Rush 'meant' what he said about Haiti

[George Gervin's Afro]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20100115/pl_politico/31539


Rush Limbaugh is not backing down from his claim that President Barack Obama is trying to score political points off the earthquake in Haiti.

Challenged by a caller during his show Thursday, Limbaugh said: “If I said it, I meant to say it, and I do believe that everything is political to this president.”

“Everything this president sees is a political opportunity, including Haiti, and he will use it to burnish his credentials with minorities in this country and around the world, and to accuse Republicans of having no compassion,” Limbaugh said in comments flagged by the liberal blog Think Progress.

Limbaugh has come under fire from both the right and the left for saying that the earthquake played directly into Obama’s hands, allowing him to look “compassionate.” The host claimed the White House’s response would bolster Obama’s standing in the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.”

He also appeared to discourage help for the island nation, saying, “We've already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

Critics have characterized Limbaugh’s comments as insensitive and tone-deaf at a time when heartbreaking images of the devastation dominate news coverage.

Confronted with some of that criticism, Limbaugh slammed a caller as “close-minded.”

“What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a blockhead,” Limbaugh shot back. “What I’m illustrating here is that you’re a close-minded bigot who is ill-informed.”

“If you had listened to this program for a modicum of time, you would know it,” he said. “But instead, you’re a blockhead. Your mind is totally closed. You have tampons in your ears. Nothing is getting through other than the biased crap that you read.”


this guy is a such a piece of shit. the world will a better place once he and dick cheney kick the bucket..

[DarrinS]

Do you only get that one radio station?

[nkdlunch]

meh, there will be others waiting to replace them.

it's a free country, I don't understand why ppl get so outraged at what ppl say. the brainless ppl that follow them and make them powerful will eventually become extinct

[ChumpDumper]

Everything this president sees is a political opportunity, including Haiti, and he will use it to burnish his credentials with minorities in this country and around the world, and to accuse Republicans of having no compassion.Not Republicans, Rush.

Just you.

And Pat Robertson.

[baseline bum]

Rush never misses an opportunity to be an ignorant asshole.

[Oh, Gee!!]

What he said is stupid, but I think he says stuff like this because he has to say something on his show--I mean, he has to fill two hours with his words. If I had to do it, I'd be saying some stupid shit as well.

he's still not as horrible at his job as peter burns and andy everett. those two morons can hardly speak for 2 minutes without sounding like complete asshats.

[ChumpDumper]

I'm surprised Rush didn't backpedal immediately on this. There's no way to be anything but on the defensive from here on out. Disaster aid is the rare kind of thing upon which most Americans can actually easily agree, and he's keeping himself on the wrong side with no one but Pat Robertson and overt racists to keep him company.

[DarrinS]

“We've already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”




This is really the worst thing he said. Saying Obama doesn't like to sqander a crisis to earn political points is like saying the sky is blue.

[Marcus Bryant]

I'm still surprised at the number of individuals, left and right, who hang on his every word.

[DarrinS]

Frl

[Blake]

I'm surprised Rush didn't backpedal immediately on this. There's no way to be anything but on the defensive from here on out. Disaster aid is the rare kind of thing upon which most Americans can actually easily agree, and he's keeping himself on the wrong side with no one but Pat Robertson and overt racists to keep him company.

especially considering how he much he would rave about Bush sending disaster aid to Iraq.

[George Gervin's Afro]

This is really the worst thing he said. Saying Obama doesn't like to sqander a crisis to earn political points is like saying the sky is blue.

so the president is only helping to score political points. is that what you're saying?

[baseline bum]

I'm still surprised at the number of individuals, left and right, who hang on his every word.

Why would you expect people to not pay attention to the ignorant ramblings of someone who basically controls a political party right now?

[Marcus Bryant]

That's way oversold. Both Limbaugh and his critics like to perpetuate that notion.

I would expect people to have something better to do.

[mookie2001]

He was saying today that it's their fault for not having better built buildings, and that their national religion- voodoo tells them not to plan for anything and to abuse their children

[Oh, Gee!!]

critics from the right will change their tune when Rush's listeners start calling those congressional offices.

[DMX7]

"Stupid" and "outspoken" don't go well together.

[Bukefal]

Rush Limbaugh is not backing down from his claim that President Barack Obama is trying to score political points off the earthquake in Haiti.

Im just referring and agreeing with this sentence, not the rest.

Of course Obama also uses this to score political points. Every president does that.

Im not saying that their whole goal in such situations are to score political points, it isnt, but when there is such a situation, they sure might as well use it.

That's politics

[Wild Cobra]

this guy is a such a piece of shit. the world will a better place once he and dick cheney kick the bucket..
No, voters like you need to kick the bucket.

[Wild Cobra]

I'm still surprised at the number of individuals, left and right, who hang on his every word.

Talking about George, right?

[symple19]

I'm still surprised at the number of individuals, left and right, who hang on his every word.

[DMX7]

I'm still surprised at the number of individuals, left and right, who hang on his every word.


Just the really really stupid ones.

[TeyshaBlue]

If boutons only had a radio show.....

[mookie2001]

I don't care if he's a dickless neocon because some people are liberal!

[Marcus Bryant]

If boutons only had a radio show.....

Now that would be entertainment.

[jochhejaam]

Danny G enters the fray;

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 15th, 2010



You thought it had something to do with tectonic plates. But apparently not according to this dramatic new insight into the Haiti earthquake from the much-loved international star of Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 3, Lethal Weapon 4 and Predator 2. (Hat tip: Burgess, via Tim Blair)


“What happened in Haiti could happen to anywhere in the Caribbean because all these island nations are in peril because of global warming.”

“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m saying? We have to act now!”



http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022430/haiti-disaster-caused-by-failure-of-copenhagen-summit-says-actor-danny-glover/

[spursncowboys]

He was saying today that it's their fault for not having better built buildings, and that their national religion- voodoo tells them not to plan for anything and to abuse their children



The Underlying Tragedy

By DAVID BROOKS (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/davidbrooks/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died.
This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not.
In the recent anthology “What Works in Development?,” a group of economists try to sort out what we’ve learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn’t seem to produce the expected results.
The chastened tone of these essays is captured by the economist Abhijit Banerjee: “It is not clear to us that the best way to get growth is to do growth policy of any form. Perhaps making growth happen is ultimately beyond our control.”
The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord’s work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change.
Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.
As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.
Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.
These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.
It’s time to take that approach abroad, too. It’s time to find self-confident local leaders who will create No Excuses countercultures in places like Haiti, surrounding people — maybe just in a neighborhood or a school — with middle-class assumptions, an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands.
The late political scientist Samuel P. Huntington used to acknowledge that cultural change is hard, but cultures do change after major traumas. This earthquake is certainly a trauma. The only question is whether the outside world continues with the same old, same old.

Are you going to go after Brooks too?

[spursncowboys]

I agree with Rush on the fact that if you go through the White House to donate money, you will end up on a contact list for BHO. There is nothing illogical about thinking that. What is so terrible to say it? Now if you take it out of context the way MSNBC does and say he is against aid to Haiti, then I can see people getting upset. Rush didn't think you should go to the Whitehouse website to donate. He had people on saying where to donate. Obama is a great politician. It's pretty much been his only job.

Everytime I have heard Rush talk about sending money to Haiti, which he cited as getting the most aid from us anyway, is that it will go to the War lords. Why does MSNBC and the drive bys always lose credibility to try and falsely discredit someone who doesn't need to run for anything?

[mookie2001]

Uhh yeah I am

he even mentioned that on the air you fucking neocon

[DMX7]

I agree with Rush on the fact that if you go through the White House to donate money, you will end up on a contact list for BHO.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/14/president-haiti-first-waves-our-rescue-and-relief-workers-are-ground-and-work

Why don't you try actually donating? You get a nice little message telling you you're leaving the White House's servers entirely when you try to.



Everytime I have heard Rush talk about sending money to Haiti, which he cited as getting the most aid from us anyway, is that it will go to the War lords. Why does MSNBC and the drive bys always lose credibility to try and falsely discredit someone who doesn't need to run for anything?

You mean the notorious war lords of the Red Cross and Salvation Army?

[spursncowboys]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/01/14/president-haiti-first-waves-our-rescue-and-relief-workers-are-ground-and-work

Why don't you try actually donating? You get a nice little message telling you you're leaving the White House's servers entirely when you try to.



You mean the notorious war lords of the Red Cross and Salvation Army?
I donated without going through the WH but I went through your link and you are right. The other part of your post is wrong though. Do you know how the RC and SA get relief out to everyone?

[SouthernFried]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: I'm gonna respond to this absolute BS that I said don't donate. But, you know, I do not make this program about me. I try very hard not to make this program about me. So if I have time to deal with that, I will. I'm confident everybody in this audience knows what I said and what I didn't say. Even the Washington Post says without the context, "What Limbaugh said is horrible." All I said was, if you paid your income taxes, that's how you donate to government for aid, and sure enough, here comes Obama announcing $100 million from the government for aid to Haiti, fine and dandy. But, you paid for it, it's your taxes. All I said was if you're going to donate do it outside the government, pure and simple. I was attacked, folks, because I am the leading voice of mainstream conservative views, not for any other reason. And this outrage is totally feigned, just as Tony Blankley said, all this outrage at me is totally faked up. They know exactly what I said, and they know for a fact that I would never tell people not to donate to any charitable cause like this, so it is what it is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: David Brooks today in the New York Times is basically saying what I said yesterday and was attacked for, that giving aid money to countries does not help them grow. Here it is right here in the New York Times, and nobody's mad at them. Do I need to read it? Yeah, let me. "On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died. This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It's a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: 'You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.'

If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He's going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths. The first of those truths is that we don't know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not." Oh, my gosh, this is deja vu, except I'm the one that said it. Using our own war on poverty, how much money have we given to the poor in this country, and we still have the same percentages of poor people -- and we're never supposed to examine the results, right? Only the good intentions of the givers!

And, of course, the givers are us. Our back pockets are looted by our own government, and the money is redistributed -- and as Mr. Brooks is saying here, there is no upside to this. "In the recent anthology 'What Works in Development?,' a group of economists try to sort out what we've learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn't seem to produce the expected results. ... . More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. ...

"The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. So we have "more than 10,000 organizations perform[ing] missions of this sort in Haiti." It's exactly what I said: We've got charities on the ground 24/7, 365 in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord's work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change. Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism." Yeeeees, all the things we pointed out this week: Dictatorships! "But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well.

"Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other. "As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book 'The Central Liberal Truth,' Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized."

"Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10. ... In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism. These programs, like the Harlem Children's Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don't understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don't care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement -- involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance," and none and none of these programs are sponsored by government and certainly not by liberal government.

So the things that end poverty are cultural, and they start bottom-up, and they're done by citizens and real people who can't take it anymore. Throwing money at it accomplishes nothing! It's been demonstrated all across the world, but most near to us it's been demonstrated in Haiti. I mention all this as a rebuttal to all of the feigned outrage at me, the lying note that I urged people not to give to charity for Haiti. Nobody in their right mind would ever believe that about me or anybody else, for that matter. However, I did say find some way to do it other than giving it to Obama, 'cause I know he's going to eliminate the charitable deduction. He wants to wipe out individual charitable giving. He wants the government to be the go-to person for all charities. That's the only reason you wipe out the deduction for charitable contributions.




END TRANSCRIPT

[clambake]

have fun with that.

[SouthernFried]

RUSH: I predicted it yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, that it wouldn't be long before the Drive-By Media, the State-Controlled Media started praising Obama for doing a much better job responding to Haiti and the earthquake than Bush did in Katrina and right here it is, by Ben Feller at the AP, very deep analysis here, "Obama Heeding Lessons of Katrina -- This is what President Barack Obama wants people to think about the U.S. reaction to the catastrophe in Haiti: 'swift, coordinated and aggressive.' He promised that stellar response in his first comments about the earthquake on Wednesday, then repeated it twice on Thursday. In other words, this will not be Hurricane Katrina." Sorry, folks, it already is. It's worse. The aid hasn't yet been distributed. Seventy-two hours they said, by the way, they're lying.

Seventy-two hours Bush dithered, didn't do anything, it's been 72 hours. If you were watching Sky News, I was watching Sky News streaming video, it is an utter catastrophe. Sky News is discussing Haiti as utter pandemonium. Sky News is showing people screaming at the top of the hour: "We need help! We're getting nothing! We're going to die." People were not even buried under concrete in New Orleans. Seventy-two hours is the benchmark. If they're going to say Bush dithered for 72 hours, Obama certainly has made a lot of speeches, he's made a lot of comments and we've seen pictures of airplanes landing and so forth. We've seen a lot of pictures of the media standing around down there but in terms of the aid being distributed, you can't tell that it's happened yet, not that it won't, but I'm just saying keep this in context here. They're building a case that Bush screwed around and dithered, and Obama is on the case. "In other words," this is AP, "this will not be Hurricane Katrina. Obama is determined to show that the United States, even consumed with its own troubles, can get this right. And that he can, too.

"The world is watching because of the expectations that come with being a rich, powerful democracy that is supposed to look out for its neighbors. And because the stain of Katrina is not gone. 'This is one of those moments that calls out for American leadership,' said Obama, who can add a humanitarian crisis to his first-year tests in office. There are huge contrasts between Katrina, the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history, and the sorrowful scene unfolding in Haiti. One was a hurricane on U.S. soil that killed 1,800 people across the Gulf Coast; the other was an earthquake hundreds of miles away that may have killed 50,000 people. Yet as the wrenching images come in of people clinging to wreckage, of bodies piling up on the street, the comparisons are inevitable. The botched federal response to Katrina in 2005 became the standard by which emergency responses are measured, and presidents are held accountable."

I predicted this. Well, the lie that the federal response to Katrina was botched has certainly become the standard, and it is a lie. The federal response to Katrina was not botched. In fact, the federal response, especially from the military, was spectacular, and this is the key, once the local Democrats let them in. Once Kathleen Blanco and once School Bus Nagin let them in, the federal response was great. "'The United States is seen in the world as the first responder to this kind of humanitarian crisis, and it has echoes - inappropriate echoes, to be sure - of Hurricane Katrina,' said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University. 'Can we get there fast enough? There's a risk there for the president.'" Oh. World's policeman is bad but the world's EMT, that's good. Yeah, we can be the world's first responders. Oh, yeah, it's great to be the world's EMT. It's bad to be the world's cop.

"Obama has responded with urgency, and the White House has tried to make sure that people know it." That sounds like politicizing this to me. "The president has dispatched ships, soldiers, Marines and loads of other assets to the reeling Caribbean nation. He has pledged $100 million for relief efforts now and promised that that number will grow." One hundred million of tax money. We don't have the money so we're borrowing it or printing it. You're going to pay for it, your kids or grandkids someday down the line are going to pay for it. So you're donating to the government. Here, folks, let me expand on this. You may have forgotten that President Obama eventually -- he said this -- wants to eliminate all tax deductions for charitable contributions. Do you remember this? Do you know why? He wants the government to be the sole provider of charity. He wants the government to be seen by people as their lifeline, their primary means of existence. If you eliminate the tax deductibility of donations to charity you're not gonna give to charity as much. You'll have your pet causes, the ones you really care about, and you'll give, but charitable giving will decline precipitously. The government will take over.

And in this context is why I suggested many days ago that if you're going to give, you already have in the form of income tax. You want to make additional donations, do it with other charities already on the ground. Even David Brooks today has a piece in the New York Times essentially saying the same thing I said, and also pointing out that we've given more aid to Haiti over the years than any other country in our hemisphere and it hasn't mattered. Just as I said about Africa, the local African leaders say stop the aid, it's retarding our progress. So President Obama was quick to claim that it cost US taxpayers a billion dollars for every thousand soldiers sent to Afghanistan. Remember that? And he has yet to mention how much it cost to send a soldier to Haiti. In fact, it didn't even matter to him. But it was a factor in sending soldiers to Afghanistan. That's about US national security. This is about domestic US politics. Haiti is about domestic US politics in addition to the humanitarian effort that is behind this.

