I found this blog Rough Ol' Boy via Catallarchy and thought it made a good case:
I also find it intensely disturbing that on Sunday it will be 9/11/05, and the experience of New Orleans only proves that the government has made no material progress towards improving its response to disaster, whether natural or man made, in the four years since a tragedy of such a magnitude last struck this country. I knew all along that the government wastes money, misallocates resources, etcetera, but I thought with so much extra spending we might make some improvement. Take the space program, for instance. Sure, it was a gigantic waste of money, but we did actually put men on the moon and invent Tang for fuck's sake. That is something, and it seems that for all the money allocated to Homeland Security we have nothing.
But I don't really blame who have overseen these boondoggles….as such. Yeah, maybe someone else could have marginally improved this aspect or that detail, but failure is just the nature of the State beast, and this is true for literally hundreds of reasons. To name but a few:
1) It's a monopoly. With no competitors, the government lacks any reason to improve its services or cut its costs.
2) People in the government frequently have the perverse incentive to fail, so that they are rewarded with larger budgets, so that they may "improve."
3) It lacks any means of determining if a project is worthwhile or not. Because most taxes paid to the government are not for rendering any specific service, people in the government are incapable of knowing if people would actually pay the price they do (through compulsory taxes) for a given service, i.e. if that service is profitable to the public.
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Keep your fingers crossed that Ophelia will stay the hell away from Mathews come Saturday
I know that
Microsoft Foundation Classes for
MS Visual C++ is kinda old now, but I loved it in college. At that time I was a Computer Science senior working for a small .COM-esque startup. I loved designing
GUIs for them, which Visual C++ makes easy through a graphical design interface. It also gave me my first programming experiences writing
object-oriented, enterprise level
applications.
Contact me if you're interested in my resume.
Now, Lord knows C++ allows you to do some pretty crazy stuff with pointers that negates the whole point of wrapping functions and data into objects.That said, the way MFC is structured makes it easy to create Windows applications that perform powerful tasks without you having to program all the little ways MS likes you to present information, buttons, lists, etc. - all that's done for you. You just concentrate on writing the code that does the real work, and let MFC handle the window-y stuff. Even if you don't like the way they implemented something, that object is based on a more abstract object which you can use to build a new object by only having to change the questionable part - you don't have to write it from scratch.
Well, I'm happy because since that job about 4 years ago I haven't done much programming at all, let alone Windows programming. And this past week I was able to write a MFC application from scratch. Just because I've been doing a lot of analyst work at my new job, my bosses decided I needed a break and gave me a task to write a quick and dirty program to solve a small problem. And I had a blast doing it.
So screw the haters - I ♥ MFC.
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Sizzle (right) and I this spring in Richmond.
Regular reader(s) of SMC know that I am anti-government. Not satisfied with simply having a small government, I sieze every opportunity to demonstrate the larger point: that the philosophy of force that informs the institution of the state is a bad way of doing the human business of life, trade, and stuff like that. It should not have surprised you all that I, like many libertarian bloggers, took the failed government response to Katrina as a sort of proof of the libertarian argument. And I even hinted that there was more to the mess than simple ineptitude.
All I can say is that it appears that the screeching of the alarmists on the libertarian front was sadly correct:
In the nearly two weeks since Hurricane Katrina, the government of New Orleans has devolved from its traditional status as an elective kleptocracy into something far more dangerous: an anarcho-tyranny that refuses to protect the public from criminals while preventing people from protecting themselves. At the orders of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the New Orleans Police, the National Guard, the Oklahoma National Guard, and U.S. Marshals have begun breaking into homes at gunpoint, confiscating their lawfully-owned firearms, and evicting the residents. "No one is allowed to be armed. We're going to take all the guns," says P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police.
Now, disarming a populace is abhorrent, but doing so when armed gangs are preying on the populace is just sick. I was glad to hear that the Army troops under General Honore are not participating in the forcible removal of NOLA citizens, though - so far everything Honore has done in this response has been outstanding. When leadership was needed, he came in and provided it. Thank God somebody involved in the gov't has some common sense and an idea of the urgency at hand during the whole disaster; otherwise I shrink from pondering what would have happened.
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Take a moment to think about the victims. Take a moment to think about the world we live in. Take a moment to think about how those two are connected.
Take a moment to stop thinking about how you think the world should be, and instead look at the world as it is. We serve a purpose much higher than politics when we do so. Eschew for just this one day the pettiness of defining the tragedy in terms of your beliefs (not that there isn't a place for that, but not today, please).
Why am I not surprised?
For reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and the Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge Mr. Bush to take command of the effort. Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's control.
Gee, federalism is awfully convenient. If Bush was consistent on state autonomy (and returned the tax dollars to match) then maybe it would be easier to see this as anything but a snide copout.
This dunce does not get it:
Buffeted by criticism over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush said Tuesday he will oversee an investigation into what went wrong and why _ in part to be sure the country could withstand more storms or attack.
