Here's another essay I was working on this morning. I'll probably work on it more when I get back from work:
According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Americans have donated more than $700 million to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. While it is great to see the American people continue to show their giving nature, it is continuing to allow the government to avoid its responsibilities to its citizens.
Government has been skirting its responsibilities since the '80s, when Ronald Reagan convinced our parents that the sick, poor and unlucky should no longer count on big government to help them, but should rather live and die at the whim of contributors to private charities.
This philosophy completely ignores reality and ultimately costs more in the long run.
While $700 million has been raised so far, most of it by the Red Cross, who are quickly approaching the record $534 million they collected after 9/11, it is ultimately just a drop in the bucket as estimates for Katrina rebuilding costs are now at $125 billion.
Disaster relief is too important to be left to private fundraisers, with their self-sustaining fundraising expenses, administrative overhead and their often religious, agendas.
In the final analysis, after the floodwaters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been razed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they've managed to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recognized the truth that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, and has already allocated $58 billion--over 70 times the amount raised by charities--to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexico.
The charities say that they are there to catch those who fall through the cracks. However why are there even cracks? We live in the United States of America, not Mali. There's only one reason flood victims aren't getting help from the government and it is because the government refuses to help them.
The Red Cross and its cohorts are letting lazy, incompetent and corrupt politicians off the hook, and sadly so are their donors.
The U.S. government can easily pick up the tab for people inconvenienced by bad weather--if helping them was a priority. That goes triple for Katrina, which was a disaster caused by the government's conscious decision to eliminate the $50 million needed to improve New Orleans' levees.
The optional war against Iraq is their top priority, which the Congressional Budget Office expects to cost $600 billion by 2010. That's almost five Katrinas right there. It also happens to be where the missing levee money went.
Also because rich people are always a political priority, their taxes have been slashed by $4 trillion over a decade--the equivalent of 32 Katrinas.
Our public servants are so worried about the tax burden placed on the rich that they're looking out for rich dead people. This is why they've gutted the estate tax that, at a cost of $75 billion annually, which would run half a Katrina a year. Trickle-down cabalists always shout starve the beast, but while the social programs are put on a diet, the mean and powerful pig out more than ever.
added later: I'm not a fan of that ending sentence. It's kinda gimmicky.
According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Americans have donated more than $700 million to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. While it is great to see the American people continue to show their giving nature, it is continuing to allow the government to avoid its responsibilities to its citizens.
Government has been skirting its responsibilities since the '80s, when Ronald Reagan convinced our parents that the sick, poor and unlucky should no longer count on big government to help them, but should rather live and die at the whim of contributors to private charities.
This philosophy completely ignores reality and ultimately costs more in the long run.
While $700 million has been raised so far, most of it by the Red Cross, who are quickly approaching the record $534 million they collected after 9/11, it is ultimately just a drop in the bucket as estimates for Katrina rebuilding costs are now at $125 billion.
Disaster relief is too important to be left to private fundraisers, with their self-sustaining fundraising expenses, administrative overhead and their often religious, agendas.
In the final analysis, after the floodwaters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been razed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they've managed to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recognized the truth that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, and has already allocated $58 billion--over 70 times the amount raised by charities--to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexico.
The charities say that they are there to catch those who fall through the cracks. However why are there even cracks? We live in the United States of America, not Mali. There's only one reason flood victims aren't getting help from the government and it is because the government refuses to help them.
The Red Cross and its cohorts are letting lazy, incompetent and corrupt politicians off the hook, and sadly so are their donors.
The U.S. government can easily pick up the tab for people inconvenienced by bad weather--if helping them was a priority. That goes triple for Katrina, which was a disaster caused by the government's conscious decision to eliminate the $50 million needed to improve New Orleans' levees.
The optional war against Iraq is their top priority, which the Congressional Budget Office expects to cost $600 billion by 2010. That's almost five Katrinas right there. It also happens to be where the missing levee money went.
Also because rich people are always a political priority, their taxes have been slashed by $4 trillion over a decade--the equivalent of 32 Katrinas.
Our public servants are so worried about the tax burden placed on the rich that they're looking out for rich dead people. This is why they've gutted the estate tax that, at a cost of $75 billion annually, which would run half a Katrina a year. Trickle-down cabalists always shout starve the beast, but while the social programs are put on a diet, the mean and powerful pig out more than ever.
added later: I'm not a fan of that ending sentence. It's kinda gimmicky.