Of course we are not suggesting that we shouldn't send soldiers to Haiti. Do not misunderstand. But why is there no concern about the cost from the White House when there was so much concern about Afghanistan? After all, isn't the job of the US military first and foremost to protect the national security interests of the United States? No, it's not. The US military is now Meals on Wheels. It always is with Democrat presidents. Back to the AP story: "He has positioned the United States as a coalition-building leader - the United Nations itself has been rocked by the collapse of its headquarters in Haiti. He has pleaded for donations from his old campaign list of supporters, more than 13 million strong." They really got mad at me in the Drive-Bys for suggesting that if you donate to WhiteHouse.gov you're going to end up on a mailing list. Well, they're already sending out requests to an existing mailing list that you'll be added to.

Like most Americans, we have somehow ended up on several of Obama's e-mail lists. I'm on a bunch of them as show prep and I haven't received anything from him or any of his myriad organizations about Haiti, yet. At any rate, I want to go through a list of headlines about Haiti and ask, "Is this really different than Hurricane Katrina?"


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So the AP has its big story out saying presidents can't avoid making things like this political. But of course if I say something about it that Obama's making it political, I get ripped to shreds. Every excuse in the world is being offered, every comparison: "Bush horrible. Bush dithering. Obama right in the mix, right on time! Obama knows how to do it. He's not going to be stay..." Well, let's just go through some of these headlines:

"Despair, Panic Set in as Food, Water, and Medical Supplies are Delayed." "Death toll estimate at 50,000 to 100,000." "UN to Launch Haiti Emergency Appeal for $550 Million." "Anarchy! Who's Running the Country?" "Aristide Offers to Return." I predicted that, too. "US Military Mobilizes Thousands." "War zone: Gangs Do Battle in Streets with Machetes Over Food." "Rescuers Race Against Time." "Wire: Angry Haitians Block Roads with Corpses" "Horror: Corpses Impede Traffic, Pyres of Burning Tires Incinerate Cadavers." "Growing Desperation." "Survivors Face Diarrhea, Malaria Outbreaks Amid Lack of Clean Water." "Looting." "Earthquake in Pictures." Satellite Photos Before and After." "Actor Danny Glover Says Quake 'Response' For Screwing Up Climate Summit In Copenhagen."

And at the top of the hour Sky News showed people screaming, "We need help! We're getting nothing. We're going to die, we're going to die!" Aren't these the same sort of hysterical headlines we saw after Katrina? Are they not? And the Katrina numbers were not nearly 50,000 to 100,000 dead. The US military did a marvelous job. We have a giant lie that has stuck about Bush and Hurricane Katrina, and Mr. Obama need not ever worry that such thing will happen to him because, as this AP story so clearly illustrates, the State-Controlled Media will be there every step of the way to make sure their readers and viewers understand that Obama's doing far better -- far, far, far better -- than Bush, who didn't care. Remember, they said Bush didn't care because there are a lot of black people in New Orleans. Obama himself even implied that at the time. Oh, yeah, folks. My memory is long on these matters. Now, here we are in the middle of a horrible disaster, and CNN is reporting that Colin Powell -- he finally speaks! -- is very impressed with the Obama initial response to Haiti earthquake.

Why do we care if Colin Powell is impressed or not? What's newsworthy about that? But he's there. We've been waiting for him to speak up, and he's impressed. Colin Powell is really impressed by Obama's initial response. The fact that the same military and charities and alike are working like hell to help these poor people down there, just as they did in Katrina, is ignored. It's all about Obama. There are charities on the ground year 'round in Haiti trying to help. But now it's all about Obama. Yet we have report after report about how the aid can't get to where it's needed and how it will be days before it does, and it's right here in these headlines that I just shared with you: "Despair, Panic Set in as Food, Water, and Medical Supplies are Delayed." "Death toll estimate at 50,000 to 100,000." The aid can't get where it's needed because of issues like the gangs, piling up corpses, blocking travel on roads. It's not because of a lack of effort on the part of the first responders -- and there were lots of obstacles to getting the aid to New Orleans, too. I'm not trying to be controversial at all. I am simply making this point to highlight how the reporting is so, so different.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: As a man who's often accused of making everything racial, this is a CBS/AP dispatch. "The human suffering from Hurricane Katrina and the images of mostly black hurricane victims and looters have provoked new debates about tough public policy decisions, the nation's troubled racial history and the racial and economic barriers that still separate Americans. CBS Radio News reports that New Orleans City Councilman Oliver Thomas said people are too afraid of black people to go in and save them. He added that rumors of shootings and riots are making people afraid to take in people who are being portrayed as thugs and thieves."

This is the story, one of the many, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina saying that Bush didn't want to go in there because didn't want to help black people and people are afraid to go help black people.

The US military was on the scene, and they were rescuing people, and we've got the video to prove it. Yet we have two clear contrasts of how the media reports both. You want me to go through those headlines again about Haiti? You want me to go through 'em again? Okay. Because we've got the story out there that Obama's doing wonderfully well. He's doing great, much better than Bush. "Despair, Panic Set in as Food, Water, and Medical Supplies are Delayed." "Death Toll Estimate at 50,000 to 100,000." "UN to Launch Haiti Emergency Appeal for $550 Million." "Anarchy! Who's Running the Country?" "Aristide Offers to Return." "US Military Mobilizes Thousands." "War zone: Gangs Do Battle in Streets with Machetes Over Food."

"Rescuers Race Against Time." "Wire: Angry Haitians Block Roads with Corpses" "Horror: Corpses Impede Traffic, Pyres of Burning Tires Incinerate Cadavers." "Growing Desperation." "Survivors Face Diarrhea, Malaria Outbreaks Amid Lack of Clean Water." "Looting." "Earthquake in Pictures." Satellite Photos Before and After." "Actor Danny Glover Says Quake 'Response' For Screwing Up Climate Summit In Copenhagen." "Sky News Video: Pandemonium Just About Everywhere." Sky News at the Top of the Hour: People Screaming at the Top of Their Lungs, 'We need help! We are getting nothing. We are going to die.'" The Associated Press, if that's your sole source for news, would make you believe that the aid has arrived and it's being distributed. Lives are being saved. It's much, much differently than it was during Hurricane Katrina with George W. Bush.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Listen to this. You've heard me twice go through the headlines two days after the earthquake in Haiti. There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and a 19th headline added. Here is the list of the headlines at the Drudge Report two days after Hurricane Katrina.

"Navy ships and maritime rescue teams sent to region." "May have killed thousands;" "Bush views damage from Air Force One;" "White House to release oil from reserves," "Officials helpless against looters;" "Twenty-five thousand Superdome evacuees to be moved to Houston Astrodome;" "Carnival cruise lines asks about using ships." That's it. Two days after hurricane Katrina versus all this. I mention this, ladies and gentlemen, not to be critical of anybody who's trying to do anything in Haiti. I'm simply telling you you're being lied to once again by the State-Controlled Media. Katrina was botched. Haiti is not being botched. The aid has not yet gotten anywhere appreciably. There's no way to get it there. There are gangs; there are lootings; there are similar things. Which place do you think is more corrupt, New Orleans or Haiti? Have they already got me up on MSNBC talking about it? I figured that. (laughing) I can play these people like a Stradivarius. What are they saying? Oh, it's from two days ago. Oh, the light-skinned, dark skinned? They still don't get that I'm making fun of Harry Reid. I told you by the end of this week those comments are going to be mine. As far as the media is concerned I will be the author, I will be the one who spoke light-skinned, dark-skinned.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All right. Back to Haiti from www.sphere.com: "Aid Delays Fuel Desperation in Quake-Battered Haiti." It appears that Obama is not getting aid to dying Haitians. Listen to this report: "Haiti seemed to hold its breath today, praying that enough aid would arrive before the fears of hundreds of thousands of hungry, injured earthquake refugees turned to violence. 'Every hour counts,' said John Holmes, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, who was dispatching search and rescue teams from New York. His colleague in Haiti, peacekeeping chief David Wimhurst, told The Associated Press that Haiti's survivors are 'slowly getting more angry and impatient.'

"About $400 million worth of aid has been pledged so far from Asia, Europe and the Americas, with a quarter of that from the U.S. alone, and some 10,000 U.S. military personnel are slated for deployment there by Monday. But immediate efforts have been stymied by roads blocked by debris, a damaged seaport and an airport that turned away civilian aid planes for eight hours Thursday because of a lack of space and fuel. Two Red Cross planes managed to land today carrying experts -- engineers, doctors and specialists in reuniting families separated by disaster -- as well as 40 tons of mainly medical supplies. The load includes a kit that can cover the basic health needs of 10,000 people for three months, plus 3,000 body bags and a ton of chlorine for water treatment.

"But help could not come quick enough for throngs of increasingly desperate survivors, who woke after a third straight night outdoors to find no one there to help them. Camps sprung up in city parks, with survivors building tents from tree branches. ... But tension is rising hourly as the wait lengthens for the wide-scale delivery of aid. ... American soldiers immediately took on a coordinating role at the airport upon arrival Thursday. Another 5,500 U.S. soldiers and Marines are expected by Monday, to provide security. ... 'Many people have not eaten since Tuesday. There are corpses everywhere, including pigtailed schoolgirls in their uniforms,' Pooja Bhatia wrote on Twitter. 'I was told at least five times that homeless peeps want to pray for me -- all of which gives me some hope that riots and violence might not happen. But it will depend greatly on when aid arrives.'"

Again, to be clear, I'm responding to media reports. I'm not criticizing Obama. They did criticize Bush. They politicized Katrina, and they criticized Bush, and they ended up having lies cemented in the public mind. I am responding to media reports predicted by me yesterday that we would have stories -- and the AP was first out of the jumping chute -- stories praising Obama, getting aid in there much faster and much thoroughly, much better than Bush did. It's not there yet. It's pretty tough. The place is a disaster. The airport, they don't have enough fuel for planes to land to get outta there. The seaport's a mess.


To the phones we go on Open Line Friday. We're going to start in Fresno, California, and Jerry, great to have you here, sir. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Mega dittos.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I'd like to know why the press isn't comparing this to the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 where Bush -- I think he had a hospital ship there within about 48 hours, he had P-3s flying search-and-rescue missions immediately. We got $35 million pledged, committed almost immediately, another $350 million within five days. And we eventually I think committed almost $950 million to the damage in --

RUSH: Well, it's an excellent point. The answer is the same answer, why didn't we get any good news coming out of Afghanistan in the early years, because it was working?

CALLER: Exactly. Yeah. And the other thing, I think the Red Cross had been kind of depleted by the time Hurricane Katrina hit, and plus he didn't have Democrats blocking his way trying to get into Indonesia.

RUSH: Exactly. Exactly right. That is my point, Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco blocked entry into New Orleans. It wasn't the hurricane, by the way, that did the damage, it was the levees bursting after the hurricane was gone that caused the floods and the levees, it was a combination of problems of local corruption and the US Army Corps of Engineers. The money was allocated; it was just not used for the levees.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's Obama. He had a little something to say this afternoon right at one o'clock Eastern time on the earthquake in Haiti.

OBAMA: The port continues to be closed and the roads are damaged, food is scarce, and so is water. It will take time to establish distribution points so that we can ensure that resources are delivered safely and effectively and in an orderly fashion. But I want the people of Haiti to know that we will do what it takes to save lives and to help them get back on their feet.

RUSH: It sounds like two different messages to me. Sounds like, "Sorry, nothing's there yet, but we're going to do whatever it takes to save lives and help them get back on their feet." So President Obama asking Haitians for patience after the Associated Press has run a story saying Obama's doing a wonderful job, beating Bush by a long shot in terms of how Bush dealt with Katrina.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Scott in Nokesville, Virginia. It's great to have you on the EIB Network, sir, hello.

CALLER: Yes, sir. This is a real honor for me.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I have a feeling 'cause I don't think anyone should listen to General "Benedict" Powell anymore. The president could have dropped in the airborne units on Wednesday. They don't even need airports.

RUSH: Good point. The 82nd Airborne could parachute in there.

CALLER: And all their equipment and supplies.

RUSH: I just saw that they're going in there now.

CALLER: Oh. Well, I guess better late than never.

RUSH: Benedict Powell, did you say? Did I hear that correctly?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: As in Benedict Arnold?

CALLER: Yes, sir, the same.

RUSH: That's because of voting and endorsing Obama, you mean?

CALLER: Yes, sir.

RUSH: As the quintessential Republican we should all model ourselves after?

CALLER: Well, just like Benedict Arnold was a hero until he didn't get enough attention and then he switched sides.

RUSH: Oooh. That's exactly right, and an apt comparison.

CALLER: And if I may: I wanted to thank you. I was in the honor guard in the nineties, and you got us through some really hard times with the Days Held Hhostage thing.

RUSH: Yeah. I was tempted to reinstitute that with the Obama election, but I thought, "Why plagiarize myself? Been there, done that."

CALLER: (laughing) Right before we tighten up and march on to the White House we would say the day that you've mentioned.

RUSH: (laughing) All right. Thanks for the call, sir. I appreciate it.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Sad news out of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. This is Fox News: "Desperation in Haiti as Aid Is Snarled, Looters Roam -- Hundreds of U.S. troops touched down in earthquake-shattered Port-au-Prince overnight and were soon handing out food and water to stricken survivors, as relief groups struggled to deliver aid Friday and fears spread of unrest in Haiti's fourth day of desperation." But wait! But wait! But wait! The AP has a story today saying that Obama has brilliantly got aid in there much faster than Bush did after Katrina. The facts on the ground don't back it up.


END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• FOXNews: Desperation and Anger in Haiti as Aid Is Snarled
• New York Times: The Underlying Tragedy in Haiti - David Brooks
• ABC: Haiti Earthquake Victims Despair as Food, Water and Medical Relief Delayed
• Reuters: Haiti death toll 50,000 to 100,000
• Reuters: U.N. to Launch Haiti Emergency Appeal for $550 mln
• Reuters: Who's Running Haiti? No One, Say the People
• Reuters: U.S. Military Mobilizes Thousands for Haiti Relief
• CBS: Gangs Armed With Machetes Loot Port-Au-Prince
• UK Daily Mail: Haiti Earthquake: No food, No Water and Gutters Running with Blood
• Reuters: Angry Haitians Block Roads with Corpses: Witness
• TIME: Haiti Tries to Dig Out as Corpses Pile Up
• Wall Street Journal: Clogged Airport, Ruined Seaport Delay Aid
• Bloomberg: Haiti's Health System Crumbles Under Quake as Outbreaks Loom
• CBS: Looting on Rise amid Haiti's Growing Desperation
• UK Daily Mail: Haiti Earthquake in Pictures: The Unimaginable Horror Which has Torn a Country Apart
• Wired: Satellite Photos of Haiti Before and After the Earthquake
• FOXNews: Haiti Crisis Overshadows Political Debates
• NewsMax: In Haiti, Tragedy, a Way of Life, Is Redefined

[DarkReign]

Danny G enters the fray;

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 15th, 2010



You thought it had something to do with tectonic plates. But apparently not according to this dramatic new insight into the Haiti earthquake from the much-loved international star of Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 3, Lethal Weapon 4 and Predator 2. (Hat tip: Burgess, via Tim Blair)


“What happened in Haiti could happen to anywhere in the Caribbean because all these island nations are in peril because of global warming.”

“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m saying? We have to act now!”



http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100022430/haiti-disaster-caused-by-failure-of-copenhagen-summit-says-actor-danny-glover/

:lmao

Seriously, this is getting...tiresome.

:lmao

Fucking Danny Glover, now??!

