about Houston and the evacuees.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/4973356/detail.html
Article about the FBI warning and the fight at the school.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/4975025/detail.html
I remember a thread about the school fight...
It is amazing for a small town gal like me to imagine that housing for that many can be found as quickly as it was.
Houston is an amazing place! Hot, humid, buggy, takes up a large....really large land mass.
I was raised in Houston and I have a love/hate relationship with it. When I was growing up the people were wonderful and there was so much for a child to do. Back then most people considered Houston as redneck central but school children were taken to the Houston Symphony several times a year. I remember going to the opera too. I'm old enough to have gone to baseball games at Colt 45 stadium before the Astrodome was built. Now the Astrodome is no longer used for baseball.
On the other hand there was always something strange about wearing shorts on Christmas Day. I live in Oklahoma now and I like having seasons. I don't miss the traffic. I don't miss it taking an hour and more to get across town when traffic was running smoothly.
Sounds like Phoenix, and I have some experience there with the weirdness of wearing shorts on Christmas day.
Even weirder to be spraying fake snow on the front window displays ;~D
What we have witnessed with Katrina is a massive failure of LEADERSHIP. Louisiana has had the same opportunity as every other state to plan and prepare for this type of event. Unfortunately, many emergency management positions go to untrained political appointees who quite frankly dont know which end of the fire truck the water comes out of, much less what the capability of their response agencies are. They see big federal bucks and nothing more. Of course the folks in the trenches (first responders) can see this and the morale of the services is affected as you would expect. Why else would so many of the NO police and firefighters desert their duties.
As to the race-baiters, media whores and liberals who are blatantly using this situation for political gain I have nothing but contempt for them. Hopefully the majority of America will see them for what they are and they will be relegated to the dust bin of history.
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
Martin Luther King Jr.
My tea leaves aren't working well this day, and trying to run your comments through Altavista's babblefish isn't clarifying what you're trying to say. Would you mind expanding the comment?
One of my favorite quotes of Martin Luther King Jr. that's all.
Thanks for your post.
It is a VERY sad day when we lose two individuals of their caliber because of a few losers who post here on FR. I have frequented their threads probably more than most others on FR. I hope with some time they will choose to come back and continue to contribute to the forum. It would be a shame to let a few jerks ruin a great forum. The few jerks certainly are not true conservative thinkers.
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!
Glad to hear it :~D
LOL, Miss Marple -- you don't know how many times I have said those very words to myself!
I have held several jobs since living here, and in each instance noticed how intimidated my co-workers were. They lived in hand-wringing neurotic fear of displeasing their supervisors. They worried constantly if anyone perceived them as breaking the rules, and about getting a written warning placed in their personnel files. The employer's omnipresent surveillance cameras created even more tension. A worker might think he was alone at his workstation, only to suddenly get an angry call from his boss at a remote location or an unexpected write-up from a surveillance officer peering down from overhead. Big Brother is always watching!
Independent thought and initiative were always discouraged. You were supposed to consult with your supervisor at the drop of a hat and never try to analyze or solve anything by yourself. ("You can't do that, you have to tell Miss So-and-So!") I lost count of the number of times I would see a customer deliberately ignored or abandoned because they asked an employee about something that wasn't directly in their job description.
One line that I used to hear over and over among civil servants was "We're not paid enough to think!" And since the factor of low wages is undeniable -- and might even explain why so many employees deserted their posts during the hurricane -- there's actually a grain of truth to that callous statement.
Most of all, never question anything! I'll never forget the night I tried to figure out the reason a problematic situation existed, only to have a co-worker stop me in my tracks with "You diggin' too deep!" It made me feel like I was in an outtake of "Roots," like someone was going to drag me from my cubicle, tie me to a stake in the middle of the cafeteria, and flay me in front of hundreds of employees just to make an example of me.
After I left one job with a particularly strict atmosphere, I rehashed it with a former co-worker who summed it up very well. He said, "Up North where you come from, you talk about 'thinking outside the box.' Here, we are taught from a very early age to 'color inside the lines.' Anything else will get you into a lot of trouble."
The thing is, the "plantation mentality" doesn't know any color barriers in 21st Century Louisiana. I've seen equal bullying from both black and white supervisors, equal intimidation in both black and white employees. There have been so many times that I've mumbled under my breath, "Don't these people know it's the year 2005 -- the Emancipation Proclamation was signed centuries ago!"
The attitudes of the workforce certainly account for a lot of what we've seen in recent weeks. The "plantation mentality" is as strong as it ever was in Louisiana.
I'm glad that you pointed out that not all the evacuees are welfare recipients. The first wave of people who came here to Central Louisiana arrived in their own vehicles, checked into hotels at their own expense, and generally spent the weekend before Katrina hit behaving like tourists. The first articles that came out of their arrival crowed about the boost of tourism dollars into our local economy. You couldn't get a table at many restaurants around Alexandria when these suburban professional families arrived.
Now, unfortunately, everything has turned 180 degrees, let alone upside-down. Today, many of these people stood in line at the Pentecostal headquarters in Alexandria for what was called the "Katrina Job Fair." Despite their circumstances, a substantial number of people came to booths sponsored by 50 Central Louisiana employers. While there were indeed some ragged-looking teens in t-shirts applying for fast-food jobs, there were mostly nicely-coiffed women and well-dressed men filling out applications. Despite losing it all, they've kept their pride and dignity as they rebuild their lives. The only downside to this is that their unanticipated presence in our community makes it harder than ever for local residents to compete for these same jobs. In fact, it was quite surprising that 50 employers with vacancies could even be rounded up under the circumstances.
Meanwhile, here's a story about evacuees who ended up in Dorchester, Massachusetts:
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/home/articles/2005/09/15/establishing_a_home_again_from_scratch/
Interesting quote:
''Everyone is focused on the evacuees, but no one is focused on people like these," says Mayor Thomas M. Menino, whose office is coordinating services for, among other displaced people, those Gulf State residents trickling into Boston without the knowledge or assistance of state officials.
"We have no sense of the numbers," the mayor says. ''They're not attached to any organization, and they're trying to start a new life for themselves, and they don't know where to go for help. They have to think about jobs. Educating their children. Health insurance. They come here without any identification or ability to make a living."
lsucat, I wish you and your family the very best of luck in getting your life back on track after Katrina!
It's all too sad to comprehend.
Bookmarking my way.
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