Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was GONE!

[poltr1]

Saw more pictures of destruction and devastation on the news today. A huge section of levee along Lake Ponchatrain (or however it's spelled) had eroded, sending more floodwater into the New Orleans metro area. The Army Corps of Engineers is working to repair this levee. Plans including dropping sandbags by helicopter, or using a barge to plug the gaping hole.

I also saw a crawl on CNN that MS senator Trent Lott had lost his home in the wake of Katrina, along with all the state's casinos, a bridge section of US 90, and most of the gulf-front homes.


This is gonna take months, perhaps years, to clean up. Will New Orleans. Gulfport, and Biloxi cease to be viable cities, or will they rise up from the (hopefully soon-to-be-receding-or-pumped-out) floodwaters, reborn?

Meanwhile, gas shot up to $3.099 a gallon today in my part of the world. While taking R to the bank and to the doctor, we passed a few stations with the new price, and started searching for a station that had cheaper gas. Some had it for $2.639. I found one station -- the BP on Wilmington Pike -- that was selling it for $2.539. So I pulled in, topped the tank, and had an early lunch.

I also heard that there are some phony relief sites out there, like katrinahelp.com. What type of scum pulls this type of shit? And why do the domain registrars allow this to happen?

FEMA (the US Federal Emergency Management Association) will be spending billions to help the people in need, giving them temporary lodging, meals, and possibly mortgages to help them rebuild.

The hardcore Libertarians (with a capital L) out there would vote to abolish FEMA, saying it's not specified in the Constitution and, therefore, the federal government shouldn't be in the business of helping and aiding its citizens, other than providing national defense. I recently checked the national Libertarian Party website. No mention of Hurricane Katrina. Ditto that for the state Libertarian party website and email list. This galvanizes an opnion that I once heard that Libertarians only care about themselves.

Comments

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I'm not libertarian, but this is a distortion of libertarian political philosophy.

[poltr1]

What's a distortion? And how so? Explain.

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

First, the national libertarian party web page was last updated in early August and the Louisiana one much, much earlier, so it's a bit unfair to insist that volunteer-run web sites be up-to-date for the last few days.

Second, the Louisiana libertarian party clearly allows for public actions in emergencies (http://www.la.lp.org/platform.htm#Ie): The reasonable protection of the community - the individuals in a particular area - may justify moderate taxation, public use of private property in civil emergencies (with appropriate compensation), and other reasonable limitations on personal property rights (emphasis added). The national party statement on taxes (http://www.lp.org/issues/cut-taxes.shtml) similarly acknowledges a limited right of government to [protect] lives.

Third, to assert that libertarians ignore collective interests is to ignore the real work that libertarians conduct every day. madfilkentist works for Harvard's library, for example—not exactly a selfish job. Stereotyping libertarians without thinking about the libertarians one knows personally may not be the same as stereotyping gays and lesbians without thinking that maybe you know a few who are in the closet, at least with respect to you. But it's still pretty fallacious.

[poltr1]

If the Libertarian Party of Ohio has a similar clause for public actions in emergencies, I've not been able to find it. Nor have there been any press releases from the state party in the past few days regarding Katrina relief. There's been one about their gubernatorial candidate (the election is in 2006), and another one urging Gov. Bob Taft to resign due to ethics violations.

The impression I'm getting from my state's Libertarian party is "It's not our problem". And I consider myself a libertarian (with a small l). That's disheartening. Would their attitude be different if a natural disaster happened within Ohio? We've had several over the years.

In case you haven't noticed, I make a distinction between libertarian (with a lower-case l) and Libertarian (with a capital L). The capital-L Libertarians are the more rabid, follow-the-party-line, activist-type people that seem to get more of the press. The lowercase-l libertarians are the more sensible and rational ones. It's like the difference between Christians and Southern Baptists. Some are more fervent than others. And I did say "hardcore Libertarians (with a capital L) in my posts.