[SouthernFried]

Haiti on List of Best Places for the Environment

RUSH: By the way, one little note on Haiti. Haiti is always on the United Nations list as one of the best places for the environment. Back in 2001 -- and it hasn't changed much, I'm sure, 'cause Haiti has not improved. Back in 2001 from a World Wildlife Report, the three worst countries by ecological carbon footprint: UAE, Kuwait, United States. The best three countries, meaning they make the least carbon footprint, the least pollution: Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan. Afghanistan being the best. In other words, this is what we should aspire to: Abject poverty saves the earth.

[spursncowboys]

Mookie, GGA, Chump: Which sentence exactly do you have a problem with?

[ChumpDumper]

Mookie, GGA, Chump: Which sentence exactly do you have a problem with?I already posted it, genius.

And comparing US delivery of aid to a foreign island 700 miles away without a functioning seaport with land-connected New Orleans for a disaster that gave at least a week of lead time is very, very stupid.

I have a problem with that.

Comparing Haiti to China is incredibly stupid. Apparently Rush and Brooks favor communism now.

We've given over $7 billion to Israel in the form of economic aid since 1997. Israel is getting over $2 billion in total aid this year, about 20 time what Obama just pledged to Haiti for disaster relief. Is Rush against that too? Have they not developed?

Stupid.

I have a problem with that kind of stupidity.

[FromWayDowntown]

Who is Rush Limbaugh?

[George Gervin's Afro]

Mookie, GGA, Chump: Which sentence exactly do you have a problem with?


It appears that Obama is not getting aid to dying Haitians. Listen to this report:

[George Gervin's Afro]

Are you going to go after Brooks too?

he lost me comparing China's economy to Haiti's

[ChumpDumper]

he lost me comparing China's economy to Haiti'sAre you kidding?

They're exactly the same!

The only differences are a couple of billion dollars in US aid over the past decade or two and voodoo.

[Cry Havoc]

The AP has a story today saying that Obama has brilliantly got aid in there much faster than Bush did after Katrina. The facts on the ground don't back it up.

Ah yes. Because Haiti is so much closer and more easily accessible than Louisiana. Therefore it's an apt comparison.

[ChumpDumper]

Ah yes. Because Haiti is so much closer and more easily accessible than Louisiana. Therefore it's an apt comparison.Are you kidding?

They're exactly the same!

[Wild Cobra]

:lmao

Seriously, this is getting...tiresome.

:lmao

Fucking Danny Glover, now??!
Yep...

I only live about 20 miles from that dumbshit.

He lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

[Wild Cobra]

I already posted it, genius.

And comparing US delivery of aid to a foreign island 700 miles away without a functioning seaport with land-connected New Orleans for a disaster that gave at least a week of lead time is very, very stupid.

I have a problem with that.

Comparing Haiti to China is incredibly stupid. Apparently Rush and Brooks favor communism now.

We've given over $7 billion to Israel in the form of economic aid since 1997. Israel is getting over $2 billion in total aid this year, about 20 time what Obama just pledged to Haiti for disaster relief. Is Rush against that too? Have they not developed?

Stupid.

I have a problem with that kind of stupidity.

Problem with financial aid to Haiti is that they haven't had a fuctional government for years. Uless we keep complete control of the distribution, the thugs, drug lords, etc. get the money.

[Sec24Row7]

Haiti on List of Best Places for the Environment

RUSH: By the way, one little note on Haiti. Haiti is always on the United Nations list as one of the best places for the environment. Back in 2001 -- and it hasn't changed much, I'm sure, 'cause Haiti has not improved. Back in 2001 from a World Wildlife Report, the three worst countries by ecological carbon footprint: UAE, Kuwait, United States. The best three countries, meaning they make the least carbon footprint, the least pollution: Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan. Afghanistan being the best. In other words, this is what we should aspire to: Abject poverty saves the earth.

Hahaha... i don't agree with a lot of what he says... but POINT Rush on that one.

[Cry Havoc]

Problem with financial aid to Haiti is that they haven't had a fuctional government for years. Uless we keep complete control of the distribution, the thugs, drug lords, etc. get the money.

All the more reason for a reasonably expected delay in response, correct? Further illuminating the differences between NOLA and Haiti.

[symple19]

Uless we keep complete control of the distribution

Part of the reason we'll have 10k pairs of boots on the ground in addition to the peacekeepers already present. There is going to be fraud and waste in any giant relief undertaking such as this.

[Marcus Bryant]

http://4gifs.com/gallery/d/142642-1/Rabbits_revenge.gif

[spursncowboys]

Marcus & Winehole: Is your version of conservatism against this kind of disaster relief aid?
Marcus: Is america the rabbit or cat?

[ChumpDumper]

Problem with financial aid to Haiti is that they haven't had a fuctional government for years. Uless we keep complete control of the distribution, the thugs, drug lords, etc. get the money.All of it?

No.

O'Reilly was talking to an aid worker in Haiti and asked him three times if "the thugs" were taking his money. He said "no" every time.

Besides, no one ever heard you complain about the $9 billion unaccounted for in Iraq the past seven years.

Sometimes the strings attached to the aid can be the problem.


Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened?

In 1986, after the expulsion of Haitian dictator Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loaned Haiti $24.6 million in desperately needed funds (Baby Doc had raided the treasury on the way out). But, in order to get the IMF loan, Haiti was required to reduce tariff protections for their Haitian rice and other agricultural products and some industries to open up the country’s markets to competition from outside countries. The U.S. has by far the largest voice in decisions of the IMF.

Doctor Paul Farmer was in Haiti then and saw what happened. “Within less than two years, it became impossible for Haitian farmers to compete with what they called ‘Miami rice.’ The whole local rice market in Haiti fell apart as cheap, U.S. subsidized rice, some of it in the form of ‘food aid,’ flooded the market. There was violence, ‘rice wars,’ and lives were lost.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2428600/posts

[spursncowboys]

All of it?

No.

O'Reilly was talking to an aid worker in Haiti and asked him three times if " the thugs" were taking his money. He said "no" every time.

Sometimes the strings attached to the aid can be the problem.



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2428600/posts

Chump: ultimately that is the same argument rush and brooks are saying. The International "help" isn't helping. I'm surprised a lib attacking subsidies. Then again, lacking convictions will do that to you.

[ChumpDumper]

Chump: ultimately that is the same argument rush and brooks are saying. The International "help" isn't helping. I'm surprised a lib attacking subsidies. Then again, lacking convictions will do that to you.I have never been for subsidies for US farmers, you idiot.

You want Haitians to starve and die in the streets because they don't have food, water and bandages.

And you want all aid to Iraq and Israel to be cut off as well since it never works.

Good for you. That's real conviction. Feel good about that. :clap

[George Gervin's Afro]

Chump: ultimately that is the same argument rush and brooks are saying. The International "help" isn't helping. I'm surprised a lib attacking subsidies. Then again, lacking convictions will do that to you.

The international help isn't working?

[DMX7]

And you want all aid to Iraq and Israel to be cut off as well since it never works.

Good for you. That's real conviction. Feel good about that. :clap

He may think that, but he doesn't really want aid cut off to Israel. It's the conservatives de facto bribe to earn Jew votes in Florida. If they were responsible for cutting off Israel, there'd be hell to pay... and they know it.

[ChumpDumper]

He may think that, but he doesn't really want aid cut off to Israel. It's the conservatives de facto bribe to earn Jew votes in Florida. If they were responsible for cutting off Israel, there'd be hell to pay... and they know it.That's just it -- he doesn't think that.

Lacking convictions will do that to him.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Chump: ultimately that is the same argument rush and brooks are saying. The International "help" isn't helping. I'm surprised a lib attacking subsidies. Then again, lacking convictions will do that to you.

that makes no sense..:lmao

[DMX7]

That's just it -- he doesn't think that.

Lacking convictions will do that to him.

Exactly.

[spursncowboys]

I have never been for subsidies for US farmers, you idiot.

You want Haitians to starve and die in the streets because they don't have food, water and bandages.

And you want all aid to Iraq and Israel to be cut off as well since it never works.

Good for you. That's real conviction. Feel good about that. :clap

How would I know what you are for, except to assume anything illogical and assinine is what you believe in? Genius, moron? What are you 12? Everytime you assume, you are wrong. Actually everytime you write something, you are wrong. So on the other hand are you for cutting off all aid? Is your absolute childish "that's not fair" mentality focus that way?

[spursncowboys]

He may think that, but he doesn't really want aid cut off to Israel. It's the conservatives de facto bribe to earn Jew votes in Florida. If they were responsible for cutting off Israel, there'd be hell to pay... and they know it.

I don't think we should cut off aid to Israel. Why do you think we should? FTR: I have never been to FL and am not Jewish.Do you have any facts to base that conspiracy theory? :lol Yeah the huge Jewish conservative bloc is so powerful. :lol

[ChumpDumper]

How would I know what you are for, except to assume anything illogical and assinine is what you believe in? Genius, moron? What are you 12? Everytime you assume, you are wrong. Actually everytime you write something, you are wrong. So on the other hand are you for cutting off all aid? Is your absolute childish "that's not fair" mentality focus that way?You made the wrong assumption, now you're mad.

Nice "convictions."

[ChumpDumper]

I don't think we should cut off aid to Israel. Why do you think we should?


International "help" isn't helping.Lacking convictions will do that to you.

[spursncowboys]

Lacking convictions will do that to you.

It was the similarities of what you wrote and what Rush and Brooks wrote. :lol
Read much?

me
Chump: ultimately that is the same argument rush and brooks are saying. The International "help" isn't helping. I'm surprised a lib attacking subsidies. Then again, lacking convictions will do that to you.

[spursncowboys]

You made the wrong assumption, now you're mad.

Nice "convictions."

Way to not answer a question.

[ChumpDumper]

It was the similarities of what you wrote and what Rush and Brooks wrote. :lol
Read much?Yes. I noticed they both said stupid shit.

As did you.


Way to not answer a question.I never said I was for cutting off all aid.

Way to make a completely wrong and stupid assumption. You do this very often. Why do you are you completely wrong and stupid so often?

[DMX7]

I have never been to FL and am not Jewish.Do you have any facts to base that conspiracy theory? :lol Yeah the huge Jewish conservative bloc is so powerful. :lol

U.S. Election 2000 - Florida - Swing State... I'm sure this will require greater clarification... as do most things for you.

[spursncowboys]

U.S. Election 2000 - Florida - Swing State... I'm sure this will require greater clarification... as do most things for you.

So I am not intelligent enough to grasp your conspiracy theory? If the jewish vote changed, it's not what the GOP did but what the DNC hasn't done. Time and time again they have shown they are willing to let the state of Israel vanquish all in the name of political correctness.

[ChumpDumper]

So I am not intelligent enough to grasp your conspiracy theory? If the jewish vote changed, it's not what the GOP did but what the DNC hasn't done. Time and time again they have shown they are willing to let the state of Israel vanquish all in the name of political correctness.Really?

How, specifically, has the DNC shown that?

[EmptyMan]

How many billions have been sent to haiti.

Looks to me like most are still living in huts.



Help those that help themselves.

[ChumpDumper]

How many billions have been sent to haiti.

Looks to me like most are still living in huts.



Help those that help themselves.Yes, charity is wasted on the needy.

[Nbadan]

BOT.....Craig Ferguson on Rush..

27LDh7BBK_4

[EVAY]

BOT.....Craig Ferguson on Rush..

27LDh7BBK_4

Thanks for this post, Dan. I love it!!

[baseline bum]

Ferguson gives that ball of hate too much credit. Still, funny suggestion.

[spursncowboys]

Yes, charity is wasted on the needy.

It's not charity when the govt. is involved.

[Marcus Bryant]

Conservatives need to learn how to pick their battles. Breaking off a few billion to help the people of the poorest country in the Western hemisphere after a natural disaster of epic proportions is not such a battle.

As for Limbaugh, first off he doesn't hold as much sway as his audience and his critics who hang on his every word seem to believe. Or McCain would never have been the GOP nominee in '08. But, Limbaugh wins no matter what. The GOP is never "conservative" enough should an electoral loss occur. If the GOP wins, well, it's obviously due to him. Either way, tune in tomorrow...

[SnakeBoy]

Besides, no one ever heard you complain about the $9 billion unaccounted for in Iraq the past seven years.


Well nation building in the name of security is something only liberals complain about. Nation building in the name of compassion is what neocons complain about. It's all just nation building with money we don't have to me.

[ChumpDumper]

It's not charity when the govt. is involved.Aid is wasted on the needy.

[Winehole23]

Aid is wasted on the needy.Just heard on NPR: food lacking, water lacking, fuel lacking, medical aid lacking, more US troops sent.

[Winehole23]

God, it's a fucking mess.

[Winehole23]

NPR: Haitians flee the capitol.

[Winehole23]

...one week after the terremoto.

[Wild Cobra]

Just heard on NPR: food lacking, water lacking, fuel lacking, medical aid lacking, more US troops sent.
One thing I heard scanning different sources was the need for politicians to get the fuck out so there is more room on the tarmac for relief planes!

Hear that president Clinton...

[Winehole23]

One thing I heard scanning different sources was the need for politicians to get the fuck out so there is more room on the tarmac for relief planesWhere'd you hear that?

[Winehole23]

The aid can't get there, because politicians are blocking the runway. Sez WC.

[Winehole23]

Srsly?

[Wild Cobra]

The aid can't get there, because politicians are blocking the runway. Sez WC.
I didn't say that. Only that there is less space for essential planes.

The fact is, there is only so much space for airplanes at the airport. Non-essential flights should be banned.

As for source? I completely forget.

[Winehole23]

Of course you do.

[Winehole23]

Thanks just the same.

[spursncowboys]

NPR huh? Hmmmmmm...Interesting.

[Winehole23]

You think it's a lie?

[Winehole23]

Do you know anything about Haiti, SnC?

[Winehole23]

Have you seen the pictures of Port au Prince?

[Winehole23]

What strikes you as not credible about the NPR coverage of the aftermath?

[Winehole23]

The death tally might exceed 200,000. That's roughly the equivalent of sixty-six 9/11s. Well over a million people have been displaced.

[Winehole23]

By any standard, this is a natural disaster of world historical dimensions in our own backyard, and you're twitting basic, objective, unassailable facts about it because they came from a source you perceive to be left of center.

How petty and sad.

[Winehole23]

I think just bit off the end of my tongue.

[Winehole23]

God damn, SnC, where's your fucking heart? Did you get hungry and eat it for a snack?

[Winehole23]

Or did your stupidity just get in the way again?

[Winehole23]

Reposted for relevance.



http://images.huffingtonpost.com/gen/132899/original.jpg

[Winehole23]

http://chattahbox.com/images/2009/02/earthquake.jpg

[Winehole23]

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01560/haiti2_1560666c.jpg

[Winehole23]

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/jan2010/8/0/leogane-haiti-pic-dm-ian-vogler-745564000.jpg

[Winehole23]

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/13/article-1242929-07D9251D000005DC-556_964x640.jpg

[Winehole23]

The National Palace.

http://english.chosun.com/site/data/img_dir/2010/01/13/2010011301493_0.jpg

[Winehole23]

The dead are being burned en masse.

http://static.stuff.co.nz/1263437716/980/3230980.jpg

[Cry Havoc]

The death tally might exceed 200,000. That's roughly the equivalent of sixty-six 9/11s. Well over a million people have been displaced.

For a country of 10,000,000, that's roughly a loss of 2% of their population.

That would be the equivalent to the Houston metropolitan area disappearing from the face of Texas and everyone in the city with it. And then some.

I'm amazed at SnC's complete detachment from reality.

Oh wait, no, that's what passes for daily posting around here.

You're seriously arguing about this? You have no decency. None.

[Winehole23]

Outside the morgue, people search for their kin and loved ones

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID12837/images/haiti_death.jpg

[Cry Havoc]

Outside the morgue, people search for their kin and loved ones

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID12837/images/haiti_death.jpg

Obviously there's nothing we can do to help those people.

NPR has clearly over-exaggerated the disaster.

