Getting A Hand From Uncle Sam
I assume most of my regular readers are conservatives or masochistic liberals. Not being able to compose these ditties on my regular computer, which is likely being carried off from my "secured" vehicle as we speak, I am sure quite a few English teachers are having a ball printing these updates out and doing their worst with red ink pens as they peruse over my writings in the raw.
In any case, this column/update is addressed to those fellow conservatives out there who likely lost property during the hurricane (if you live in St. Bernard, this is not so much a probability as much as it is a certainty.)
You are highly encouraged to visit the FEMA.gov website and file, or at a bare minimum, explore, your options concerning disaster relief.
Now this is no time to be philosophical about the prefered restricted powers of the Federal government nor is it appropriate to quote from Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Just do it.
The Federal government, like Don Farnuci of Godfather II, wets its beak into our pockets every paycheck and then goes for a second course on April 15 if it's not satisfied with the first course. Consider it like a "tax refund" in exchange for the utter destruction of a lifetime's worth of memories, accumulated possessions, etc.
This would be an ideal time to log on to the FEMA site since most people are not even thinking about it right now and unless you absconded to somewhere like New York City or Athens- Greece, not Georgia, you are already bored to death of alternating between the Weather Channel, FoxNews, and CNN.
The process is fairly simple and takes about 20 minutes. If you feel guilty about seeking some of your own money back, feel free to right things with your conscience by tithing part of it at a later date to your house of worship (tax write-off) and the Club for Growth.
On a good note, it appears that the waters are receding in St. Bernard (from 10 ft to 5 ft of water) and that just maybe people will be able to go home to collect what little is left and then shove off again for another vacation in such exotic locales like Jackson, MS and Alexandria (not the one with the pyramids) until the parish is inhabitable. Rats and snakes will be a major problem as God's less appreciated critters began moving in as the waters rose.
Boat and helicopter are the only means of transportation throughout St. Bernard.
Also I have been able to reach all family stuck in Chalmette thanks to a blessed 35 minute hole in what has been days of constant "all circuits are busy" signals.
On a not so good note, the water is still pouring into the city due to the gash in the now-world famous 17th Street Canal levee (tourists From Osaka will one day pose for pictures in front of it.) The lake waters have been leveling off a bit so the water in the city should not be rising at too alarming of a rate.
The looting in New Orleans is still all the rage though Governor Blanco has finally dispatched State Troopers to New Orleans to help curb these urban reenactors of Gen. William T. Sherman's "Georgia tourists"
As of yet, my suggestion of placing the heads of looters on pikes along Canal Street has yet to be implemented, though I do look forward to reading of the arrest of some of our dim-witted criminals who will inevitably attempt to return the stolen goods sans receipt to the local Wal-Mart for a "cash-money" refund. It turns out that the gun department of a New Orleans Wal-Mart was ransacked as well, which is very disturbing indeed since I doubt the purloiners of these goods intend to use the stolen firearms for pheasant shooting.
I don't blame the cops for the lack of aggressive tactics in combating the looters but rather on their superiors who refuse to let the men and women on the beat take appropriate measures against these modern day Visigoths.
In any case, this column/update is addressed to those fellow conservatives out there who likely lost property during the hurricane (if you live in St. Bernard, this is not so much a probability as much as it is a certainty.)
You are highly encouraged to visit the FEMA.gov website and file, or at a bare minimum, explore, your options concerning disaster relief.
Now this is no time to be philosophical about the prefered restricted powers of the Federal government nor is it appropriate to quote from Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. Just do it.
The Federal government, like Don Farnuci of Godfather II, wets its beak into our pockets every paycheck and then goes for a second course on April 15 if it's not satisfied with the first course. Consider it like a "tax refund" in exchange for the utter destruction of a lifetime's worth of memories, accumulated possessions, etc.
This would be an ideal time to log on to the FEMA site since most people are not even thinking about it right now and unless you absconded to somewhere like New York City or Athens- Greece, not Georgia, you are already bored to death of alternating between the Weather Channel, FoxNews, and CNN.
The process is fairly simple and takes about 20 minutes. If you feel guilty about seeking some of your own money back, feel free to right things with your conscience by tithing part of it at a later date to your house of worship (tax write-off) and the Club for Growth.
On a good note, it appears that the waters are receding in St. Bernard (from 10 ft to 5 ft of water) and that just maybe people will be able to go home to collect what little is left and then shove off again for another vacation in such exotic locales like Jackson, MS and Alexandria (not the one with the pyramids) until the parish is inhabitable. Rats and snakes will be a major problem as God's less appreciated critters began moving in as the waters rose.
