!MOLON LABE!...
Posted on 09/16/2008 5:04:18 PM PDT by Rebelbase
GALVESTON, Texas (AP) - The few hundred holdouts on Texas' ravaged Bolivar Peninsula will be required to leave in the next few days, and officials said Tuesday they are ready to use emergency powers to empty the barrier island scraped clean by Hurricane Ike.
(Tex A.G. looking at legal options)
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
At some point, if individuals want to assume the risk of staying, let them. Maybe the adverse circumstances, no food, water etc. will change their minds ... or maybe not. In any event, threats like these can cause the casualties, that they seek to avoid.
I want to know who built that house in the foreground.
Where is the Constitutional authority for government officials forcing property owners (or people authorized by the property owners to be on the property) to vacate their property? I can see maybe requiring that children and mentally incompetent adults be removed, as they aren’t legally able to make decisions for themselves, but not mentally competent adults.
I remain skeptical about that photo (and a similar one from another angle), in spite of the apparently reputable source. Look at the triple window in the front. You can’t really tell if there’s any glass in them (though it really looks like there is), but they clearly have either a reflective glass on the top sections, or neat, undamaged shades or interior shutter over the top section in each window. I don’t care how well a house is built — with 100+ mph winds carrying huge amounts of flying debris, glass windows get smashed and any blinds or shutters inside get torn off or at least severely damaged. The only explanation I can think of besides a photoshop hoax, is that in spite of its perfectly-squared-to-the-streets orientation, it actually didn’t “live” there, and floated in from a much less devastated area at some point after the winds had greatly diminished. Even if that’s the case, the builder would still deserve plenty of credit for building a house that can float around off it foundation and remain in one piece.
Local zoning codes and building standards?
That was Gilchrist. Gilchrist is no more.
Conclusion: the house is a fakery.
You can click on the photo and magnify it. Upon doing so, the gullied out areas underneath the pad appear legit. And there are signs of roof damage, e.g. some shingles missing along the roof peak.
I'm certainly hoping his information is wrong.
Are there any satellite shots of the area?
Lots of provisions of local building codes and zoning standards are of very questionable constitutionality as well. Many of these things boil down to forcing people to pay contractors to do things to their property that they don’t want done and/or forcing people to spend money to make OTHER people’s neighboring properties have higher market value. There’s at least one municipality (in Maryland IIRC) that had/has a minimum house size in the zoning requirements for a particular area, and actually made someone tear down a new house because it was too small!
How did it come to pass that state and local governments have outlawed the lifestyle that the pioneers had, and which formed a wonderful foundation for our culture and economy?
I don’t know. I still think it may be either a float-in, or a photoshop of a slightly damaged home pasted over photos of this obliterated area. The windows just don’t look possible to me.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2081430/posts
It’s a real pic,,,
Start lookin’ at post # 2951 ,,,
~~~
Sounds like the AG wants to play Nanny State...:0/
A TEMPORARY evacuation just ISN’T ENOUGH.
I wrote this in 1992 after Andrew, whose path was eerily similar to that of Katrina – and now Ike! That should tell ANY sane person that THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN AND PROBABLY IN LESS THAN 12 YEARS GIVEN THE MORE AGGRESSIVE HURRICANES IN THIS CYCLE. And this cycle is predicted to last another 15 years!!
Simply change some of the names.
If they rebuild NOLA on the present site – and DON’T get folks OFF THOSE BEACHES ALONG THE ENTIRE HURRICANE-PRONE U.S. COAST — keep this for the NEXT catastrophe. Insanity is defined as doing the same things over and over while expecting a different result. Whom God would destroy, He first makes insane. Has this nation lost its mind? Look to NOLA – BUILT 8 FEET BELOW THE SURROUNDING WATERWAYS – for the answer for that. If NOLA is rebuilt, those low-lying areas ought to be allowed to revert to their original state as wetlands and swamps. The folks necessary to operate that vital port and petro/chemical infrastructure need to live in reinforced dwellings ABOVE future anticipated flood levels.
And now that Rita and Ike have come and gone, taking most of these coastal dwellings and structures with them, it is time to consider turning a 10 to 15 mile strip of our hurricane prone coastal areas into RV parks or campgrounds with MINIMAL SEMI-PERMANENT – and I stress “SEMI” — STRUCTURES. Anyone building a structure in that strip is ON HIS OWN RE. SHOULDERING THE FINANCIAL LIABILITY FOR ITS LOSS!!!
************
WHAT GEORGE SHOULD HAVE SAID
by Dick Bachert
On the evening of September 1st, 1992, President George Bush went on national TV to announce that the already empty federal coffers would pour forth uncounted billions of dollars to totally rebuild the Florida and Louisiana communities destroyed by Hurricane Andrew. A vast majority of Americans seem to agree with this action, providing yet more evidence (as if more were needed) that we have come very, very far from the philosophy of self-reliance articulated by one Colonel Davey Crockett. (See “Not Yours to Give” available from FEE at www.fee.org)
Instead of attempting to purchase his reelection with plundered resources, this is what George Bush should have said.
“My fellow Americans:
As you all know, a devastating hurricane has struck the southern tip of Florida and Louisiana. Our hearts and prayers go out to all who have lost so much.