[Winehole23]

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/jan2010/5/3/haiti-earthquake-pic-reuters-581841911.jpg

[Winehole23]

http://i.ehow.com/images/GlobalPhoto/Articles/2290276/earthquake2-main_Full.jpg

[Winehole23]

IRC estimates the quake has rendered 3M people homeless.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2010/0113/Haiti-earthquake-With-aid-groups-already-there-relief-efforts-ramp-up-quickly

[Cry Havoc]

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2010/01/19/haiti.as.it.happened.cnn&hpt=P1

First hand video of the quake.

Of course, it's CNN, so I expect SnC will be along any moment to argue that the video is fake, since it's not directly from Fox News.

[Cry Havoc]

I donated without going through the WH but I went through your link and you are right.

Why did you donate, SnC? Don't you know that it's covered by our taxes?

[Winehole23]

I doubt he followed the first order news. I know I suggested he's stupid, but in this case, he's probably just ignorant.

[Winehole23]

I didn't see these pictures until a few minutes ago myself.

[SnakeBoy]

Where'd you hear that?

Talk radio probably. I heard it on Laura Ingram although she wasn't reporting a story just making the comment then if the airport is so backed up that supply planes can't land (which is/or at least was true) then why the hell are politicians flying in there.

[Winehole23]

Which politicians? They don't want that photo op.

[ChumpDumper]

Could a politician fly in on a plane also loaded with supplies?

Is that at all possible?

Is there a law against that kind of thing?

[Winehole23]

...

[Winehole23]

Talk radio probably. I heard it on Laura Ingram although she wasn't reporting a story just making the comment then if the airport is so backed up that supply planes can't land (which is/or at least was true) then why the hell are politicians flying in there.The French were complaining earlier today that the US forces in Port au Prince were rerouting aid to Santo Domingo. Whether that's an infrastructure problem or something political I don't know.

[Winehole23]

I can believe there's not sufficient infrastructure for the amount of aid on the way right now.Or challenging security issues, for that matter.

[Winehole23]

or for the amount really needed, right now.

[ChumpDumper]

Talk radio probably. I heard it on Laura Ingram although she wasn't reporting a story just making the comment then if the airport is so backed up that supply planes can't land (which is/or at least was true) then why the hell are politicians flying in there.
Could a politician fly in on a plane also loaded with supplies?

Is that at all possible?

Is there a law against that kind of thing?
Clinton, the highest-ranking Obama administration official to visit since the magnitude-7.0 quake struck Tuesday, arrived in a Coast Guard C-130 transport that carried bottled water, packaged food, soap and other supplies.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_clinton

God damn, Laura Ingram is a fucking idiot.

[SnakeBoy]

God, it's a fucking mess.

That's an understatement. I saw a report this morning from a hospital there. They don't have the supplies to treat the people with broken/crushed limbs, infection is setting in, they are losing people by the minute(quote), and the surgeon said they have been performing 70+ amputations per day but only had enough supplies to keep doing amputations for another 12 hours. If they can't do amputations & don't have supplies to treat infection then those peole will die.

In another report they said food/water were not getting distributed very well. One lady they showed was getting her first food in 4 days. The more people get desperate the more violent it becomes which makes distribution even slower which makes people more desperate which makes them more violent....


I think the final death toll will be far greater than the high number of 100,000 that was reported early on.

[Winehole23]

That's an understatement.Yeah, I know. You mentioned infection. We may not have seen the worst yet. We almost surely haven't. To judge from this forum alone, people are still too busy picking lint from their navels to have noticed at all . You, Sir, are an exception.

[SnakeBoy]

To judge from this forum alone, people are still picking lint from their navels.

They're just sticking to making everything a reflection on Obama. I don't like Obama any more than them but Haiti is just a horrible tragedy. Has nothing to do with politics.

[Winehole23]

They're just sticking to making everything a reflection on Obama. I don't like Obama any more than them but Haiti is just a horrible tragedy. Has nothing to do with politics.I disagree. Politics makes everything worse.

[SnakeBoy]

The French were complaining earlier today that the US forces in Port au Prince were rerouting aid to Santo Domingo. Whether that's an infrastructure problem or something political I don't know.

Infrastructure I believe. I heard a day or maybe two ago that there was just so many planes coming in that they couldn't get them all safely on the ground. Only one small airport. Here's a little bit about it...

http://penguinsix.com/2010/01/18/haiti-airport-capabilities-and-the-complainers/

[SnakeBoy]

I disagree. Politics makes everything worse.

Well yeah you're right on that one.

[Winehole23]

Infrastructure I believe. I heard a day or maybe two ago that there was just so many planes coming in that they couldn't get them all safely on the ground. Only one small airport. Here's a little bit about it...I believe it too. I think I said as much.

[Winehole23]

Well yeah you're right on that one.Wish I wasn't.

[spursncowboys]

For a country of 10,000,000, that's roughly a loss of 2% of their population.

That would be the equivalent to the Houston metropolitan area disappearing from the face of Texas and everyone in the city with it. And then some.

I'm amazed at SnC's complete detachment from reality.

Oh wait, no, that's what passes for daily posting around here.

You're seriously arguing about this? You have no decency. None.

I am amazed at what you believe decency to be. I don't think you or family members will deploy there. What exactly are you doing? Furthermore what statement exactly do you consider indecent? Also fuck you for assuming you know anything about what I think. FWIW I have given a large amount, of my tithe, to Red Cross. That's my money asshole.

[George Gervin's Afro]

I am amazed at what you believe decency to be. I don't think you or family members will deploy there. What exactly are you doing? Furthermore what statement exactly do you consider indecent? Also fuck you for assuming you know anything about what I think. FWIW I have given a large amount, of my tithe, to Red Cross. That's my money asshole.

you do this all of the time when it comes to obama. funny how you don't like people doing it to you.

[spursncowboys]

Do you know anything about Haiti, SnC?
Here comes the professor. Let me guess, you know Haiti because of some book? What the fuck are you talking about? You are the biggest blowhard winehole. You use stupid cliches and make no stands for anything. Oh wow the govt. is hypocrites. Wow, thanks cpt obvious.

[spursncowboys]

By any standard, this is a natural disaster of world historical dimensions in our own backyard, and you're twitting basic, objective, unassailable facts about it because they came from a source you perceive to be left of center.

How petty and sad.
You do that all the time. You are assuming alot. My comment was pointed towards you going to npr. You going to huffpos and npr to get most of your information, yes I find that insightful. Especially going by your slanted stories you post.

[George Gervin's Afro]

You do that all the time. You are assuming alot. My comment was pointed towards you going to npr. You going to huffpos and npr to get most of your information, yes I find that insightful. Especially going by your slanted stories you post.

So are you going to stop assuming people's motives now? or will you just look like a hypocrite and keep doing it? I'll remind you everytime you assume someone's motives with your own words. how's that?

[spursncowboys]

God damn, SnC, where's your fucking heart? Did you get hungry and eat it for a snack?
Why say that. Show me what post would make you write that? Especially after you wanting to give countries away to terrorists, dictators, and communists. I would also love to know what you have personally done for haitians and how it has helped. Then tell me when you plan on going there to further your assistance.

[spursncowboys]

Part 2: What We Should Not Ask Government to Do and Why


4. Based on the rule of rational choice, government should not undertake in disasters those activities for which the benefits do not outweigh the costs – activities like getting supplies to victims and rebuilding disaster-stricken communities.

Government’s poor performance in disaster relief is best explained not by reference to venal and/or incompetent officials but instead by the centralized nature of government and the incentives that accompany government decision-making.
Economic analysis of the dismal record of federal, state, and local agencies in disasters like Hurricane Katrina suggests that part of our disappointment is an inevitable result of expecting government to perform functions for which it is ill-suited. Public choice economists have identified key factors that explain why government cannot – and, perhaps, should not be expected to – perform well the growing list of relief and rebuilding tasks it has been assigned over the last century:
Centralized institutions like governments cannot efficiently gather, process, and act upon the widely dispersed, localized information that is key to disaster response.
Government’s difficulty harnessing knowledge is exacerbated by bureaucratic institutional structure.
Government lacks an effective feedback mechanism for evaluating whether their disaster relief efforts are succeeding in meeting the needs of disaster victims.
The incentives that face managers and employees in government agencies reduce effectiveness in disaster response.
Government attempts to shelter people from disaster or to ameliorate their losses afterwards create moral hazards and perverse outcomes.
Government disaster-relief programs are prone to unintended consequences.
5. Government agencies have difficulty providing for people’s wants and needs in disaster because they are unable to overcome what economist Friedrich von Hayek famously identified as the knowledge problem – that “. . . knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess . . . . “(Hayek, 519-20)
Centralized disaster response thus faces two significant obstacles:
The difficulties of gathering and communicating the fragmented, chaotic, and dispersed information from the disaster-stricken area to those responsible for responding.
People who are familiar with the local conditions, needs, and available resources will not be involved in the decision-making. (Hayek, 521-24)
Economists Russell Sobel and Peter Leeson of the non-profit Mercatus Center at George Mason University illustrate Hayek’s contention that centralized direction cannot overcome the knowledge problem as they describe FEMA relief and recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
Case Study:

FEMA Failure – More Than Bad Leadership

“. . . Information is fragmented, diverse, and often contained in inarticulate forms, held separately and locally by the many individuals who compose society. . . . [T]he foremost obstacle that every effort at social coordination must overcome is somehow tapping into this dispersed information and processing it in forms that individuals can use to mutually achieve their ends.


. . . We argue that natural disaster management is no different in this regard than coordinating individuals in ‘normal’ economic contexts. Following a natural disaster there are ‘relief demanders’ – individuals who desperately need disaster relief supplies, including evacuation, food, shelter, medical attention, etc. On the other side, there are ‘relief suppliers’ – individuals ready and willing to bring their supplies and expertise to bear on the needs of relief demanders. On both sides of this ‘market’ information is decentralized, local, and often inarticulate. Relief demanders know when relief is needed, what they need, and in what quantities, but not necessarily who has the relief supplies they require or how to obtain them. Similarly, relief suppliers know what relief supplies they have and how they can help but may be largely unaware of whether relief is required and, if it is, what is needed, by whom, in what locations and quantities. (pp. 2-3)


. . . When government substitutes central planning for markets, essential information is generated in an untimely fashion, generated inaccurately, or not generated at all. Because of this, central planning cannot effectively coordinate decision making among numerous and dispersed individuals with different endowments, wants and needs.


. . . There is no reason to think that FEMA, or any other government agency charged with FEMA’s task, is immune to the information problem.

. . . Our finding that an inability to overcome the information problem is the root cause of government’s failure to effectively manage natural disaster relief casts doubt on recent explanations of FEMA’s failure following Hurricane Katrina. One strand of argument, for example, suggests that an unfortunate succession of ‘bad directors,’ culminating in the leadership of former FEMA director Michael Brown, is the reason for this failure. Our analysis suggests that although incompetent directorship may exacerbate government’s inability to effectively manage natural disasters, it is of subsidiary importance to Hayek’s knowledge problem. . . . Even the most benevolent and effective of directors cannot overcome this problem, which stems from inherent organization of government management, which is centralized.


. . . [B]ad leadership does not help, but neither does it explain the core failure of the system. Replacing Stalin with Mother Theresa or Albert Einstein would have been no more help for the Soviet economy than replacing Michael Brown or the current FEMA director with one of these individuals would be.”

(Sobel &Leeson, “The Use of Knowledge,” 2, 3, 21-23)


The United States is one of many economies that have achieved high levels of well-being by choosing not to rely on central planning. We have created a system that incorporates Hayek’s insight – government is inherently incapable (not unwilling) of overcoming the obstacle of dispersed economic information. Logically, we should also recognize that the knowledge problem that restricts government effectiveness in normal times does not disappear in crisis. Instead, it escalates.
Beyond the obvious difficulties imposed by damage to transportation and communication infrastructure, disasters exacerbate the knowledge problem by further fragmenting information. Additionally, disaster conditions vary considerably from locality to locality, increasing the volume of critical information.

6. Government’s inability to effectively harness knowledge and information is further exacerbated by bureaucratic institutional structure.

Bureaucratic structures are characterized by detailed procedures, strict protocols, and line-of-command decision-making.
Nobel laureate Gordon Tullock reasoned that bureaucracy is an effective (some would argue, necessary) mechanism for centrally-directed institutions where people’s choices are not constrained by competition for profit, as they would be in a market.
One of the problems inherent in carrying out government policies is to organize subordinates so that they will behave as their superiors want them to behave – that is, by contributing to the goal that has been identified through the political process. Bureaucratic structures create incentives for employees to contribute: benefits accrue to those who follow procedures and protocols and costs are borne by those who do not.
While the bureaucratic incentive structure may, indeed, be necessary to the functioning of government, it is a cumbersome method of dealing with the knowledge problem and – as was clearly evident during Hurricane Katrina – inevitably slows disaster response.
Case Study – The Knowledge Wedge:

Note to FEMA – Turn on the TV!

“From the view of political actors charged with relieving disaster, there is no disaster to respond to until the President, who is reached in the final stage of the bureaucratic procedure, has officially declared as much. This is true even if a disaster requiring assistance has already struck; the disaster is readily acknowledged and visible in the media, etc. Unavoidable bureaucracy inherent to government management creates a separation between what might be called ‘private knowledge’ of disaster and ‘political knowledge’ of the same disaster.


This bureaucracy-created ‘knowledge wedge’ severely limits the goals that can be successfully achieved using government. . . . The more monumental the task in terms of coordination, the greater the problem the knowledge wedge that bureaucracy generates becomes, and thus the less likely government is to effectively complete the task. Since . . . the coordination problem to be solved increases as the division of knowledge increases, this means that for endeavors in which information is more fragmented and localized, such as natural disaster relief management . . . government is an increasingly less effective tool to accomplish the goal.


The bureaucracy-created ‘knowledge wedge’ . . . explains why, though the citizens of New Orleans, the media, and countless others were aware of the impending and eventual disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, key government . . . figures were not . . . . The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, for example, did not declare Hurricane Katrina an ‘incident of national significance’ until 36 hours after it made landfall . . . despite the fact [that] . . . two days before Katrina’s arrival the National Hurricane Center predicted Katrina would hit the Gulf Coast.


. . . As a useful point of comparison, contrast the government’s ability to learn about disaster with the private sector’s information . . . . ‘The private-sector planning began before Katrina hit. Home Depot’s ‘war room’ had transferred high-demand items – generators, flashlights, batteries and lumber – to distribution areas surrounding the strike area. Phone companies readied mobile cell towers and sent in generators and fuel. Insurers flew in special teams and set up hotlines to process claims.” (Sobel and Leeson “The Use of Knowledge. . . ”7-9)


7. The political process lacks an effective feedback loop from victims to the decision-makers responsible for allocating resources in a disaster.

The information necessary to determine which programs are working, which are not, and what other resource uses would be valuable is not communicated directly from consumer (disaster victims) to supplier (government). Instead, decision-makers have only the (insufficient and mostly incomplete) information that comes to them through the political process.
While we might reasonably expect that government decision-makers have good information about the costs of the programs they create, it is hard to imagine how they could be expected to have accurate knowledge of the benefits or of the potential benefits of alternatives; information that is communicated by price in the private sector.
The results of government agencies facing neither profit nor loss from their allocation of resources are the all-too-familiar stories of ineptitude that disaster relief spawns.
Sample Illustrations: No Feedback
It Seemed Like A Good Idea At the Time

Gulf Coast relief fiascos in 2005 exemplified the problems government agencies face because of inadequate knowledge and ineffective feedback – problems that refuse to subside in the face of well-meaning compassion. Consider, for example, FEMA’s well-intentioned effort to provide temporary housing for the homeless. It seemed like a good idea to move them outside the devastated area. It resulted in trailer parks that went “virtually unused.”

