An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

by Robert Tracinski
Sep 02, 2005

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

Quoted: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. ..

Thanks for posting a good article

Tag......

+1

First article I have read that is 100% accurate!!!!!!  

Someone with a DU troll account needs to post it over there and then watch their heads explode.  


How do we get this article out to more folks?  For starters, email it to everyone you know at a minimum.  

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.


homerun paragraph.  

For those that apply - Sheeple.  One lady was given an MRE.  She was upset that it was not hot.

Go figure.


Jynx



"No fear the dead, Fear the living." - Grandfather Ashau Lui

Great article.

+10,000

I smell a Pulitzer

nah -this will never see the light of day...unfortunately.

'none is so blind as he that refuses to see.'

this came from a guy in LA. His personal observation. very inline with the article but in a much more condensed format and direct perspective.

" I read some of these postings, about the looters just trying to survive and it is the people's own fault for not getting out..... I dont think alot of you understand the people themselves.

Most of these refugees live in project communities were law enforcement will not enter because of fear. They have never had any disciline from thier parents much less any form of government. They are totally reliant on the government, they get welfare, housing, and food stamps from the government. So this rescue effort isnt extra help in thier eyes its thier due, and its not enough, they will expect more. They will not try to help themselves, they will simply look you in the face and say "what are you going to do with me now?". They didnt leave before the storm because nobody went in thier and held thier hand to move them. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio get ready, I dont think you know what your in for. New Orleans was a scary and lawless place before the storm, a place where most of us who know it would not dare to bring our families."

While I agree with alot of the welfare tack, I know that everyone around here is smart enough to know that it does not apply to 100% of those stuck in that shithole.

Edited to add: I lived in one of those types of areas when I got out of the military. It was all I could afford given the circumstances.

Quoted: While I agree with alot of the welfare tack, I knwo that everyone around here is smart enough to know that it does not apply to 100% of those stuck in that shithole.

Agreed, a large percentage of those left, maybe even the vast majority, but not the whole lot. I have seen many elderly, etc who couldn't leave. Many stayed with them to help them. The list goes one.

I think this article addresses the portion of the masses who are shooting, looting, robbing, raping, and setting fire to what is left because big gubernment 'isn't doing ENOUGH.'

Thanks for an excellent article. Take it in context.

The first post is on target. Look at the folks at the super dome, nothing to do nobody leads. You can't help people that will not help themselves. They want it all given to them.

Chinook3

The truth is painful, but it's the truth.

Quoted: Sorry guys but going to have to call a NO to the 'Welfare State; being the cause…… Switzerland and Germany are very socialist with a huge all encompassing 'Welfare State' that is used by ALL the population. Both contries saw massive flooding last month but no rioting, looting and other stuff. I'm going there next thursday, you can bet it will be all cleaned up by then.

It is the mentality of the those who are part of the welfare state and not the state itself that is the true problem. We have created several generations of 'cradle to grave' recipients who can do nothing responsible for themselves.

I think, compared to the Swiss and Germans, our welfare state does a far better job of completely eradicating anything that remotely looks like pride in one's self, not to mention, responsiblilty and accountability.

Quoted: Sorry guys but going to have to call a NO to the 'Welfare State; being the cause…… Switzerland and Germany are very socialist with a huge all encompassing 'Welfare State' that is used by ALL the population. Both contries saw massive flooding last month but no rioting, looting and other stuff. I'm going there next thursday, you can bet it will be all cleaned up by then. img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53455773.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53455772.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53451869.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53453515.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53467183.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53460176.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53459215.jpg How cool are the swiss in a crisis!

You may be correct that it is not the welfare state problem over there, but the leeches of the welfare state over here are definitely a wholly different animal that does not seem to know how to act civilized.  Maybe the people over there haven't experienced the "400 years of oppression"!

Even more incredible is gonna be the Billions of Dollars of taxpayers money going to help these people out ... who .. more than likely ... do not pay taxes ...... and already recieve free housing, welface, medicaid, etc. from all us tax paying citizens ...  :(

tag

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Sorry guys but going to have to call a NO to the 'Welfare State; being the cause…… Switzerland and Germany are very socialist with a huge all encompassing 'Welfare State' that is used by ALL the population. Both contries saw massive flooding last month but no rioting, looting and other stuff. I'm going there next thursday, you can bet it will be all cleaned up by then. It is the mentality of the those who are part of the welfare state and not the state itself that is the true problem.   True!  We have a similar bottom feedng 'underclass' here in Britain. The world over, tards will be tards…

You have to remember that its not happening everywhere here either, but is mostly in New Orleans.  In many ways it is the perfect storm.  A huge underclass, utterly ineffective local leadership, a flood that hampers supplied and troops, etc....  Most places on the coast look like the Swiss picture.  Conversely, I suspect that if the immigrant rifraff in London had a similar opportunity you might see a similar situation.  

