The recent cases regarding people who have bamboozled the federal government into providing their children with health care when they could have continued to work at lousy jobs that provided health insurance seven years before they had kids, or simply refused to have children in the first place until they had health insurance coverage, made me realize that all too often people in our society expect the government to bail them out when they are perfectly capable of taking responsibility for their own misfortunes and misdeeds. For example, do we really want to get the government involved in this situation?
ATLANTA, Oct. 15 — For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water. […]
In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days. […]
“Here’s the fly in the ointment,” Mr. Hayes added. “The vulnerability in the Southeast has changed. Population shifts, increased competition and demand for water has increased, so that’s made this drought worse than it might have been.”
Within two weeks, Carol Couch, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, is expected to send Gov. Sonny Perdue recommendations on tightening water restrictions, which may include mandatory cutbacks on commercial and industrial users.
If that happens, experts at the National Drought Mitigation Center said, it would be the first time a major metropolitan area in the United States had been forced to take such drastic action to save its water supply.
“The situation is very dire,” Mr. Hayes said.
I know, I know. Many good people live in the South. Some of them may even have moved there at a time when they weren’t aware that there were real possibilities that droughts could happen in the Southeastern United States. Still, it’s not like they don’t have options, after all. They can always move away to some place else where water is more abundant, abandoning their homes and businesses, families and friends (and churches, don’t forget the churches). I mean if it was good enough for the Okies in the 1930’s, it should be good enough for people who live in today’s version of the dust bowl, right? Just saying, it’s something to consider should the worst come to worst (i.e., all the reservoirs dry up).
Personally, I have a soft spot for people in need, and my liberal, do-gooder nature, which often influences me at such times, gets the better of me. If it was up to me, I’d provide these people with all the government assistance they need to get them through this awful situation so that they have enough water to drink, etc. Thank goodness we have the firm and steadying hand of President Bush to keep these potential freeloaders from taking advantage of our good natures. I’m sure he’ll treat the water deprived folks of Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas the same way he’s treating the SCHIP kids — by telling them to take responsibility for their problems themselves.
That’s the “Republican Way.”