“FEMA spent $1.3 billion on 95,000 trailers for hurricane victims, and in some cases $38,000 per lot to make parks trailer ready – double the cost of the trailers themselves. Because FEMA chose to locate the trailers in remote places, away from cities and jobs, FEMA . . . [also planned] to spend millions to cook meals and provide bus service and security for trailer parks. In the not-too-distant future, FEMA will turn around and pay yet again to tear the parks down. FEMA’s incredible misallocation carries little penalty or consequence for FEMA decision makers . . . . In fact, FEMA’s failure was rewarded with billions of additional dollars in funding for the agency’s continued work.” (Sobel & Leeson, “The Use of Knowledge . . .,” 19-20)

Sometimes, it does not take rocket science to figure out what disaster victims need – ice after a hurricane on the Gulf Coast in August, for example. Just knowing “what” however, does not solve the allocation problem. The feedback necessary for the seemingly simple task of getting ice to New Orleans did not happen. Though these failures seem funny after the fact; at the time, it was simply a waste of resources and a missed opportunity to help victims.


“FEMA ordered 182 million pounds of ice to be delivered to stranded families and aid workers. Yet some of the ice ended up in Portland, Maine, more than 1,500 miles away from the disaster area. The cost of shipping and storing the 200-plus truckloads of the Portland-bound ice was $275,000.

. . . NBC News reported that it had found trucks full of ice in . . . Maryland, Missouri, Georgia, and Tennessee. Some of the trucks had been driving and/or sitting idle with their full loads for two weeks.
. . . A truckload of ice even ended up at the Reid park Zoo in Tucson, Arizona. The driver of the ice truck got so many conflicting commands from government relief officials that he ended up traveling through 22 states without ever delivering a single bag of ice to a hurricane victim. Instead, he ended up donating it to the Tucson zoo to be enjoyed by the polar bears.” (Sobel & Leeson, “Flirting . . .” 5)



While it is certainly true that private firms also make mistakes, the key point is that they bear a cost for their mistakes, and FEMA does not. Having to “donate” misallocated ice to polar bears would reduce profits for a private supplier and that is a strong incentive to improve procedures. FEMA officials face no such incentive.

It bears repeating here that these scenarios cannot be explained away by laughing at officials’ “stupidity” or lack of “effort.” Even efforts to learn from past mistakes are often doomed to ludicrous failure by the lack of feedback and the ever-changing specifics of time, place, and event. Look at what happened when Florida Emergency Management officials tried to learn from Hurricane Katrina, determined not to get caught without ice “next time.”

“Minneola – Need some ice for that big Super Bowl party? How about some frozen daiquiris? Or maybe you just miss the ice and snow from up North.
Whatever the case, here’s your hookup.
The small Lake County city is looking for ways to use nearly 600,000 pounds of ice cubes – 15 truckloads in all – to be delivered . . . by the state Division of Emergency Management. The chilly delivery is part of a colossal effort to get rid of nearly $2 million in relief supplies . . . .
. . . Altogether, the state is storing about 225 truckloads, or a total of 9 million pounds, of bagged ice cubes in two large warehouses . . . . The glacier-sized supply was left over from relief efforts after Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
Emergency officials held onto the unused ice, expecting a busy hurricane season last year. That never happened.
The cost of keeping almost 5,000 pallets of bagged ice in cold storage is about $90,000 a month.” (Sargent)

8. As disaster response extends beyond immediate rescue and relief, incentives for both elected and appointed government workers result in increasingly poor resource use.

Public choice theory, the application of economic reasoning tools to political decision-making, teaches us that government disaster-relief activities are prone to serve the wants and needs of politicians rather than those of disaster victims.
The key insight of public choice theory is that elected decision-makers’ pursuit of self-interest is dependent upon their ability to gain and remain in office.
Regardless of how altruistic or depraved a politician’s self-interest, he cannot pursue it in the political arena unless he is in office. This reality creates strong incentives for politicians to be most responsive to those individuals and groups with the greatest ability to affect their political tenure. Thus, when government relief efforts extend beyond the immediate emergency, they tend to be politically allocated.
Unelected government employees also face incentives that frustrate effective disaster response. Because they are not motivated by profit – their civil service salaries are unaffected by any calculation of the amount and effectiveness of the assistance they provide – they have little incentive to respond effectively and efficiently to the needs of disaster victims.
It is important that the analysis of incentives not be read as primarily an indictment of government workers’ character.
Loyal, hardworking, caring employees know that they are likely to be commended for carefully following and documenting procedures and criticized for taking risks – incentives arguably ill-suited to disaster conditions.
On the other hand, employees know that they risk reprimand for skipping steps, abandoning procedures, and trying something new and different, despite the urgency of abnormal conditions.
Accountability and the close-scrutiny and second-guessing to which public agencies are subject make them prone to “type two” errors, errors that result from being overly cautious.
Case Study: Perverse Incentives

FEMA and Katrina: A Comedy of (Type 1 or Type 2?) Errors

“Economists distinguish between two types of policy mistakes: ‘type-one’ and ‘type-two’ errors. Type-one errors are mistakes that result from not being cautious enough. . . . Type-two errors, on the other hand, are mistakes that result from being too cautious. . . . [P]ublic choice theory informs us that government agencies like . . . FEMA are overly prone to commit type-two errors.


. . . Both type-one and type-two errors can result in injuries or harm to the public. However, the visibility and public backlash are likely larger for type-one errors. . . .[I]f a disaster is declared and FEMA jumps the gun by getting involved immediately, it may commit a type-one error. Because type-one errors are overt mistakes, they are highly visible and are therefore accompanied by a higher likelihood of admonishments from citizens, the press, and possibly, other government agencies.


Suppose, for example, that FEMA allows rescue workers to enter a disaster zone and those workers get hurt. FEMA could be blamed for letting them in prematurely. Thus, bureaucratic hesitancy has always been an operational assumption of FEMA. Indeed, as the Senate report points out, ‘FEMA has a longstanding policy of not putting its emergency responders in the path of a storm so that they will not be in need of rescue themselves.’


Type-two errors, in contrast, are less visible, and thus less likely to result in admonishment. . . . If FEMA waits too long to enter a disaster zone, it may be blamed for acting too slowly as it was in the case of Katrina. But that blame is likely to be less than what FEMA might receive if it entered a disaster zone immediately, before a plan was worked out, and consequently bungled its relief effort in a more overt fashion. FEMA . . . has an incentive to delay action even if more disaster victims are harmed by its not entering than would be harmed if it entered prematurely. Victims lost before FEMA enters because it delays action are less obviously linked to FEMA’s lack of action.”

(Sobel &b Leeson, “Flirting . . . “ 6-7)

Additionally, some of the ineptitude and escalating cost of government relief programs can be explained by the incentives associated with what the late Nobel laureate Milton Friedman famously called the “other people’s money” syndrome.
Friedman identified four categories of spending, noting that the incentive to get value for money is very high when you spend your own money on yourself, but that it falls when you spend your own money on someone else or especially when you are spending other people’s money on someone else. (See appendix 1 following this lesson: “The Other People’s Money Syndrome,” for Friedman’s four categories of spending and how they help us to understand government inefficiency in the wake of disaster.)

9. Government programs to shelter people from disaster or to help victims afterwards tend to be characterized by escalating costs because they create moral hazards and perverse “Good Samaritan” effects.

A moral hazard exists when people are shielded from the full costs of risk, thereby creating an incentive for them to engage in more risk-taking behavior. While moral hazards occur in both the private and the public sector, they are more likely to persist in public sector programs.
Insurance is the classic example of an industry in the private sector that is affected by moral hazards. At the margin, insurance creates incentives for people to be less careful because their losses are covered by insurance.
However, because they are in business to make profit, private insurance companies are well aware of moral hazard. They incorporate their awareness in rate calculations and in pre-requisites for coverage – smoke detectors as a condition for home-owners insurance, for example.
Government programs do not have the incentive of profit, so there is no incentive to mitigate moral hazards. Government-funded disaster insurance programs, for example, continue to experience escalating real costs as a result of their inability to discourage building in disaster-prone areas of the country.
The “Good Samaritan” paradox refers to the distortion in decision-making that occurs when people come to expect generous disaster assistance.
The intention of assistance is to help people get through an unexpected tough time and regain their former independence. The perverse outcome of institutionalizing ongoing government disaster relief is to increase the number of people who make choices knowing that the availability of government assistance reduces their risk of loss.

Sample Illustrations - Moral Hazards & Good Samaritan Effects


#1 – Relief Encourages Risky Behavior

In 1998 a team of American Geophysical Union (AGU) researchers investigating the dramatic rise in U.S. disaster relief costs from 1970 – 1998, were startled to find that Americans were actually moving into regions at high risk for natural disasters.


“States most affected by the costs of hurricanes (Florida, North Carolina, and Texas) and earthquakes (California and Washington) show the largest increase in both population and revenue. More people are moving into coastal areas that are vulnerable to natural hazards – particularly earthquakes on the west coast and hurricanes on the east coast.” (van der Vink, 553)


Two important factors that researchers noted in concluding that people were not moving out of ignorance were that: 1) there had been no significant change in the number or intensity of the weather phenomena producing disasters, and 2) it was well known throughout the U.S. that hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and floods generally occur where we would expect them to occur – on barrier islands, flood plains, hurricane coasts, and fault zones.

#2 – The Good Samaritan Paradox: Federal Flood Insurance

In 1968, Congress created the NFIP or National Flood Insurance Program for homeowners living in river flood plains and flood-prone coastal regions. The programs’ goals were: 1) to reduce the amount of flood-disaster relief the federal government was paying by substituting an insurance program, and 2) to make a concentrated effort to encourage future development in other than flood-prone areas.


In the summer of 1993, serious summer flooding devastated the midwestern United States. By that time, 2 ½ million NFIP policies had been sold, a total of $200 billion of insurance, but the bill for flood relief was not covered by insurance. Writing in Regulation Magazine a year after the floods, Sheldon Richmond explained the paradox faced by the Good Samaritan American taxpayers.


“Federal coverage is voluntary, and only 13 percent of eligible property owners [were] . . . covered. People forgo coverage either because they are fatalists or because they are counting on federal relief anyway. [emphasis added] In past years the federal government has made relief payments to property owners without insurance . . . People who did not have flood insurance when the Midwestern rivers flooded can still get money from FEMA’s general fund . . . as long as they buy a NFIP policy. In effect, they get insurance after the fact.


. . . [M]ore than a third of total payouts have gone to 3 percent of all claimants, so-called ‘repetitive loss’ cases, since the policy allows for multiple claims without an increase in premium. Most of the money has gone to owners of beachfront homes, not to residents in riverfront areas.


. . . Since there is private insurance for other risks, one naturally wonders why a federal flood insurance program is needed at all. Federal officials and the insurance industry give the stock answer that floods are not an insurable risk, which presumably means premiums would be prohibitively expensive if not infinite. . . . [I]f an activity is so expensive that private insurers won’t underwrite it or will insist on very high premiums, that is market information that ought to be heeded . . . Private insurers would have no incentive to understate the risk. But bureaucrats have such an incentive. The bureaucrats do not risk their own money, and their agency can’t go out of business. The lower the premium, the more people will buy their policy and the bigger and more prestigious the program will be. But the lower premium encourages more people to locate in dangerous areas, exposes more assets to risk, and increases the economic loss from natural disasters.” (Richmam)
10. Disaster-relief windfalls are associated with increases in corruption.

Recent studies by development economists have established the relationship between natural-resource and foreign-aid windfalls and increases in corruption. Disaster relief creates similar windfall conditions and similar increases in corruption.
Intrigued by this relationship, University of West Virginia economists Peter Leeson and Russell Sobel studied the effect of FEMA-provided disaster relief on public corruption in the United States. They found a positive relationship between the amount of FEMA disaster relief received and public corruption in the state.
Defining corruption as “political officials’ abuse of public authority for private gain,” the researchers used data from the Department of Justice on corruption-related federal criminal convictions per state from 1990-99.
They found that “. . . [An] additional $1 per capita in average annual FEMA relief is associated with a 1.9 percent increase in public corruption in the average state.Alternatively, moving from a state that has experienced no natural disasters and received no FEMA relief to the average state in our sample increases public corruption 17 percent.”(Sobel & Leeson, Weathering . . . , 16)

Disaster Relief and Corruption

“Between 1990 and 2002 America convicted more than 10,000 public officials of corruption-related crimes. The distribution of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, however, was far from even. America as a whole averaged four corruption-related convictions per 100,000 residents. Mississippi, Florida, and South Dakota averaged 7.5. Utah, Arizona, and Nebraska, on the other hand, had less than half the U.S. average.


Over the same period, 599 natural disasters struck America. Like with corruption, these too were unevenly distributed. Oddly, though, the geography of natural disasters maps the geography of corruption extremely well. Fifty-six of these natural disasters occurred in Mississippi, Florida, and South Dakota. Only 13, however, occurred in Utah, Arizona, and Nebraska.


The positive connection between public corruption and natural disasters holds throughout America. . . .The relationship is clearly positive: states hit by more natural disasters are more corrupt.


. . . Disaster relief windfalls open up new opportunities for bribery, for instance by privileging private vendors charged with administering post-disaster supplies in return for illegal side payments. . . . Disaster relief windfalls also create new opportunities for public officials in charge of disaster relief funds to skim incoming resources for themselves or divert them to their friends. The chaotic and confused atmosphere typically created in the wake of a major natural disaster facilitates public officials’ ability to do this.” (Sobel & Leeson, “Weathering . . . “ 1-3)

(Importantly, Sobel and Leeson are not comparing public corruption to private fraud or denying that fraud in the private sector is absent during disaster. Nor are they arguing that public corruption is inevitably associated with government spending. The important variable in their study is the windfall of FEMA relief.
The researchers also studied the relationship between corruption and changes in non-FEMA related state and federal government spending and found no significant increases in corruption.)
11. Government disaster-relief efforts are prone to unintended consequences. Just because a program is well-intentioned does not guarantee that it will produce the desired outcomes.

Disorganization, policy changes, and conflicting policies create uncertainty, which discourages private and commercial recovery efforts.
Well-intentioned government-financed assistance that persists beyond the immediate emergency hampers private and commercial recovery efforts. Once the immediate crisis point of a disaster has passed and basic human needs such as food and shelter are being met, government provision of goods tends to slow down recovery.
Sample Illustrations: “Signal Noise”

#1: When Regulation Gets in the Way of Relief

A year and more after Katrina, the vast majority of Americans remain dissatisfied with the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent snail-paced recovery. Emily Chamlee-Wright, economics professor at Beloit College, and Daniel Rothschild, Associate Director of the Global Prosperity Initiative, proposed the explanation that government disaster policies undermine community recovery. “Disastrous Uncertainty,” concludes that when communities fail to rebound, the problem may be that government is doing too much, rather than not enough. They argue that rebuilding is likely to be more rapid and sustainable if civil society, rather than government, takes the lead. Their study focuses on the “signals” that guide decision-makers in civil and commercial society and they contend that government intrusion slows community disaster recovery by introducing significant “signal noise.”


“After the storm, many parents faced the daunting task of navigating the system of relief services and beginning the demolition process while caring for young children. The temperatures were high, stress levels were higher, and the lines were long. But professional childcare was in short supply. Some daycare providers did what they could to open their doors to disaster victims in the weeks and months that followed, but state regulators fined them for failure to comply with child-teacher ratios and other requirements.

The parents sent a clear signal – a demand for much needed, safe, and affordable childcare. Childcare professionals easily and correctly read their signal. The regulatory environment, which was not crafted for a post-disaster context, caused signal noise that prevented childcare professionals from meeting this need.” (Chamleee-Wright, 14)


#2: The “FEMA Economy”

In the wake of disaster, the government has a key role to play in re-establishing and enforcing the rules of the game that minimize signal noise and allow a robust response to the disaster by civil and commercial society. By ensuring private property rights and enforcing contracts, for example, the process by which property owners discover the new value of their homes and businesses can unfold swiftly. To this end, it is important for governments to provide reliable police protection and courts. But when the government gets in the business of providing the goods and services ordinarily provided through markets – such as trailers and extended unemployment compensation – well-intentioned policies can create significant signal noise and thereby slow recovery. In this lies a paradox: government policies designed to help may actually harm the intended beneficiaries.


