The Right State

News stories fill both the airwaves and print on how the people of New Orleans are still suffering.  Shown are pictures of the poor and displaced who are living in mobile homes set up by the government.  Candidates of all stripes take their turn at the microphones to announce their plans for the beleaguered city as the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches.  The politicians all have different plans but the fault of the slow recovery is still being placed on George Bush’s shoulders.  But there is another aspect to the plans put forward by all the candidates seeking their TV-face time, the government should help.

 This can be shown by looking no farther than the recent call by both politicians and the MSM for the government to help.  As for the displaced, they are still waiting—looking to the government for help.

Private citizens, not the government, deserved the credit, they said - a source of grim humor among those laboring to mend the neighborhood.

“Of course, we should also thank George Bush, Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin,” resident Robert Counce said sarcastically as a recent meeting of the Gentilly Civic Improvement Association wrapped up.

Some writers when writing about the refugees of New Orleans simply can not leave Iraq out of the equation.  Get a grip.

It is one thing to bungle the complex geopolitics of a war in a far-off place we clearly didn’t comprehend. It was quite another thing to fail to bring relief to fellow Americans who stood in the sweltering heat of a New Orleans summer pleading for water, for food, for shelter and for relief from the fear that they had been abandoned.

I really feel for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.  But the bottom line is that they were living off of the government before the hurricane, they looked to the government to evacuate them, they looked to the government to shelter them in the interim, and they are still looking to the government for help.  Isn’t it time for the victims of Katrina to help themselves?

On top of all of this, we hear the trailer houses the government bought for the Katrina victims are dangerous.

About a year after she moved into a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer, Teresa Coggins, a diabetic, lapsed into a coma.

When she woke up in an Ocean Springs hospital eight days later, she blamed the trailer she’d been living in.

Coggins, 48, is one of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims who moved into FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, 2005. FEMA spent nearly $1.8 billion buying more than 120,000 trailers and millions more maintaining them. Once storm victims began moving out of the trailers, FEMA had no use for them. But now the agency can’t reuse, sell or even give the trailers away because of complaints they emit hazardous levels of formaldehyde.

Coggins, who began living in her trailer in February 2006, is not only bitter about her $100,000 hospital bill but also about what she described as FEMA’s lack of response when she asked that her trailer be tested.

“I could have died, and nobody would know it was formaldehyde,” Coggins said.

Oh, my God.  We are killing those we sought to help.  Ok, maybe not.  Newsflash!!  Formaldehyde is used in the construction of trailer houses.  You can smell it in almost all new trailer houses.  Millions of people have bought and lived in them with no problems.  If it was alright for them, so why are the trailers not alright for those displaced by Katrina.  Most states require manufactures to inform their customers how to relieve any buildup of formaldehyde.  After talking to a field representative, I have come to the conclusion that these people in Louisiana just wanted another excuse for the government to step in an help them out again.  To rid the trailer house of the offending fumes, all the home owner has to do is to open a window or turn on the air conditioner.  This field rep had never had a single case of a mobile home owner being overcome by fumes in his 16 years.  Were the Katrina evacuees too stupid to turn on the air conditioner or open a window.  By the way, I have not heard of a single case of a trailer house inducing a diabetic coma.  Nope, not ever. 

Another interesting tidbit is the lack of news concerning about the people of Mississippi who lost so much.  Most are helping themselves along with the neighborly of the American people.  Galveston and Beaumont were devastated by Hurricane Rita and yet they are not depending on the government to bail them out.

It is a matter of attitude.  Many of the victims of Katrina were dependent on the government before the hurricane and they still are.  These people will never amount to anything because they can do nothing on their own.  At least not unless the government tells or shows them how. 

Tags: Culture by Chuck
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