One political aspect of the whole Hurrican Katrina disaster that I haven’t seen discussed is the involvment and, it seems, the reliance upon charities such as the American Red Cross to respond. Don’t get me wrong, after watching and reading about what’s going on I think the Red Cross seems much better prepared to deal with this situation than the local governments, FEMA and DHS. What I’m wondering is this: Does BushCo and the right-wing mentality behind it expect this to be responded to through charity and not the government?
We’ve seen this several times recently – 9/11 and the Tsunami – where altruism came through with people’s checkbooks to respond to these disasters. I think this is great and all, but my question is just about reliance upon such things when they should be covered by our tax dollars. Don’t we pay the government to respond to such emergencies?
I mean, let’s be honest. The economy still ain’t that great. I’d love to be able to donate some money but can barely get by until payday. This brings up all sorts of issues like where our tax dollars actually go. One of the reasons I’ve been a war tax resister at times is because I’d rather my money went to the Red Cross or a peace group than to the monolithic neocon war machine (and maybe we need to revisit this as a method as the Iraq war muddles on).
But should the government expect its citizens to buck up and financially take care of the rescue and recovery and whatever else the non-profits will be doing with donations? And does this represent a victory already by the right-wing foundations that have been spreading the “ownership society” idea in one guise or another for decades?
Sorry this isn’t a well thought out or written diary, but I wondered if anyone else hadn’t thought about these sorts of issues in regards to this disaster.
