Looterville

[muckefuck]

If you're looking for a little schadenfreude this morning in the wake of disaster, the crazy woman who decided to remain in New Orleans because her cats weren't worried has been forced to evacuate.

I have to confess some frustration with people who defy a mandatory evacuation order and then turn around and scream for rescue when things get worse than they expected. On the one hand, a state's power to force people from their homes should certainly be limited. Moreover, people should be allowed to make bad decisions without being required to pay the ultimate price for them. But demanding to be left alone and then suddenly changing your mind just makes matters worse for everybody.

For instance, if all citizens had evacuated their homes in the beginning, then law enforcement could basically assume that anyone on the streets who wasn't a rescue worker was a looter and take appropriate action. Of course, a lot of people who stayed behind did so to protect their property since they expected that the police wouldn't do much to prevent widespread theft--and they're being proven right. The first-hand accounts of conditions in the city today are nothing less than harrowing. What I want to know is: What the hell are the looters doing with all this crap? After all, 80% of the city is flooded and passage in and out is drastically curtailed. Are they taking it all back to their flooded homes where it will simply be destroyed? The idiocy of it all pisses me off.

Comments

[bunj.livejournal.com]

I don't feel like getting into a flame war over on wicked_wish's livejournal, but I find it hard to believe that if money hadn't been spent on Iraq, New Orleans would have been fine and dandy. Flood control is such a long-term project that three years of insufficient funds doesn't cause the whole thing to fail. No, that takes decades of erosion, mismanagement and removal of marshland. It also helps to have a system (levees) which is fundamentally flawed.

I sometimes speculate on what good can come out of this, and I hope a radical rethink on flood policy is one of them. The levee system is a bad system, particularly in an area like Louisiana where they are constantly sinking. On CNN the other night Aaron Brown asked the mayor of New Orleans if he had anything he wanted to say. The mayor made a plea for the federal government to do something about erosion and the removal of marshland.