Quoted: An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005 ...The man-made disaster is the welfare state...

Self-serving nonsense – just like the idiotic statements made by one of the Kennedys claiming Bush was responsible for causing the hurricane, or those who claim Bush deliberately responded slowly since many of the victims were black.

I make no apologies for the looters – who IMHO should shot.

But look at what else has been going on in this country the last few years.

We had the anti-globalization demonstrators tear up Seattle a few years ago.  Were they on welfare?  What about other demonstrators during various political conventions?

We have people, esp. college kids, rioting, starting fires, committing vandalism, and such after sporting events!  But those are just “pranks”, right?

We have corporate crooks like Bernie Ebbers and such stealing from anybody they can.

We even have occasional members here claiming that it’s OK to break into someone’s wireless home network.  We also have folks who have no problem pirating software or listening to someone else’s cell phone conversations or illegally downloading movies.

NO is certainly the extreme in lawlessness compared to some of these examples (esp. the posts here).  Still, the problem has nothing to do with welfare.  It has to do with morality.

But few people want to talk about that – they’ve got their own agendas that they want to push.  And we’re going to see those all those different agendas being pushed - more and more and more - in the following days.

This article is just one example.

That article is dead on accurate.  I sent it to everyone I know including some of my lib coworkers.  They need to read this stuff.

tag and article forwarded to everybody in my mailbox.

So I've been watching the coverage and the people "dying because they're still stuck in the city".  It occurred to me a while ago that these people waited for the government limo to come to evacuate them.  They are so used to having everything taken care of for them that when that didn't happen they simply sat down on the curb and waited to drown.  "Well, I have no idea how to help myself."

I'm reaffirmed in that view in that I see trucks rolling into all parts of New Orleans.  That tells me there is at least one semi-dry route into the city, dry enough for trucks to pass.  That route, by nature, runs both ways.  Why are NONE of these people walking out?  Even if there is water in places, there's shit that floats EVERYWHERE.  Self-preservation will sustain you through the tough spots.  Go TO THE HELP instead of waiting for it to come to you like rats in a cage.  We have created generations of people who are completely helpless.

And I fear the result of the spin on this will be even more helpless people on my (as a taxpayer) tit.

tagged for after dinner reading

Game, set and match!

Nail on the head.

Good article, its right on.

taggage

Well, that and a +1 to the difference between the welfare class in the USA and the Swiss.  I believe there's a difference - in Switzerland, don't they at least make you do something in order to receive welfare?  Or are you allowed to do nothing over there?

In the USA, you are required to do absolutely nothing except go to the mailbox to pick up your check when you are on welfare.  Well, there's a "try to get a job" requirement, but that's easily solved by bombing the interview.

Quoted: An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State by Robert Tracinski Sep 02, 2005 It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster. If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild. Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting. But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster. The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong. The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over the past four days. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view. The man-made disaster is the welfare state. For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency--indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country. When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11). So what explains the chaos in New Orleans? To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story: "Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on. "The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire.... "Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders. " 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' " The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows National Guard troops, with rifles and armored vests, riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad. What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to drive away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Super Dome? Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them? My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage last night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Chicago, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.) What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"--the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels--gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75% of the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of the 300,000 or so who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then gave me an additional, crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose. There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa. There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit--but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals--and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep--on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves. All of this is related, incidentally, to the apparent incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. But in a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters--not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency. No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism. What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. They don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men. But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them. The welfare state--and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages--is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting. tiadaily.com/php- bin/news/showArticle.php?id=1026

I being a black male married 23 years age 42,father of 2 sons one 21 in college the other still in high school am one that thinks that the welfare state is not to blame,but a group of people mostly black that are living off a system that was meant to be a hand up not a hand out.I was raised by parents that belived in working for what you want I worked at night college in the day.They helped to put all five of us in school,one lawyer,2 teachers,2 managers at companies.We have in turn put each one of there grands in college 4 are out and working 2 more this year. blacks need to learn the problem this not whites it's them.

+1Million

Quoted: Sorry guys but going to have to call a NO to the 'Welfare State; being the cause…… Switzerland and Germany are very socialist with a huge all encompassing 'Welfare State' that is used by ALL the population. Both contries saw massive flooding last month but no rioting, looting and other stuff. I'm going there next thursday, you can bet it will be all cleaned up by then.