“There is now a great cry for the federal government to “do something”.
“And we shall.
“I have dispatched otherwise idle military resources — men and women involved in our national defense who will profit from what will amount to a real-life field exercise — to the area to render whatever aid the local authorities deem appropriate to restore basic communications and public safety infrastructure. But, beyond that, we can do little else. Before you brand me a heartless monster, allow me to explain:
“The area involved has been regularly struck by many such storms since long before we have inhabited this continent. There is reason to believe that this pattern will continue. All who have vacationed or visited there will agree that it is a beautiful area and by driving a short distance, residents there can avail themselves of the ocean waters and sandy beaches of that coastal setting. I, too, understand the attraction. That’s why I spend as much time as possible
in Kennebunkport. That’s the upside of living in such an area.
“The downside is that the area is regularly struck by these terrible storms. Which is why responsible and intelligent residents of the area insure their property against the inevitable resultant damage.
“That the largest private insurers have determined that certain of these areas are so likely to be struck by storms such as Andrew as to make them “actuarially unsound” risks is a matter for the insurers and the property owners. Government will only, through the lawfully established court system, do its best to see to it that any contracts between these private parties are honored.
“If a prospective property owner is unable to secure private insurance against these calamitous eventualities, he or she had better reevaluate his or her position. If a prospective owner cannot bear the financial loss which would flow from the destruction of an uninsured home in one of these high risk areas, he or she is well advised to purchase in an area where such insurance is available. It is not, nor can it ever be, the government’s place to levy a compulsory tax on citizens who do not live in these high risk beach areas to subsidize the folly of those who choose to do so! It would be criminal to force citizens who themselves already pay hundreds of dollars each year to protect their homes from
normal hazards such as fire and the occasional tornado to also pay for the beach front lifestyle of others! To increase their taxes so that some of their less responsible fellows may enjoy the benefits of living in these normally
beautiful — but statistically periodically dangerous — surroundings is unconscionable.
“As much as our hearts go out to those who have lost so much, I must remind them that just as it has happened in the past, it will happen again. If you chose to remain there, you do so at your peril. This is an election year and the temptation is great for me to obligate the already strapped taxpayers of the entire nation to pay for the rebuilding of these damaged areas.
“Though it may cost me another term as President, I must, because of the dangerous precedent it would set, resist it. To do otherwise would be the grossest unfairness to, say, a citizen in Kansas whose roof might be blown off during a tornado. Would that citizen not have the right to ask the federal government to do the same for him? Multiply that by the numbers of isolated, individual-but equally calamitous disasters each year and you will come to see that the treasury of even the richest nation on earth (which, thanks to decades of such nonsense, we no longer are) would soon collapse under the load.
“On a technical level, I would also remind you that expert analysis of the destruction of these homes quickly disclosed that it was government and the building codes — rather the false security of their enforcement — which led to the loss of nearly 85,000 dwellings. You who now look to government to solve your problem ought to consider that it was the failure of the government mandated building code enforcement that reduced your home to a pile of rubble. Your reliance upon government enforcement of these codes and their assiduous observance has proven to be an error.
“In that connection, I would point out that engineers who surveyed the damage discovered a number of structures which survived. It was found that these buildings had been built under an older, ostensibly less stringent code and/or were constructed using a number of proven, but more costly, techniques designed to improve survival.
“If you do plan to rebuild in one of these uninsurable sections, please, in order to minimize the destruction the next time another killer storm comes ashore, employ these construction techniques.
“Let me now turn to what we must now do to help those in such desperate need at this moment.
“I submit that we should continue and intensify what we’ve been doing thus far: The volunteer activities many of you have undertaken as individuals, small businesses and large corporations are doing exactly what I envisioned when I
launched my “Thousand Points of Light” campaign. What we need now are millions of such points. And, if the response continues to swell as in the past few days, we’ll get there.
“Let me also remind you that the first folks into the area with meaningful relief were not government people. As we have seen, these huge bureaucracies possess equally huge levels of static inertia. They lack the flexibility and
sensitivity to function efficiently. People helping people is the highest embodiment of the faith our forefathers brought to these shores over 300 years ago.
“America was — and, I fervently believe, still is – a nation of people who understand this basic concept. It is time we remembered that government’s role is to only do for citizens those few constitutionally limited things we cannot
individually do for ourselves. I’d remind you what George Washington said about government: “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is force! And like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”
“It is also time for us all to remember that we must take individual responsibility for ourselves. We must remember, for example, that we cannot construct our homes in places where the forces of nature periodically rage against us without adequate preparation for those periodic rampages.
“To be more specific, if we must build in those areas, we must take personal responsibility for the soundness of construction and/or insure against the certain eventuality that these natural assaults will occur. The days when
individuals can look to a government to force the rest of us to underwrite the folly of the few are gone! I urge those of you now digging out from the destruction in Florida and Louisiana to remember that as you consider your future. I pledge that if you grant me another term in office, I shall devote my next 4 years to bringing government back under the United States Constitution in order to ensure that it does only those few things we cannot do for ourselves and does them as efficiently and effectively as possible.
“Let me again urge us to continue the enormous volunteer efforts we have already begun until this tragedy is behind us.
“Thank you and good night!”
!MOLON LABE!...
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