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Duncan Hunter, George Stephanopoulos, Gulf Coast, Gulf Coast Recovery, Katrina, San Diego,
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BOSTON-- Republican Congressman (and presidential candidate) Duncan Hunter told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday morning that he thought the Congress would "reward" California (and his home town, San Diego) for its exemplary behavior (one detail, according to him: "almost no incidents of looting") during the fires of last week, by appropriating all the money needed to rebuild. Is it just me, or is there a subtext to Rep. Hunter's remark: that the Congress is punishing another area for its "behavior" during another disaster?
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Oops and I forgot to add
Conservative leaning with a (mildly) republican governor (San Diego/Riverside/San Bernardino Counties) vs. New Orleans and adjacent parishes (liberal leaning with a dem governor
Well from the comments and post seems like more than one person got the subtext of the whole incident when comparing it with the Katrina disaster-me included-it's that basically
Non ethnic, middle and upper class folk fare much better (San Diego County et al) in a disaster that poor ethnic folks do (Katrina/New Orleans).
Hate to admit it but it sure looks that way.
Yes--not only Congress but the Bush Administration has been punishing "another area" that had gone through a disaster. One need only recall the dig President Bush made at her governor as he complimented Schwarzenegger last week for his response to the fires.
For more on how this American state is being abused by Bush, read this Daily Kos diary www.dailyk
Harry,...I sadly have to admit that race does play a role, as much as I'd prefer otherwise.
of COURSE ..it IS tragic to lose everything that carries Memories!.
If a fire ravaged my apartment building..
It makes me sick that FEMA will step in for those who were uninsured or UNDER insured..(
sorry..it may not be about race..but it is certainly about money.
Halsey sez: "It makes me sick that FEMA will step in for those who were uninsured or UNDER insured..(
Replace that last part with "you live in a *flood* zone" or "you live in a *hurricane* zone" and watch the hackles rise.
We all have our little prejudices, don't we?
That bit of snark aside, I suspect that most of the homes are insured. A lot of that area that burned is relatively new construction and the occupants are paying mortgages. You can't get a mortgage without fire insurance. And the fire insurance rates in that area are higher than in other regions of the county and Southern California where fire danger is less, though, oddly, not extremely high, since the Southern California insurance market is extremely competitive and the rates are deeply discounted.
Now whether they were insured well enough to replace them is a completely different question. Since the vast majority of the homes that burned were in the infamous "planned development" tracts, they were built with vast economies of scale. Replacing a single home as a "one off" will be hugely more expensive.
The mortgage holder, of course, only cares that it gets paid and doesn't give a rip about the homeowner.
News coverage? Yes, it's about race. Or about what Mr Shearer calls "the template" about race. You cover black people one way, brown people another, Native Americans another, Asians yet another, and whites an entirely different way. Black and brown people are poor and downtrodden, perhaps more prone to crime because of their social status, Native Americans oppressed and disenfranchised, Asians industrious, whites. . . well, white.[*]
All templates and all equally wrong.
As I've suggested elsewhere, comparing Katrina and the Southern California fires is not just like comparing apples and oranges. It's comparing apples and rocks. Besides some very basic common elements, they're very different.
------------
[*] Note: I do not believe these stereotypes, they are the stereotypes I believe are often used in the media.
Steve sez (about Halsey):
Halsey sez: "It makes me sick that FEMA will step in for those who were uninsured or UNDER insured..(
Replace that last part with "you live in a *flood* zone" or "you live in a *hurricane* zone" and watch the hackles rise.
We all have our little prejudices, don't we?
**********
Well, actually no. The poor live in flood-prone areas because the wealthy own all the property above the high water mark. (Funny about that, ain't it?)
Of course, in California, the wealthy and semi-wealthy build in fire-prone areas and on the sides of landslide-prone hills because the view is so great. You think the wealthy and semi-wealthy are gonna settle for a view of the faux brick wall of the next apartment building over?
If the Corps of Engineers built a system and said that it would protect you from Category 3 California wildfires, and your house burned down, along with half of your city, in a Category 1 wildfire, I think you'd be pretty steamed. And right to be so.
Before you get the idea that people are foolish to believe the assurances of the Corps, try to remember that an imposing and apparently invincible fixture of the City of New Orleans is the Mississippi River levee. It holds the river out of the City every day of every year, even when the River rises to 30+ feet above sea level, as it does every Spring of every year. The Corp built and maintains that levee, so people get this - to you, I suppose - crazy idea that man-made civil public works can actually do what they are designed to do.
yup.
and the irony that highly educated people refused to leave their homes in the face of imminent danger is somehow lost to the MSM as well.
S. Californian's are somehow more civilized in the face of destruction than we are?
bullshit..
It's a fire...jus
The nature of the disasters are totally different.
I was picking up the subtext that the Southern Californians were conducting themselves in a fashion that was much more civilized (white) than in New Orleans and that was why FEMA was able to do a much better job.
Of course, not emphacizing that we Californians go through fire drills about twice a year. Yea this fall's fire was exponentially worse but everybody who recieved the phone call had the motivation and wherewhithal to get the eff out of Dodge.
I don't support Governor Swarzeneggar yet I have to give him credit. At his first conference he said "We will rebuild".
I don't think white vs black has as much to to with this as rich vs poor. The people in NO couldn't help if they were poor, and they needed our help much more than the rich in CA need it. There's something wrong when we feel more sympathy for the haves than for the have nots.
You speak in the past tense, as though New Orleans' need for help has passed. New Orleans very much needs help right now.
The tragedy in New Orleans is that while the disaster crossed race and economic lines, public perception is that it victimized only poor blacks.
Your taxes built a flood protection system that one researcher said didn't "come within a country mile of the design load." More likely than not, you are protected by a similar system. What you should feel is outrage, not sympathy. Weshould rebuild New Orleans out of duty, not out of charity.