All due respect, you're the one who doesn't understand.  The difference between Switzerland and the public housing projects of an inner American city could hardly be more different and extreme.

taggage

Quoted: Quoted: Sorry guys but going to have to call a NO to the 'Welfare State; being the cause…… Switzerland and Germany are very socialist with a huge all encompassing 'Welfare State' that is used by ALL the population. Both contries saw massive flooding last month but no rioting, looting and other stuff. I'm going there next thursday, you can bet it will be all cleaned up by then. All due respect, you're the one who doesn't understand.  The difference between Switzerland and the public housing projects of an inner American city could hardly be more different and extreme.

I agree.  It's not just learned helplessness.  Even high income people here would sit and cry if they couldn't flee.  It's thug culture, combined with shouting down anyone who calls it out as racist on top of sense of entitlement.  It's wrong is right morals or lack there of.  That's the difference.  See from day one they are wrapped in a culture that tells them to hate everyone with more than them.  To show no respect to authority because that makes them a bitch.  Kindness is weakness.  Do unto others before they get over on you.  We tolerate it and our media worships it.  

I'll bet that is not the case in Switzerland.

Quoted: the problem has nothing to do with welfare.  It has to do with morality.

You make a good point.  The problem is morality.  And it's the morality of the people involved that leads them to willfully become part of the welfare state.

Quoted: Sorry guys but going to have to call a NO to the 'Welfare State; being the cause…… Switzerland and Germany are very socialist with a huge all encompassing 'Welfare State' that is used by ALL the population. Both contries saw massive flooding last month but no rioting, looting and other stuff. I'm going there next thursday, you can bet it will be all cleaned up by then. img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53455773.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53455772.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53451869.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53453515.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53467183.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53460176.jpg img.photobucket.com/albums/v133/macandy/53459215.jpg How cool are the swiss in a crisis!

I would somewhat agree, but there is a HUGE difference between the good citizens of Switzerland/Germany and the parasites who live in inner shitty America.  Comparing the two is kind of like comparing British Marines to French Gendarmes - night and day.


-K

btt for a great article.  Thanks for posting it, raven.

Quoted: I'm reaffirmed in that view in that I see trucks rolling into all parts of New Orleans.  That tells me there is at least one semi-dry route into the city, dry enough for trucks to pass.  That route, by nature, runs both ways.  Why are NONE of these people walking out?

Where are they going to go, smart guy?  What are they going to eat or drink?  Where are they going to sleep?

With their level of unpreparedness, the best they can do is stick with the other sheeple and wait for transport or supplies.

I being a black male married 23 years age 42,father of 2 sons one 21 in college the other still in high school am one that thinks that the welfare state is not to blame,but a group of people mostly black that are living off a system that was meant to be a hand up not a hand out.I was raised by parents that belived in working for what you want I worked at night college in the day.They helped to put all five of us in school,one lawyer,2 teachers,2 managers at companies.We have in turn put each one of there grands in college 4 are out and working 2 more this year. blacks need to learn the problem this not whites it's them.

It will take your leadership and others like you to change the current paradigm.  Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are not leaders.  

You are.

The article is spot on. Kudos to the author for putting into words what the common-sense people of this nation already know.

I worked in the projects when I first graduated from college (in Richmond, VA)--Jefferson Village, Midlothian Village, Gilpen Court, etc.  

I worked for a rent-to-own place (a ripoff--left as soon as I was able), so the vast majority of our business was welfare that was dumb enough to pay $779 in low weekly payments of $9.99  for a 20" TV with a 'mote (the TV cost us $125 in volume).

95% of the people in the projects were ADC (Aid to Dependent Children)--basically, you get pregnant, the state gave you an apartment, gave you food stamps, paid your utilities and gave you $300 a month (more if you had more kids).  

These were Physically capable (obese, but no overt physical limitations) females (almost exclusively Black--however, there were about 10-15% White with the same caracteristics).  

99% of the time, their places were FILTHY--grease everywhere, overflowing trash (the dumpsters are right next to the buildings), cockroaches on everything....

Only about 1% of the time, was a place clean (to be honest, the people that had clean places usually were too smart to get the garbage at ripoff prices we normally carried).  

These are women who had NOTHING to do but watch TV all day, and yet couldn't keep their places clean....

They standard was for the Boyfriend to show up around the time of the check coming in, hang around for a week or two, and disappear for the rest of the month.  

What I see in New Orleans is the EXACT same thing--garbage around, people not giving a damn about their surroundings...  The only difference I can see is that there isn't any other place for the Boyfriends to go...