The government’s provision of goods and services long after immediate needs have passed creates what one New Orleanian referred to as a “FEMA economy.”


“. . . .For example, many businesses trying to reopen have found it difficult to attract employees. In part, this is due to the fact that many people simply haven’t returned to the affected region. But the repeated extension of unemployment benefits has exacerbated this problem: despite the availability of jobs and the need for employees, the federal government continues to pay people not to work. Further, the premium wage that government relief agencies pay low-skilled workers crowds out private employers from the labor market, stunting the speed of recovery. Service-based companies find the labor shortages particularly daunting as they attempt to bring operations back on line. As one business owner noted, ‘You’re competing with FEMA; you’re competing with everybody. The contractors that are doing debris pick up and stuff, they are paying big bucks. They are paying $12 [to $15] an hour to stand behind a truck with a little [“stop”] sign.’”

According to a study released in February 2006, two-thirds of firms in the affected region had trouble recruiting workers, and media accounts affirm the recruitment woes of employers. And yet in March 2006, Congress extended unemployment benefits for another thirteen weeks beyond the twenty-six weeks of unemployment benefits authorized by the Stafford Act. (Chamleee-Wright, 15-17)

The $12-$15/hr. from FEMA contractors left fast food restaurants like Burger King and Popeye’s Chicken scrambling for workers. Wages jumped more than 50% from the federal minimum wage of $5.15 to more than $8/hr. with annual signing bonuses of $6000, and owners were still scrambling. Glen Helton, president and CEO of Strategic Restaurant Acquisition Corp. lamented his inability to reopen many of the fifty-four Burger Kind stores his company owns in New Orleans. Not only was much of his former workforce unable to return home, but many who did found other options. “To make matters worse, competition has exploded for the unskilled and low-skilled workers favored by the fast-food industry. Every employer operating in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is chasing after the same pool of workers, he said. ‘Now the job market includes anybody doing relief work at $15 an hour. ... Everyone is looking for general laborers, and they are drawing from our normal work force’ . . .” (Darcé)


While many recognize the benefits of government assistance, it does seem that it is possible to have too much of a good thing:


“To some extent, these consequences may be unavoidable. To the extent that swift debris removal and other key public services are deemed top priorities, wage premiums will certainly facilitate the process. But the longer FEMA workers stay, and the more relief work is treated as a public works project rather than the short-term provision of an essential service, the longer these distortions will persist. As one Mississippi resident observed, “There’s no reason for a business to open up that provides any kind of food service if right down the street you get food [for free] . . . . It was necessary for [government] help to be scaled down so our businesses could come back in, start giving us a tax base, start giving these people an incentive to get a job, to work to get back to normal.” (Chamleee-Wright, 15-17)
Conclusion

Government ineptitude during natural disasters may be good fodder for comedians and radio talk-show hosts, but the pertinent lesson is more about the need to adjust our expectations than the need for “better” government. Throughout the 20th century, we demanded that government take on more and more responsibility for citizens’ well-being with relatively little consideration of whether or not political institutions are inherently capable of meeting the lengthening list of expectations. The tendency to think that big problems – like natural catastrophes – can best be dealt with by big institutions, like government, is understandable. Persisting in that belief in the face of continuing evidence to the contrary is not. If we expect governments to perform functions for which they do not have the necessary knowledge, incentives, and mechanisms, we not only invite disappointment, but risk undermining their ability to perform the vital tasks for which they were created: restoring civil order, maintaining the rule of law, and providing those few public goods necessary for other economic and social institutions to operate.

Lessons 2 and 3 have given us a framework for a “division of labor” between our political and economic institutions in responding to natural catastrophes. However, sitting back and letting markets and governments do their jobs does not satisfy our personal desire to do “something” when disaster strikes. The next lesson turns from the big picture of institutional response to the human desire to help others. How can we, as individuals, best reach out to disaster victims in ways that not only satisfy our emotional needs but also the real needs of victims? Lesson 4, “When Disaster Strikes, What Can We Do?” examines the institutional dynamics of charitable giving.

http://www.fte.org/disasters/index.php?page=lesson3

[spursncowboys]

Appendix 1: “Other People’s Money”

In 1979, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman and his noted-economist wife, Rose, published their best-seller, Free to Choose, containing what has become recognized as a classic analysis of the incentive problems associated with government spending. Below is an excerpt of their explanation of the perverse incentives that face people spending other people’s money – the “OPM Syndrome.” As you read this excerpt, mentally substitute “disaster relief programs” where they refer to “welfare.” Their insight is as useful in our contemporary consideration of the role of government in disasters, as it was when written in the context of welfare reform three decades ago.

“When you spend, you may spend your own money or someone else’s; and you may spend for the benefit of yourself or someone else. Combining these two pairs of alternatives gives four possibilities summarized in the following simple table:


YOU ARE THE SPENDER

On Whom Spent
Whose Money You Someone Else
Yours I II
Someone Else's III IV

Category I in the table refers to your spending your own money on yourself. You shop in a supermarket, for example. You clearly have a strong incentive both to economize and to get as much value as you can for each dollar you do spend.


Category II refers to your spending your own money on someone else. You shop for Christmas or birthday presents. You have the same incentive to economize as in Category I but not the same incentive to get full value for your money, at least as judged by the tastes of the recipient. You will, of course, want to get something the recipient will like – provided that it also makes the right impression and does not take too much time and effort. (If, indeed, your main objective were to enable the recipient to get as much value as possible per dollar, you would give him cash, converting your Category II spending to Category I spending by him.)


Category III refers to your spending someone else’s money on yourself – lunching on an expense account, for instance. You have no strong incentive to keep down the cost of the lunch, but you do have a strong incentive to get your money’s worth.


Category IV refers to your spending someone else’s money on still another person. You are paying for someone else’s lunch out of an expense account. You have little incentive either to economize or to try to get your guest the lunch that he will value most highly. However, if you are having lunch with him, so that the lunch is a mixture of Category III and Category IV, you do have a strong incentive to satisfy your own tastes at the sacrifice of his, if necessary.


[Many government] . . . programs fall into either Category III – for example, Social Security, which involves cash payments that the recipient is free to spend as he may wish; or Category IV – for example, public housing; except that even Category IV programs share one feature of Category III, namely, that the bureaucrats administering the program partake of the lunch; and all Category III programs have bureaucrats among their recipients.


. . . Legislators vote to spend someone else’s money. The voters who elect the legislators are in one sense voting to spend their own money on themselves, but not in the direct sense of Category I spending. The connection between the taxes any individual pays and the spending he votes for is exceedingly loose. In practice, voters, like legislators, are inclined to regard someone else as paying for the programs the legislator votes for directly and the voter votes for indirectly. Bureaucrats who administer the programs are also spending someone else’s money. Little wonder that the amount spent explodes.


The bureaucrats spend someone else’s money on someone else. Only human kindness, not the much stronger and more dependable spur of self-interest, assures that they will spend the money in the way most beneficial to the recipients. Hence the wastefulness and ineffectiveness of the spending.


But that is not all. The lure of getting someone else’s money is strong. Many, including the bureaucrats administering the programs, will try to get it for themselves rather than have it go to someone else. The temptation to engage in corruption, to cheat, is strong and will not always be resisted or frustrated. People who resist the temptation to cheat will use legitimate means to direct the money to themselves. They will lobby for legislation favorable to themselves, for rules from which they can benefit. The bureaucrats administering the programs will press for better pay and perquisites for themselves – an outcome that larger programs will facilitate.


The attempt by people to divert government expenditures to themselves has two consequences that may not be obvious. First, it explains why so many programs tend to benefit middle- and upper-income groups rather than the poor for who they are supposedly intended. The poor tend to lack not only the skills valued in the market, but also the skills required to be successful in the political scramble for funds. Indeed, their disadvantage in the political market is likely to be greater than in the economic. Once well-meaning reformers who may have helped to get the welfare measure enacted have gone on to their next reform, the poor are left to fend for themselves and they will almost always be overpowered by the groups that have already demonstrated a greater capacity to take advantage of available opportunities.


The second consequence is that the net gain to the recipients of the transfer will be less than the total amount transferred. If $100 of somebody else’s money is up for grabs, it pays to spend up to $100 of your own money to get it. The costs incurred to lobby legislators and regulatory authorities, for contributions to political campaigns, and for myriad other items are a pure waste – harming the taxpayer who pays and benefiting no one. They must be subtracted from the gross transfer to get the net gain – and may, of course, at times exceed the gross transfer, leaving a new loss, not gain.


These consequences of subsidy seeking also help to explain the pressure for more and more spending, more and more programs. The initial measures fail to achieve the objectives of the well-meaning reformers who sponsored them. They conclude that no enough has been done and seek additional programs. They gain as allies both people who envision careers as bureaucrats administering the programs and people who believe that they can tap the money to be spent.


Category IV spending tends also to corrupt the people involved. All such programs put some people in a position to decide what is good for other people. The effect is to instill in the one group a feeling of almost God-like power; in the other, a feeling of childlike dependence. The capacity of the beneficiaries for independence, for making their own decision, atrophies through disuse. In addition to the waste of money, in addition to the failure to achieve the intended objectives, the end result is to rot the moral fabric that holds a decent society together.


Milton and Rose Friedman. Free to Choose. New York: Avon Books, 1979. pp. 116-119.

http://www.fte.org/disasters/index.php?page=lesson3

[TeyshaBlue]

Jesus...they just got hit again.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_earthquake

Hard to fathom why anyone's breath is wasted on politics in the face of catastrophe like this. Of course, some folks will just waste breath as a point of order.

The logistics of this must be hellishly gordian. Honestly..where the hell do you start? Blanket air drops? As for what happens after this is over, if it is ever truly over, I can see a magnificant opportunity for the world, the UN, each nation, to support the building of a nation. This could be a unique opportunity for the planet. Sadly, I don't see that happening.

[spursncowboys]

Jesus...they just got hit again.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_earthquake

Hard to fathom why anyone's breath is wasted on politics in the face of catastrophe like this. Of course, some folks will just waste breath as a point of order.

The logistics of this must be hellishly gordian. Honestly..where the hell do you start? Blanket air drops? As for what happens after this is over, if it is ever truly over, I can see a magnificant opportunity for the world, the UN, each nation, to support the building of a nation. This could be a unique opportunity for the planet. Sadly, I don't see that happening.

[TeyshaBlue]

your point?

[George Gervin's Afro]

your point?

Ask him if he is going to stop doing things to other people that he 'f*cking hates' when people do it to him? I'm curious to hear his answer.

[Cry Havoc]

Requoting what other people said, for some reason.

NPR, hmmmm?

You can swear at me all you want, SnC, but when you denigrate legitimate news sources' reports because they don't jibe with your political affiliation, and accuse someone of knowing something just because they read about it in some book, not to mention calling someone "professor" as an insult... it doesn't piss me off. I pity you. I think it's sad how you can accuse someone of being more educated than you and intend it as a insult.

Most of all though, you bring your political BS into a thread in attempt to defend Rush, and then you accuse others of being political. Although Rush essentially told you not to give money, so I don't know how you can defend him at the same time you claim to be donating.


I am amazed at what you believe decency to be. I don't think you or family members will deploy there. What exactly are you doing? Furthermore what statement exactly do you consider indecent? Also fuck you for assuming you know anything about what I think. FWIW I have given a large amount, of my tithe, to Red Cross. That's my money asshole.

My best friend's wife is Haitian. I've been on the phone with them personally as they've been speaking to people and developing assistance plans with officials at the Haitian Embassy in DC. So, sorry, I guess it's wrong of me to take your attitude and what you said personally.

[Winehole23]

My comment was pointed towards you going to npr. You going to huffpos and npr to get most of your information, yes I find that insightful. Especially going by your slanted stories you post.I seldom post anything from either Huffpo or NPR. It's easily checkable. The search function is your friend.

BTW, what's so slanted about drawing attention to the fact that Haiti lacks water, food, fuel medical supplies and security? You never addressed this.

[Winehole23]

Why say that. Show me what post would make you write that? You twitting me for posting very basic, very uncontroversial reporting (the shortage of water,food, fuel, medical supplies) because the source was NPR. It was chickenshit.


Especially after you wanting to give countries away to terrorists, dictators, and communists.Link?


I would also love to know what you have personally done for haitians and how it has helped. Then tell me when you plan on going there to further your assistance.I donated money to the IRC. I intend to donate for an ongoing basis for awhile. My place of work will also be having a benefit next Tuesday. I'll be working that. It's not very much, admittedly.

[Winehole23]

Here comes the professor. Let me guess, you know Haiti because of some book? Yeah. I've read a couple of books. Got a problem with that?

[Cry Havoc]

Yeah. I've read a couple of books. Got a problem with that?

Well, certainly some book isn't nearly as reputable of a source as a stalwart of journalistic integrity such as Rush or Hannity.

[Winehole23]

Doubtless not.

[Winehole23]

Only elitists read books anymore.

[baseline bum]

Yeah. I've read a couple of books. Got a problem with that?

:lol

[Winehole23]

Real men believe what blogs and talk radio tell them to believe.

[Winehole23]

I get your point that the government sucks at disaster planning, that it creates bureaucracies, perverse incentives and so forth...but your timing couldn't possibly be any worse, SnC.

The effort to alleviate such massive and acute human suffering doesn't really fit in this conversation. Focusing on the inefficiencies and perversities of aid misses the point right now. The point is millions of Haitians literally fighting for their lives b/c of a natural disaster. Doing nothing isn't really an option, IMO.

[Marcus Bryant]

I'm not sure why I should be concerned about spending, say, $20 billion to help the people of Haiti. I'm sure most Americans don't either.

[Winehole23]

There's a time and place for the conversation SnC wants to have about the unintended consequences of aid. Using a natural disaster like this RIGHT NOW to highlight them is chickenshit IMO.

[Winehole23]

I guess the point of the blurb from Free to Choose was a backhanded repudiation of compassion for human misery as political opportunism and the desire to help as arrogant meddling in someone else's life.

As a criticism of the New Deal and Great Society bureaucracies it makes some sense.

As a criticism of aid in the acute phase of disaster response it is just cold-hearted and wrong-headed.

[Cry Havoc]

There's a time and place for the conversation SnC wants to have about the unintended consequences of aid. Using a natural disaster like this RIGHT NOW to highlight them is chickenshit IMO.

He's just detached from reality and has no clue what kind of catastrophe this is.

[Marcus Bryant]

I guess the point of the blurb from Free to Choose was a backhanded repudiation of compassion for human misery as political opportunism and the desire to help as arrogant meddling in someone else's life.

As a criticism of the New Deal and Great Society bureaucracies it makes some sense.

As a criticism of aid in the acute phase of disaster response it is just cold-hearted and wrong-headed.

Free to Choose goes back on the shelf when it comes to deciding which country to invade next, or the MIC in general.

[Winehole23]

No shit.

[Winehole23]

Conservatives need to learn how to pick their battles. Breaking off a few billion to help the people of the poorest country in the Western hemisphere after a natural disaster of epic proportions is not such a battle.This.

[Marcus Bryant]

I'll have to peruse my copy tonight to see if Friedman even touched on it. Probably in the general 'proper role of government is to provide a legal framework and national defense' sense. I don't recall him as ever really mounting a critique of the MIC. Perhaps if he was a politician he'd end up as Ron Paul...regarded as a good fellow on domestic affairs and a 'dangerous pinko commie liberal isolationist loon' on everything else.

[spursncowboys]

He's just detached from reality and has no clue what kind of catastrophe this is.

