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.
Good point, and it could well be that the emphasis on contributions to charity are not only to make people feel they can do something, but make people feel guilty that they can’t, and therefore they won’t criticize the government for not doing its job.
The situation in New Orleans right now is the clearest case. Government neglect and cutbacks made NO much more vulnerable, including the oil supply line. (One deteriorating two-lane highway is the best we can do?) And right now, judging from reports I just heard on Democracy Now, no private charity can do a thing until people are rescued out of there from hospitals,etc. and communications and transportation lines are in place: the kind of massive infrastructure stuff that only the federal government and its military can do, plus an intact National Guard with the necessary equipment.
I was just watching CNN (for the first time in a while) and heard a heartbreaking phone call from a nurse who basically said, “hey, we called you because we don’t know what’s going on and only three people have been evacuated from the hospital” as her voice cracked and you could hear her start to cry.
The emergency “response” is absolutely dispicable and, I believe, will become a bigger part of the story… IF the media does its job. Watching Paula Zahn right now, I’m not hopeful.
Makes me kind of sick to hear these calls by officials. “Brother can you spare a dime?” Man, they have been spending there asses off, like a mall-shopping teen with a limitless credit card, running our public ass into monstrous debt. And then, they want the public response to fucking tradgedy to be — you average people out there, give until it hurts. Unbelievable. And, this is not that I think we shouldn’t give in such circumstances. That just shouldn’t be our public disaster planning.