AFARR

Quoted: Quoted: Sorry guys but going to have to call a NO to the 'Welfare State; being the cause…… Switzerland and Germany are very socialist with a huge all encompassing 'Welfare State' that is used by ALL the population. Both contries saw massive flooding last month but no rioting, looting and other stuff. I'm going there next thursday, you can bet it will be all cleaned up by then. All due respect, you're the one who doesn't understand.  The difference between Switzerland and the public housing projects of an inner American city could hardly be more different and extreme.

I've not lived very long in Germany, but what exactly do you think makes anywhere AT ALL in Switzerland a "welfare state?"

What Switzerland does do is pay for about 100% of education (even at the graduate level) provided students can get in to a university.  What Switzerland does do is provide a highly rigorous academic environment and they most certainly do not pass people who shouldn't be passed.  What Switzerland does do is avoid (through sane management of the legal system) the "Tort Lottery" impact you have.  What Switzerland does do is mandate military service for young men.  What Switzerland does do is MANDATE the presence of an assualt weapon in good condition with ammo in every home with an able bodied man.  What Switzerland does do is permit nationwide concealed carry.  What Switzerland does do is insure against severe health issues for everyone.

And they manage to do all this with the lowest tax rates on the continent (except for Liechtenstein and Monaco)

Surprise, surprise:  Swiss are highly overeducated and even the kid behind the McDonald's counter speaks 4-5 languages (English, French, German, SwissGerman, Italian/Romanish), "welfare fraud" is basically unheard of, recycling rates are the highest in all of Europe, the country is fricking beautiful anywhere you look, liability insurance is cheap and "Directors and Officers insurance" doesn't even really exist, firearms deaths are rare, and when they occur they are often among illegal aliens (naturally, many people not permitted to reside in Switzerland try to).

Meanwhile, banking thrives, the value of a Franc is clear, the average time for a citizen to remain on assistance is 4 months, pensions are well funded, well managed, even overfunded, and having them ripped off is unheard of, the national currency is like a rock, basically tracking gold...

In short, what Switzerland manages to do is instill a sense of responsibility.  If you want to live there you have to work.  Period.  And people do.

You want to compare to New Orleans now?  You want to try to tell me it's just the people's attitude?  I, rather, think that it's a very tough "work or learn and we will provide massive cushions for you and provide you with what approaches the best quality of life on the planet- but otherwise GET THE FUCK OUT" attitude.

New Orleans could have used some of that, it seems to me.

Great article, but like someone else said, they didn't rape, riot or loot in Switzerland.  

What allows a civilzation to exist?  Something must control each person's behavior.  A person can have internal controls which limit our behavior.  This is morality- a sense of right and wrong which has its foundation in a belief in God and in turn that there is good and evil and right and wrong.  When a person does not have internal controls, their behavior must be controlled externally.  This is where the government comes in.  One of the main roles of the government is to wield the "sword" of punishment.  You do something wrong- you get punished.  This is the role of the criminal court system and prison system.   In our society we had many more people who functioned based on internal controlls until the 1950's when we decided that they were just to old fashioned.  Now we are told that there is no right or wrong, and that morality is really just being judgmental.  We have raised a generation who have been taught this.  We can see the results all the way from the corner thief/drug addict up to the head of Enron.  The problem is the same- the belief that there is no right or wrong, and that I am not accountable or responsible for my actions.  The "welfare state" mentality goes along with the amoral mentality.  "I am not responsible for myself"- this means both my actions and caring for myself.  If I do wrong, it is someone else's fault, if I am not cared for it is someone elses fault.  Our society has become dependent on external controls in order to exist.  If people think they can get away with anything without being caught or penalized, they will try.  The city of NO is now ruled by a group of people who have no internal controls, and have also been freed from their external controls.  The only thing that will improve the situation in the short term is reestablishment of those external threats of punishment.

Quoted: Quoted: You want to compare to New Orleans now?  You want to try to tell me it's just the people's attitude?  I, rather, think that it's a very tough "work or learn and we will provide massive cushions for you and provide you with what approaches the best quality of life on the planet- but otherwise GET THE FUCK OUT" attitude. New Orleans could have used some of that, it seems to me. Hey Austrian! Maybe we could send then several hundred thousand "refugees" from NO and the surrounding area...I thgink things would change for the worse...damned quickly...if we did!

PRobably.  However, send me 50,000 of the children of the "refugees" or perhaps their middle schoolers and I suspect you would, in about 15 years, have 49,800 quite productive, smart, intelligent, responsible adults.