No dickhead. You are detached. You want other people's money to go help through other people's blood, sweat and tears. If you two want to help so much- go. The airlines will give you a good deal. Then after months of your family not seeing you, I might consider you attached to the situation. Furthermore don't ask others to do that, especially if they are already scheduled on a deployment. You have no idea what I think because, in your attempt to discredit me and villify me, you have assumed everything. I think everything, as far as helping, is good( don't make your contribution minimum WH ) but don't think that to be humane you have to be lock step with a retarded innefficient operating procedure. There should be nothing wrong with asking questions. Some more advice is to not assume I am for or against anything, because Rush L. was taken out of context. Then to attack me and when I ask for an instance I get none but something about rush is classless (like brett favre).



BTW the 82nd unit over there just got back from a deployment.

[spursncowboys]

Free to Choose goes back on the shelf when it comes to deciding which country to invade next, or the MIC in general.Friedman was for the iraq war.

Reporter:What is the biggest risk to the world economy: America's deficits? Energy insecurity? Environment? Terrorism? None of the above?
Milton Friedman: Islamofascism, with terrorism as its weapon.

[rjv]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: David Brooks today in the New York Times is basically saying what I said yesterday and was attacked for, that giving aid money to countries does not help them grow. Here it is right here in the New York Times, and nobody's mad at them. Do I need to read it? Yeah, let me. "On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. This week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Red Cross estimates that between 45,000 and 50,000 people have died. This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It's a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: 'You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.'

If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He's going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths. The first of those truths is that we don't know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not." Oh, my gosh, this is deja vu, except I'm the one that said it. Using our own war on poverty, how much money have we given to the poor in this country, and we still have the same percentages of poor people -- and we're never supposed to examine the results, right? Only the good intentions of the givers!

now he's endorsing communism to prove his point! but rush, i thought socialism is a doomed economic policy! how is it china does not fit into this?


And, of course, the givers are us. Our back pockets are looted by our own government, and the money is redistributed -- and as Mr. Brooks is saying here, there is no upside to this. "In the recent anthology 'What Works in Development?,' a group of economists try to sort out what we've learned. The picture is grim. There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth. There is nearly zero correlation between how a developing economy does one decade and how it does the next. There is no consistently proven way to reduce corruption. Even improving governing institutions doesn't seem to produce the expected results. ... . More than 10,000 organizations perform missions of this sort in Haiti. ...

"The second hard truth is that micro-aid is vital but insufficient. Given the failures of macrodevelopment, aid organizations often focus on microprojects. So we have "more than 10,000 organizations perform[ing] missions of this sort in Haiti." It's exactly what I said: We've got charities on the ground 24/7, 365 in Haiti. By some estimates, Haiti has more nongovernmental organizations per capita than any other place on earth. They are doing the Lord's work, especially these days, but even a blizzard of these efforts does not seem to add up to comprehensive change. Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism." Yeeeees, all the things we pointed out this week: Dictatorships! "But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well.

why stop there rush? why not tell us who put baby doc in power and why? who helped create a ruthless dictatorship?


"Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other. "As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book 'The Central Liberal Truth,' Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized."

the countries have been on separate economic paths since the island was divided into 2 separate colonies after the treaty of ryswick. the french took one colony and turned into a sugar producing slave colony that gave rise to a massive mulatto population in the process. the spanish in turn made the other colony a subsistent agronomy and the white population stayed the dominant majority (and we know where rush is going here as well don't we? this smacks of the midwest floods/katrina analogy he made a few years ago. again the whites fare better than blacks theory).

the domincans and haitians are cultural opposites and there is a deep division between the two nations. presidents such as trujillo and balaguer have committed mass atrocities against the blacks of haiti. when limbaugh mentions the dictators of the domincan republic he fails to mention that they were often the most brutal to haitians!

rush is being more racist here than ever. labeling a mostly catholic nation as voodoo practictioners who can fare no better than the predominantly european based neighboring nation.



"Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10. ... In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism. These programs, like the Harlem Children's Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don't understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don't care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement -- involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance," and none and none of these programs are sponsored by government and certainly not by liberal government.

and this is the greatest irony of all. rush tells us that obama is going to turn this into a political opportunity in the midst of his own attack against government funded aid. he is using this as an oppurtunity to remind us that there should just be charity and nothing else. our governments have no business starting aid programs that just perpetuate poverty.

the fact that in this most desperate time, where the most crucial acts are search and rescues, medical treatment, supplying food and water, getting shelter, getting order reestablished he acts as if it is preposterous to do this through federal aid. as if it is not our nation's duty.

one has to wonder what kind of triage he would run in an ER. ("okay. all republicans with minor lacerations to ER stat!" "put any questionable minority with a spinal cord injury in the hall!" )



it is a truly machiavellan speech that sends a chill up my spine.

[Marcus Bryant]

That's right. I think it was his wife who was opposed to the war.

[Winehole23]

No dickhead. You are detached. You want other people's money to go help through other people's blood, sweat and tears. I guess this bothers you re: the earthquake in Haiti. It doesn't bother me.


If you two want to help so much- go. The airlines will give you a good deal. Then after months of your family not seeing you, I might consider you attached to the situation.Your approval of my opinion means nothing to me. We all do what we can.


but don't think that to be humane you have to be lock step with a retarded innefficient operating procedure.WTF are you talking about?


There should be nothing wrong with asking questions.There isn't. You just don't like the responses you're getting.


Some more advice is to not assume I am for or against anything, because Rush L. was taken out of context. What he said was asinine, regardless. Your own take is even worse IMO.

[spursncowboys]

WH: what bothers me is someone thinking the giving of money makes him humane when it doesn't hurt him in the least. It might as well be pretend money. Also agreeing with someone for using someone elses money doesn't make you compassionate either. Your opinion means nothing. My own take is worse. Really? Which part exactly? You don't even know my opinion.

[Marcus Bryant]

How are we even equating this to 'foreign aid' (as in the long-term programmatic variety)?

Again, of all the things to critique, why this? We just saw a GOP candidate win a US Senate seat in MA on a campaign against mammoth government and someone wants to bitch about this?

Further, Limbaugh doesn't give a shit about the GOP, or "conservatism" in general. He just looks to make a $, or 20 million of them a year, getting people to pay attention to him. If the GOP wins, it's because of him. If it loses, it's because it didn't do what he said. Fairly obvious formula.

I will admit that I am curious as to how he spins the win of a pro-choice RINO as his doing. Not enough to listen to him though.

[Cry Havoc]

No dickhead. You are detached. You want other people's money to go help through other people's blood, sweat and tears. If you two want to help so much- go. The airlines will give you a good deal. Then after months of your family not seeing you, I might consider you attached to the situation. Furthermore don't ask others to do that, especially if they are already scheduled on a deployment. You have no idea what I think because, in your attempt to discredit me and villify me, you have assumed everything. I think everything, as far as helping, is good( don't make your contribution minimum WH ) but don't think that to be humane you have to be lock step with a retarded innefficient operating procedure. There should be nothing wrong with asking questions. Some more advice is to not assume I am for or against anything, because Rush L. was taken out of context. Then to attack me and when I ask for an instance I get none but something about rush is classless (like brett favre).



BTW the 82nd unit over there just got back from a deployment.

So, just to be clear for everyone:

Haitian family: We need water, as we have not had any in a week.

SnC: Sorry, I can't give you water, because my government paid $3 a bottle for it and I disagree with that. I want more a efficient government. So until then, I'm going to ridicule effort to help you and your country full of starving people who are dying of thirst and don't have a single possession to their name.

And, oh yes, keep calling me names, SnC. It really strengthens the context of your argument. But really, I'm done with you. I have no interest in trying to convince an absolute fool of the idiocy of their position. I'd make better progress bashing my head into a concrete wall. As an added bonus, the wall would likely provide better conversation. You would never admit to being wrong about something you care about, so I'm done.

[Winehole23]

WH: what bothers me is someone thinking the giving of money makes him humane when it doesn't hurt him in the least. It might as well be pretend money. Monopoly money would be, ah, far less effective.

Haiti needs help. The state of mind prompting the assistance is neither here nor there.


Also agreeing with someone for using someone elses money doesn't make you compassionate either. Sure. So what? Haiti needs our help.

Resent direct US aid all you want, SnC. It's politically appropriate and it's arguably the humane thing to do. That you're fighting it so hard reveals more about you than it does the help itself. I frankly don't care if the people giving it are hypocrites. The plight of Haiti puts all that in the shade.


My own take is worse. Really? Which part exactly? Your obvious resentment of direct US aid to the poorest country in the New World, after the worst earthquake there in over 200 years.

[spursncowboys]

Whatever winehole. You attack me, and have no actual quote of what i said that you think is so wrong. Everything that you have assumed about my view is wrong.

[Winehole23]

I doubt you have failed to express your own opinion accurately, or that I have misrepresented it, but for the record, would you care to state it for all of us?

Set the record straight SnC.

[spursncowboys]

I doubt you have failed to express your own opinion accurately, or that I have misrepresented it, but for the record, would you care to state it for all of us?

Set the record straight SnC.

Exactly. You assumed everything. YOu went straight to slandering me and demonizing. For what exactly?
FWIW: fuck your record.

[Winehole23]

I criticized you and what you said. Big boys can take it. You just whine. Thanks for clearing that up.

[spursncowboys]

Way to show class. Also all those posts in regards to admitting to being wrong. Why don't you read what you wrote. Maybe the best advice can be from yourself.

[Winehole23]

Way to show class.Sit on a fork and spin. I couldn't care less what you think of me.


Also all those posts in regards to admitting to being wrong. Why don't you read what you wrote. Maybe the best advice can be from yourself.I'm fallible, unlike you.

I don't think you've ever copped to a mistake here, SnC. Not once. Is that because you haven't made any, or are you just too cowardly to admit it when it happens?

[spursncowboys]

Sit on a fork and spin. I couldn't care less what you think of me.

I'm fallible, unlike you.

I don't think you've ever copped to a mistake here, SnC. Not once. Is that because you haven't made any, or are you just too much of a coward to admit it when it happens?

bad memory on your part. When I am wrong, I'll say it. The one I remember off the top of my head was when I said something was a metaphor when it wasn't. You are not admitting mistake here when clearly you slandered my brand and lied about what I wrote and took me out of context.

[Winehole23]

bad memory on your part. When I am wrong, I'll say itI don't recall any such instance. Care to point one out for us?

[Winehole23]

You are not admitting mistake here when clearly you slandered my brand and lied about what I wrote and took me out of context.I don't think I did. You complained about sending "other people's money" to Haiti, did you not?

[Winehole23]

You also cut and pasted a raft of slightly related material suggesting that aid is inefficient and counterproductive. Why did you do so in this thread, if you have "no problem" with aid to Haiti?

[Winehole23]

Seems like you're getting a little bit two faced, now that you've been called out as a callous jerk.

[spursncowboys]

I don't think I did. You complained about sending "other people's money" to Haiti, did you not?

No I complained about people thinking that is compassionate on them. It is not. A govt. cannot be compassionate. Just like a business cannot.

[Cry Havoc]

No dickhead.


Here comes the professor. Let me guess, you know Haiti because of some book? What the fuck are you talking about? You are the biggest blowhard winehole.


NPR huh? Hmmmmmm...Interesting.


FWIW: fuck your record.


That's my money asshole.



Way to show class.

:lmao

[spursncowboys]

Seems like you're getting a little bit two faced, now that you've been called out as a callous jerk.

No. Not at all. I do not worry about what people on a forum think of me. You and cryhavok just assumed you knew what I thought in an attempt to vilify me. I still don't know why. That kind of thing seems callous to me.

[spursncowboys]

:lmao

So how are you attached to the situation in Haiti?

[Winehole23]

I still don't know why.You don't get it. Nothing could be clearer.

[Winehole23]

No I complained about people thinking that is compassionate on them. It is not. A govt. cannot be compassionate. Just like a business cannot.So what?

[spursncowboys]

You also cut and pasted a raft of slightly related material suggesting that aid is inefficient and counterproductive. Why did you do so in this thread, if you have "no problem" with aid to Haiti?

Did you read it. It was pretty good. I left the source. It was of a report on aid for natural disasters. You should have read it. If not all, what I posted would have been educational for you.

[Winehole23]

Aid to Haiti isn't about political posturing or hypocrite do-gooders. It's about helping victims of a natural disaster of historical dimensions in our own back yard.

[Winehole23]

Did you read it. It was pretty good. I left the source. It was of a report on aid for natural disasters. You should have read it. If not all, what I posted would have been educational for you.Yeah, I read it. Comparing disaster aid to Haiti to federal hurricane relief is way off the mark. Swing and a miss, SnC.

[Yonivore]

Aid to Haiti isn't about political posturing or hypocrite do-gooders. It's about helping victims of a natural disaster of historical dimensions in our own back yard.
I think it can be both.

What was it Rahm Emmanuel said? That's right, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

I hope we throw everything we have at providing relief for the Haitian people but, don't think for one minute, the Obama administration isn't calibrating their actions for the most political benefit.

[Marcus Bryant]

Bitching about Haiti relief is like bitching about the White House mess budget. Figure it out.

[Marcus Bryant]

Hey, who pays to vacuum the White House? WHO PAYS?

[Winehole23]

I think it can be both.Sure.


What was it Rahm Emmanuel said? That's right, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

I hope we throw everything we have at providing relief for the Haitian people but, don't think for one minute, the Obama administration isn't calibrating their actions for the most political benefit..Sure. Who cares about that right now? There's plenty of time left for all that.

Meanwhile, millions of Haitians lack water, food, medical care and social order. That's where the focus should be right now, not on petty political bs and the propriety and effectiveness of foreign aid.

[spursncowboys]

Aid to Haiti isn't about political posturing or hypocrite do-gooders. It's about helping victims of a natural disaster of historical dimensions in our own back yard.

I agree. However I wouldn't think to read this from you. Should the only reason we help them is because they are near our borders?

Historically in the United States, disaster response and relief has not been considered the responsibility of government, and most especially not the federal government. People caught in natural calamities turned to family and to community organizations like churches and private charities for support. State and local governments readily engaged in rescue operations and the task of re-establishing and enforcing civil order when necessary, but the federal government maintained a hands-off stance until the early 20th century. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire prompted the first-ever federal allocation of disaster aid. Congress appropriated $2.5 million* in disaster aid – a small gesture compared to modern FEMA response – to cover the cost of food, blankets, tents and other relief supplies requisitioned from West coast Army depots. While President Roosevelt telegraphed California Governor Pardee and San Francisco Mayor Schmitz to express concern and offer “assistance,” the assistance consisted mainly of sending Secretary of Commerce Victor Metcalf to the city to keep the White House informed of developments. Tellingly, Roosevelt declined assistance and donations from abroad, saying that the U.S. had sufficient resources, and he directed offers of domestic assistance from such sources as the city governments of Chicago, Boston, New York, and from John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to go to the Red Cross rather than to the notoriously corrupt San Francisco city government. (Strupp, 18-23)

[Yonivore]

Sure. Who cares?
I just saw the argument polarizing over the two choice and wanted to point out it can be both and, in this case, probably is.

[Winehole23]

@SnC: Haiti may be a basket case, but in significant respects it is our basket case.

And yes, their geographical closeness to the USA has political ramifications we would ignore at the peril of our own standing in the world. We're best situated and best equipped to help.

[Cry Havoc]

So how are you attached to the situation in Haiti?

I"ve stated this twice, in two separate threads. It's not my fault that you're too lazy to read it.

[Winehole23]

BTW, SnC, my heated reply to you had to as much do with your suggestion that my comment about the lack of food, water, medical care and security was "slanted" or otherwise untrustworthy b/c the source was NPR, as it did with your grievously misplaced focus on foreign aid in general and federal disaster aid.