FEMA didn't do a much better job. The evacuation here in San Diego was facilitated by the local government, the local red cross chapter, and the salvation army. FEMA showed up on day three, as the majority of the evacuees started to head home. This crisis may have been handled well, but FEMA didn't do the handling.
And New Orleans vs. California is apples and oranges. The big difference was that qualcomm was not locked off from the outside world with people dying inside, no bathrooms and no water. Under those conditions, "civilized" people of any color would have rioted.
We know only illegal immigrants and blacks loot.
A Mexican carrying a plasma TV could not possible own it. The question in New Orleans is how do blacks watch plasma TV's with no electricity.
Way to jump on that Harry and, yes, it is great the way you follow these comments and respond. It gives us an added incentive to participate and, I hope, offer intelligent responses.
By the way, you may have mentioned this in a post I've missed, but W's slap at your former governor while on site in California was just another way to try to re-write history to make it seem that she was at fault - not the feds - in what went down with regard to Katrina.
He is relentless in his lies.
One of the things New Orleans is being punished for by the Bushies is harboring Democratic voters. Louisiana now has a shiny new Republican governor. Even though Blanco didn't run again, could any Democrat have been elected this time?
Harry, comparing, even in passing, the similarities of the fires in So Cal to Hurricane Katrina, in anyway other than both being disasters affecting Americans is simply dishonest.
The So Cal fires had the benefit of the Katrina failures working for them from the start. Add to that the fact that the Governor of California is Republican and the individuals primarily being impacted in San Diego and Orange County were wealthier than the victims of Katrina, and how could there not be a better response in So Cal?
Also people with money tend to loot less and sue more ... more reason for So Cal authorities to get it right.
Finally, just in shear magnitude of destruction, a comparison of the So Cal fires to the Katrina aftermath, outside of the pain and heartache felt by those directly impacted in both cases, is akin to comparing a mouse to an Elephant.
Rep Hunter trying to spin comparisons between the two tragedies for political benefit is disgraceful, but hardly out of character for him.
That's how the Duncan Hunters of the world work, more resources to people who already have resources. People without resources need to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps
Hunter is the one that looted the US Treasury. The investigation is on-going.
I noticed that too Harry. He said it over and over again. I am sorry the moderator didn't call him on it. So this is how our government works, based on reward for behavior. Funny I always thought it was based on need. I guess Katrina proved that wrong anyway.
Didn't follow the fire much, other than the coverage in the LAT, but when I saw live footage of a "refugee camp" (people in some sort of auditorium, having been evacuated), the contrast between them and the New Orleans evacuees was staggering. Almost made you think there was some sort of political agitprop going on.
First, all the people (at least all the ones on camera) were white. Second, they were all casually well-dressed and well-coiffed. Third, there were no fat people among them; everyone looked fit. Fourth, no one seemed particularly distressed or confused, much less panicky. While understandably serious and distracted, they didn't appear that far removed in demeanor from a group of people who'd stepped out of a real estate seminar for the morning coffee break.
I'm not trying to make a cheap joke about SoCal's affluence, but my lord, what a contrast between these residents and the ones depicted on TV during Katrina!!
No wonder so many New Orleans residents cried "Foul!"
DaveMacaray sez: "First, all the people (at least all the ones on camera) were white. Second, they were all casually well-dressed and well-coiffed. Third, there were no fat people among them; everyone looked fit. Fourth, no one seemed particularly distressed or confused, much less panicky."
Didn't you know all us Southlanders were white, had perfect hair, and are thin as rails? It's the sunshine and the water (there's something about living on stolen resources that does that to you).
Seriously, I think one of the reasons why the Qualcomm Stadium folks looked so "good" is that they're mostly middle to upper middle class. A lot of the communities evacuated are of that demographic. You don't live in a hilltop McMansion on poverty wages.
As far as the panic and confusion goes, first off, the San Diego authorities did a bang up job in getting the word to evacuate out in an orderly fashion. The "reverse 911" system worked very well, with only a couple of false alarm glitches.
Why? We've done it before. The 2004 Cedar fire was, to some small extent (and I'm not making comparisons here) our "Katrina". Our emergency services people *did* learn a lot of lessons.
But more to the point is that the vast majority of the people you saw were fairly confident that their homes would be standing when they returned. Sure, there was some angst and apprehension, but a lot of the evacuation was more precautionary than necessary. I was under a "voluntary" evacuation order myself but it was frankly no big deal for me -- I spent the night on a lumpy single bed instead of my own.
Contrast that with folks who *knew* they lost everything and the reasons for the differences are quite apparent.
This was my third voluntary evacuation. After a while, it gets almost routine.
How out of touch is this duncan hunter with the real world out there-- rewards to his district? A gold star for good behavior? San Diego fires next to New Orleans floods?
He's pretty out of touch. His statements have included a description of his visit to New Orleans. Well, not New Orleans, really - just outside of New Orleans. Well, not really just outside New Orleans, not very near New Orleans at all, actually over 60 miles from New Orleans. Houma, actually. Rep. Hunter remarked that the Houma shelters were brimming with food and clothing and emergency supplies - so much that donors were being turned away. Rep. Hunter seemd to think that the Superdome and Convention Center people should just come to Houma for aid. After all, 90 miles isn't so far - just over an hour, unless you have to walk, or swim, and you're on the wrong side of the River.
He is very out of touch. He went to Houma after the Corps flooded New Orleans, and thought he was on the front line. He went to a shelter that was brimming with food and clothing and other supplies - so much so that donors were being turned away - and seemed to wonder why the evacuees at the Superdome, Convention Center and elswhere didn't just drive to Houma, it's only a little over an hour away, unless you have to swim, or walk, or fly.
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