Bush also announced he is sending Vice President Dick Cheney to the Gulf Coast region on Thursday to help determine whether the government is doing all that it can.
Are you sure Dick is all rested up yet? Maybe he needs another week to compose himself...
"Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people," the president said after a meeting at the White House with his Cabinet on storm recovery efforts.
What the fuck are you talking about? Bureaucracy isn't some convenient scapegoat you can use at your leisure. The reason bureaucracy tied things up is because the rescuers were leaderless.
YOU are the fucking problem, George W. Bush. YOU are responsible for the gov't. YOU did not show leadership when it was desperately needed. YOU kept making snide remarks about how you weren't to blame and how much you sympathized with the people. Now YOU want to investigate why your minions didn't do what, in hindsight, you think should have been done?
This is an insult to everybody's intelligence. Get this moron out of the White House NOW.
From
Crooked Timber comes the
anti-state backlash:
Hyatt had a convoy arrive by Wednesday? As Alan notes, Google Maps helpfully tells us that the New Orleans Hyatt Regency is less than two tenths of a mile away from the goddamn Convention Center. I guess FEMA couldn't figure out the last leg of the trip or something?
...
Look, just to be clear, this post isn't really about whether the disaster should make me or anyone else want to become a libertarian. Examples like this show-in case you needed more evidence-that there is absolutely no good reason the federal government couldn't have mounted a serious relief effort for the people of New Orleans much, much faster than it did, and especially for the thousands at the convention center and the Superdome.
This argument may never placate the apologists for the omnipotent state, but perhaps a few normal people like you and I will start to get the picture.
I'm glad people are increasingly more safe, but FEMA is starting to scare the hell out of me. Now not only are they seizing local equipment from first responders and tying it up in bureaucracy, they're even deploying "sonic laser" crowd control technology to the flood zone.
Everybody needs to keep alert - this may be when things in this country start getting REAL interesting.
Just as he would have wanted:
The ashes of gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson have been blown into the sky from a cannon in Aspen, Colorado.
Rest in peace, friend of freedom.
The Houston Chronicle:
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.
When I describe myself as a left-libertarian, people often ask what that means. So read what Wally Conger has to say about it.
The Bush Administration handling of this event has been piss poor, as I have documented this week. But via Antiwar.com's blog, I found Blah3 and the compilation of administration deceit, media fabrication, and obstruction that has pulled the wool over the public's eyes. The treachery of this gov't defies belief; there is a coverup of the suffering of our own citizens on a scale akin to the fabrication of Iraq war news:
There were a lot of questions asked yesterday morning about the phony briefing that Bush got in that hangar, featuring a backdrop of Coast Guard helicopters. People were wondering why those choppers were not out picking up flood victims or delivering supplies. The reason why is simple - Bush had the majority of helcopter traffic stopped while Marine One was in the Gulf Coast region.
...
Bush to women: "There's a Salvation Army center that I want to, that I'll tell you where it is, and they'll get you some help. I'm sorry.... They'll help you.....
Woman 1: "I came here looking for clothes..."
Bush: "They'll get you some clothes, at the Salvation Army center..."
Woman 1: "We don't have anything..."
Bush: "I understand.... Do you know where the center is, that I'm talking to you about?"
Guy with shades: "There's no center there, sir, it's a truck."
Bush: "There's trucks?"
Guy: "There's a school, a school about two miles away....."
Bush: "But isn't there a Salvation center down there?"
Guy: "No that's wiped out...."
Bush: "A temporary center? "
Guy: "No sir they've got a truck there, for food."
Bush: "That's what I'm saying, for food and water."
Bush turns to the sister who's been saying how she needs clothes.
Bush to sister: "You need food and water."
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I'll admit - I was one of the people who, in the beginning, wondered out loud why the poor in New Orleans didn't get out sooner. I was displaying my ignorance, it turns out. Errol Louis exposes the ugly truth, and while I certainly think there is a limit to how much you can blame history for the poverty of African Americans, the bottom line is that this rings true:
To the casual viewer, the situation is an incomprehensible mess that raises questions about the intelligence, sanity and moral worth of those trapped in the city. Why didn't those people evacuate before the hurricane? Why don't they just walk out of town now? And why should anyone care about people who are stealing and fighting the police?
That hard, unsympathetic view is the traditional American response to the poverty, ignorance and rage that afflict many of us whose great-great-grandparents once made up the captive African slave labor pool. In far too many cities, including New Orleans, the marching orders on the front lines of American race relations are to control and contain the very poor in ghettos as cheaply as possible; ignore them completely if possible; and call in the troops if the brutes get out of line.
By almost every statistical measure, New Orleans is a bad place to be poor. Half the city's households make less than $28,000 a year, and 28% of the population lives in poverty.
And now for the kicker:
Ten billion dollars are about to pass into the sticky hands of politicians in the No. 1 and No. 3 most corrupt states in America. Worried about looting? You ain't seen nothing yet.
