Relief effort has racial element?

[Devastatin Dave]

Sure, but what strikes me most is the absence of government from the local level all the way to the top. In my country a mayor would have been standing on top of that levee even if there was a huge risk that it would break. Happens all the time here when there is a risk of flooding. A mayor either evacuates his town and makes sure he is the last one out, or he stays there with everyone else to ride it out and be seen to ride it out. He is responsible for the maintenance of dykes and levees in his district, and if he runs he is fired on the spot by the Minister of the Interior. Of course said minister would not be vacationing on his ranch, nor would our Prime Minister chose to attend a fund raiser or the Foreign Secretary be shopping for shoes at the critical moment. Sorry for the rant, but I still find the whole thing over there surreal.

Best post of the thread. This mayor is hollow...

[Adrian II]

Best post of the thread. This mayor is hollow...

He is only a symptom. Looks like the real culprit here is hostility to government. Not contempt for blacks or the poor or the Army engineers, but contempt for government as a force for good. This ideology has prevailed in the U.S. for the past twenty-five years. Even after 9/11 it took a long time to wrench U.S. airport security out of the incompetent and cost-cutting hands of private companies. Go figure.

Oh, and we have our share of the same over here so this is no U.S. bashing. I am bashing an insane ideology that says everybody will be better off if we are all left to fend for ourselves.