Boat and helicopter are the only means of transportation throughout St. Bernard.
Also I have been able to reach all family stuck in Chalmette thanks to a blessed 35 minute hole in what has been days of constant "all circuits are busy" signals.
On a not so good note, the water is still pouring into the city due to the gash in the now-world famous 17th Street Canal levee (tourists From Osaka will one day pose for pictures in front of it.) The lake waters have been leveling off a bit so the water in the city should not be rising at too alarming of a rate.
The looting in New Orleans is still all the rage though Governor Blanco has finally dispatched State Troopers to New Orleans to help curb these urban reenactors of Gen. William T. Sherman's "Georgia tourists"
As of yet, my suggestion of placing the heads of looters on pikes along Canal Street has yet to be implemented, though I do look forward to reading of the arrest of some of our dim-witted criminals who will inevitably attempt to return the stolen goods sans receipt to the local Wal-Mart for a "cash-money" refund. It turns out that the gun department of a New Orleans Wal-Mart was ransacked as well, which is very disturbing indeed since I doubt the purloiners of these goods intend to use the stolen firearms for pheasant shooting.
I don't blame the cops for the lack of aggressive tactics in combating the looters but rather on their superiors who refuse to let the men and women on the beat take appropriate measures against these modern day Visigoths.
posted by BourbonConservative at 9:25 AM
4 Comments:
Hi Bourbon, hope you're doing as well as possible under the circumstances, thank you for the good updates you've been giving us on the situation out there.
I'm not a conservative, nor a masochistic liberal, I'm an independant, please be kind as the conservatives seem to appreciate us around election time. By the way, I'm NOT a Libertarian kind of independant NOR a Socialist (those guys seem kinda nuts)*LOL I'm more of a "middle-of-the-roader", not too far on either side.
Anyhow, that's enough of my political talk. I enjoy your writings, and appreciate viewpoints from either side of the political divide. Afterall, at the end of the day, we are all Americans who love our country very much.
Stay safe,
and best wishes to all always,
GC
Hey, Mike!
I'm glad your family is safe (relatively). You can always get a new house and new clothes but loved ones are irreplaceable.
The offer still stands to stay by my place.
--Lawrence
I am a Liberal.
And I would only suggest that 1) This shows why we should have a stronger more effective Federal government, because you just won't make a profit giving away money to help people rebuild (and the insurance industry will take a $20 billion plus hit from this as well, but not everyone has, or even qualifies for, insurance) or rebuilding levees, etc. and pumping the water out. In fact, it is no secret that the levees and pumps have suffered from decades of benign neglect, but in an act of classic bad timing, President Bush and the Republican congress just a couple of months ago slashed funding for flood control projects in New Orleans. Obviously, that is from next year's budget so it has nothing to do with the present situation, but the philosophy is the same as John Ashcroft denying the FBI's request for more counterterrorism funding on September 10, 2001-- saving a small amount of money now and gambling that it won't cost you dearly later.
2) it doesn't bother me a bit that my taxes will be going to help rebuild New Orleans (even though I live in an area, the high desert of northeastern Arizona, where natural disasters are extremely limited in scope and rare, so I'm sure that I've paid much more in taxes to fix Florida, California, etc. than I will ever get back in disaster relief -- and trust me, instead of grumbling about taxes, I count it a blessing and thank God for that fact).
Liberals like me would rather spend the money on prevention and creating a stronger country (in all the many aspects of this that this entails) so that we don't have to 'pay the piper' so much on the day of reckoning. Particularly illuminating was the reaction of the Dutch (US disaster elicits worldwide sympathy, anger, shock, a country where millions of people (including some of my relatives) live below sea level. They made the investment years ago to install state of the art flood control devices as well as to fund the development and enabling of evacuation procedures. They were shocked that we hadn't made the same tax investment. Maybe we should.
I look at it as an investment in the country as a whole (I am, after all, an American). I'd much rather, frankly, that my taxes be used to build a new school in New Orleans than that they be used to build it in Mosul (price tag for creating another Islamic republic is a quarter trillion and rising).
Oh, and speaking of living out in the middle of the desert (where we collectively pay more for disaster relief elsewhere, despite the occasional forest fire), the coldest comment I heard today (other than the idiot jihadists in the last link I posted) came from a conservative caller on Phoenix talk radio, who complained about 'whiners' and suggested that it wouldn't be 'cost effective' to rebuild New Orleans and suggested abandoning it to the sea and 'letting the market dictate where people would rebuild.' Cold as ice, but if you want to know the honest truth of the matter, that is what some of your conservative 'brethren' in other parts of the country are saying about you.
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