You then followed up with an ad hominem attack suggesting (against all credibility and readily checkable evidence in this forum) that I rely exclusively on NPR and HuffPo for what I post here, and inferentially, that what I posted about Haiti was somehow less than trustworthy.

What was the point of all that, if we are essentially in agreement about the condition of Haiti, and the moral and political necessity of aid? I'd really like to know.

You complain that I ran down your "brand", but you seem to have forgotten you attacked mine first.

[clambake]

can we call you "arianna"?

[Winehole23]

It's a free country, clambake. Call me whatever you want.

[clambake]

It's a free country, clambake. Call me whatever you want.

i thought it went marxist?

[spursncowboys]

BTW, SnC, my heated reply to you had to as much do with your suggestion that my source of information about the lack of food, water, medical care and security was "slanted" or otherwise untrustworthy b/c the source was NPR, as your grievously misplaced focus on foreign aid in general and federal disaster aid.

You then followed up with an ad hominem attack suggesting against all credibility and evidence in this forum, that I rely exclusively on NPR and HuffPo for what I post here, and inferentially, that what I posted on Haiti was less than trustworthy.

What was the point of all that, if we are essentially in agreement about the condition of Haiti, and the moral and political necessity of aid? I'd really like to know.

You complain that I ran down your "brand", but you seem to have forgotten you attacked mine first. I did generalize on your comments. I'm sorry. I do have a problem with the type of stories npr push. It was NPR historically and it was not a shot against that specific story. I will be specific and avoid ad hominem attacks in the future.

[Winehole23]

You tell me, clambake. Hell if I know.

[Winehole23]

I did generalize on your comments. I'm sorry. I do have a problem with the type of stories npr push. It was NPR historically and it was not a shot against that specific story.Contextually, that wasn't too clear, but ok.


I will be specific and avoid ad hominem attacks in the future.Just be specific. The ad hominem didn't bother me so much as that you seemed to be minimizing the reliable, basic reporting on this story. It's hell in Haiti right now. You seemed to be questioning that.

Perhaps I misunderstood you, SnC, but you certainly did yourself no favors by making an offhand comment about the unreliability of NPR, when the information I cited was, and is, COMPLETELY UNDISPUTABLE.

[clambake]

i think his point is thats its always hell in haiti.

the way it should be.

[Winehole23]

That hell isn't entirely of their own making. Haiti had considerable "assistance" in constructing it.

[clambake]

That hell isn't entirely of their own making. Haiti had considerable "assistance" in constructing it.

now you're talking to me, and not him.

he's not complex.


i'm anxiously awaiting his thesis on indonesia.

[Cry Havoc]

now you're talking to me, and not him.

he's not complex.


i'm anxiously awaiting his thesis on indonesia.

"Lots of islands."

[George Gervin's Afro]

I think it can be both.

What was it Rahm Emmanuel said? That's right, "Never let a good crisis go to waste."

I hope we throw everything we have at providing relief for the Haitian people but, don't think for one minute, the Obama administration isn't calibrating their actions for the most political benefit.

:lmao

yoni are forgetting the 9/11 attack ..to then justify the Iraq war..talk about not letting a good crisis go to waste. I don't remember you complaining about it the political benefits war gives the republicans... oh wait you don't care about being intellectually honest or fair..n ever mind.

[TeyshaBlue]

:lmao

yoni are forgetting the 9/11 attack ..to then justify the Iraq war..talk about not letting a good crisis go to waste. I don't remember you complaining about it the political benefits war gives the republicans... oh wait you don't care about being intellectually honest or fair..n ever mind.

9/11 happened in Haiti?

[boutons_deux]

Haiti is Disaster Capitalism. Watch US military invade and occupy Haiti under the pretext of a policing action, when really it's making Haiti safe for US investors and suppliers.

[TeyshaBlue]

Haiti is Disaster Capitalism. Watch US military invade and occupy Haiti under the pretext of a policing action, when really it's making Haiti safe for US investors and suppliers.

Haiti has no oil, boutonsky.

Invade and occupy. Fuck, that's hilarious.




and by hilarious I mean, galactically stupid.

[coyotes_geek]

Haiti is Disaster Capitalism. Watch US military invade and occupy Haiti under the pretext of a policing action, when really it's making Haiti safe for US investors and suppliers.

If Haiti had anything that US investors were interested in, those investors would have been invested there a long, long time ago. And they wouldn't have needed anyone to remove the Haitian government to do it.

[boutons_deux]

The US has already dumped/kidnapped democratically elected Aristide twice because he refused to privatize functioning nationalized industries.

Once the industries were privatized, they were sold to investors, and closed, forcing Haiti to buy stuff from, hmm, companies controlled by the same investors.

eg, flour, cement, hogs, etc.

I expect foreigners will end up controlling water, gas, electricity, telephones, fuel. The increased enslavement of Haiti by foreign capital continues, as it has been since it became an independent country.

No, it's not on the scale of the oil industry, but there will be 10s of $Bs of foreign (taxpayer) aid pouring in, and the foreign corps and capitalists will be there to vacuum it up, just like in Iraq, under the watchful guns of the policing US military and murderous/raping mercenaries.

And just like in Iraq, the contractors will fail to deliver quality work, there will be little serious accounting, $Bs just plain disappear, fraud.

You guys are so fucking naive to think the US actually has any country's best interest in mind other than the US's own best interest.

[Winehole23]

Haiti has no oil, boutonsky.

Invade and occupy. Fuck, that's hilarious.




and by hilarious I mean, galactically stupid.He probably read the Cynthia McKinney thing (http://www.voltairenet.org/article163604.html)on this. I don't know how Haiti could possibly keep such massive reserves of oil ("makes Venezuela look like a glass of water" according to one source), gold and iridium a secret for so long, but (advocatus diaboli, right?) if it were possible to keep it a secret, and the US knew the secret, I have little doubt we'd use that knowledge to our maximum advantage. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are easy for us to push around.

[Winehole23]

If Haiti had anything that US investors were interested in, those investors would have been invested there a long, long time ago. And they wouldn't have needed anyone to remove the Haitian government to do it.True.

[coyotes_geek]

The US has already dumped/kidnapped democratically elected Aristide twice because he refused to privatize functioning nationalized industries.

Once the industries were privatized, they were sold to investors, and closed, forcing Haiti to buy stuff from, hmm, companies controlled by the same investors.

eg, flour, cement, hogs, etc.

I expect foreigners will end up controlling water, gas, electricity, telephones, fuel. The increased enslavement of Haiti by foreign capital continues, as it has been since it became an independent country.

No, it's not on the scale of the oil industry, but there will be 10s of $Bs of foreign (taxpayer) aid pouring in, and the foreign corps and capitalists will be there to vacuum it up, just like in Iraq, under the watchful guns of the policing US military and murderous/raping mercenaries.

And just like in Iraq, the contractors will fail to deliver quality work, there will be little serious accounting, $Bs just plain disappear, fraud.

You guys are so fucking naive to think the US actually has any country's best interest in mind other than the US's own best interest.

$10's of billions? Don't be ridiculous. Haiti's pre-quake GDP was only $7 billion, a figure they're not going to be coming close to any time soon. And the tsunami releif effort didn't even make it to $15 billion. Most of the money flowing in to Haiti will be going to humanitarian efforts, not reconstruction. Sure, there will be a little money to be made by someone to do some reconstruction, but it's not all that much. Especially considering how there are much greener pastures to be found by the investors and corporations in the affluent nations of the globe as those nations' governments spend hundreds, if not thousands, times the money going to Haiti trying to stimulate their own economies. So you'll have a select few making some bucks off some reconstruction, but once the relief funds dry up they'll be gone. They'll be gone because there's no money to be made in Haiti. It's a poor nation. To suggest that there is some great untapped profit potential in that nation, great enough to motivate the U.S. into whatever kind of takeover you think is going on, is ridiculous. If such a potential existed, it would have been tapped by someone a long time ago and Haiti wouldn't be the poverty stricken nation that they are.

[Cry Havoc]

The US has already dumped/kidnapped democratically elected Aristide twice because he refused to privatize functioning nationalized industries.

Once the industries were privatized, they were sold to investors, and closed, forcing Haiti to buy stuff from, hmm, companies controlled by the same investors.

eg, flour, cement, hogs, etc.

I expect foreigners will end up controlling water, gas, electricity, telephones, fuel. The increased enslavement of Haiti by foreign capital continues, as it has been since it became an independent country.

No, it's not on the scale of the oil industry, but there will be 10s of $Bs of foreign (taxpayer) aid pouring in, and the foreign corps and capitalists will be there to vacuum it up, just like in Iraq, under the watchful guns of the policing US military and murderous/raping mercenaries.

And just like in Iraq, the contractors will fail to deliver quality work, there will be little serious accounting, $Bs just plain disappear, fraud.

You guys are so fucking naive to think the US actually has any country's best interest in mind other than the US's own best interest.

And the thread gets a little dumber. I didn't know that was possible. Congratulations, boutons.

Next we'll invade/take over Pakistan, because that country is just full of wealth waiting to be exploited. :lol

[George Gervin's Afro]

9/11 happened in Haiti?

Yoni is board's biggest Iraq war whore... and he's also a hypocrite.

[Winehole23]

You know, GGA, I dish on Yoni probably more than anyone here, but your global judgment about his character is out of place in this thread.

[George Gervin's Afro]

You know, GGA, I dish on Yoni probably more than anyone here, but your global judgment about his character is out of place in this thread.

My problem with Yoni is that he had no problem the Bush administration using 9/11 as a 'crisis not be wasted' to justify the war in Iraq.. and now he crticizes the dems for doing the same thing. I don't like people who are hypocrites..just like snc stating that he 'f*cking hates when people assume what he's thinking' yet he has no problem doing the same thing when it comes to posting about Obama and the democrats.. you can't have it both ways

would you consider this hypocrisy?

[Winehole23]

More like partiality to political faction, but I see what you mean. FWIW, I doubt you're immune to it yourself, GGA.

[George Gervin's Afro]

More like partiality to political faction, but I see what you mean. FWIW, I doubt you're immune to it yourself, GGA.

I'm not a hypocrite.

[rjv]

the US has exploited haiti to the point that it was essentially an overseas plantation, so i think rush can shut his piehole and let some government assistance flow freely, and without question, to these people who were already living in catastrophic conditions before this exponentially greater disaster occurred.

[Winehole23]

@GGA: I didn't say you were. But you do seem to be partial to one party, and it comes across in your posts.

Like, for example, your embarrassing and rather threadbare defense of Obama's broken promise to televise the debate on health care reform and make it unprecedentedly transparent, when in fact he concocted a backroom deal with insurance and pharmaceutical interests behind closed doors, before the debate ever started in Congress.

[George Gervin's Afro]

@GGA: I didn't say you were. But you do seem to be partial to one party, and it comes across in your posts.

Like, for example, your embarrassing and rather threadbare defense of Obama's broken promise to televise the debate on health care reform and make it unprecedentedly transparent, when in fact he concocted a backroom deal with insurance and pharmaceutical interests behind closed doors, before the debate ever started in Congress.

I have stated more than once that I am not enamored with what Obama has done. I was going to vote for McCain until he picked palin as his sidekick so I haven't always been on Obama's side. My problem with many of the Obama haters on this board is there inability to act with any sense of intellectual integerity. Obama stated in the video posted that Clinton's problem in 93 was that the crafting of the bill was done in private. Congress , at least appeared, to debate and discuss the bill in public which is exactly what Obama said he would do. The other provisions you mentioned were made public after the fact (which does contradict Obama's pledge) however it does not make him a liar. Lying is the purposeful intent to decieve someone. Did Obama make those claims 1 yr prior to winning with the intent to decieve everyone if he did win? I don't think he did.

[Winehole23]

Lying is the purposeful intent to decieve someone. Did Obama make those claims 1 yr prior to winning with the intent to decieve everyone if he did win? I don't think he did.As a US Senator and candidate for President last year, I guess Obama was still unfamiliar with the ins and outs of political process.

[George Gervin's Afro]

As a US Senator and candidate for President last year, I guess Obama was still unfamiliar with the ins and outs of political process.

or he could forsee the future. Which still doesn't make him a liar.

[Winehole23]

Reasonably, he could have foreseen that his promise was unrealistic, yes. JMO.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Reasonably, he could have foreseen that his promise was unrealistic, yes. JMO.

I will agree but , like all presidential candidates, he probably felt at the time he could shake things up from the status quo. I am disappointed that he has not even come close to shaking anything up.

[TeyshaBlue]

And the thread gets a little dumber. I didn't know that was possible. Congratulations, boutons.

Next we'll invade/take over Pakistan, because that country is just full of wealth waiting to be exploited. :lol

No thread is too stupid for boutonsky to bring it down another level.:downspin:

[TeyshaBlue]

I will agree but , like all presidential candidates, he probably felt at the time he could shake things up from the status quo. I am disappointed that he has not even come close to shaking anything up.

That makes at least two of us.

[boutons_deux]

Just watch what happens in Haiti,

see how long the US occupies Haiti,

and see what US and other countries go in to "help" the Haitians by limiting their capacity for self-support so they are forced to "buy rather than make", eg, their own food.

This happens anywhere corporations move in to poor countries. eg, Monsanto selling patented, sterile seeds that are Monsanto-insecticide-ready so the farmers have to buy their seeds from Monsanto every year, as has happened in Africa and India.

The US invasion of Haiti for "humanitarian" objectives is really an opportunity for a predatory corporate invasion.

[TeyshaBlue]

Just watch what happens in Haiti,

see how long the US occupies Haiti,

and see what US and other countries go in to "help" the Haitians by limiting their capacity for self-support so they are forced to "buy rather than make", eg, their own food.

This happens anywhere corporations move in to poor countries. eg, Monsanto selling patented, sterile seeds that are Monsanto-insecticide-ready so the farmers have to buy their seeds from Monsanto every year, as has happened in Africa and India.

The US invasion of Haiti for "humanitarian" objectives is really an opportunity for a predatory corporate invasion.


Newsflash: Haitians were already limited in their capacity for self-support.
Define "Occupation" before you go any further.

[coyotes_geek]

Just watch what happens in Haiti,

see how long the US occupies Haiti,

and see what US and other countries go in to "help" the Haitians by limiting their capacity for self-support so they are forced to "buy rather than make", eg, their own food.

This happens anywhere corporations move in to poor countries. eg, Monsanto selling patented, sterile seeds that are Monsanto-insecticide-ready so the farmers have to buy their seeds from Monsanto every year, as has happened in Africa and India.

The US invasion of Haiti for "humanitarian" objectives is really an opportunity for a predatory corporate invasion.

Haiti's GDP = $7 billion
Monsanto's annual revenues = $12 billion

"Hello, Barack? Monsanto here. Do you mind taking over Haiti for us? We think we can make a couple of bucks off of them."

"No problem Monsanto. I'll get right on that. Remeber, you and your corporate buddies will always have a friend in Barack Obama."

[spursncowboys]

My problem with Yoni is that he had no problem the Bush administration using 9/11 as a 'crisis not be wasted' to justify the war in Iraq.. and now he crticizes the dems for doing the same thing. I don't like people who are hypocrites..just like snc stating that he 'f*cking hates when people assume what he's thinking' yet he has no problem doing the same thing when it comes to posting about Obama and the democrats.. you can't have it both ways

would you consider this hypocrisy?

Can you use a specific time I assumed what they were thinking? Also an elected representative is a little different than people making false conclusions from my posts, continually.

[Winehole23]

You aren't Yoni, SnC.

[Winehole23]

It's not all about you here. lol.

[spursncowboys]

You aren't Yoni, SnC.


GGA
.just like snc stating that he 'f*cking hates when people assume what he's thinking' yet he has no problem doing the same thing when it comes to posting about Obama and the democrats.. you can't have it both ways

would you consider this hypocrisy?

[Winehole23]

Oh right. I appreciate the correction. Carry on.

[Winehole23]

Red Cross: great at raising money.

At doing stuff, not so much:

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes