The Life and Times of the Watters Family

Who’s To Blame for Katrina’s Destruction?

I don’t usually post stuff like this here, but I’ve been following news coverage, and frankly, I’m getting pretty pissed off. I’m not an expert, and don’t claim to be one. Here goes:

While I agree the federal government has a responsibility to these people, doesn’t the bulk of the governmental responsibility here lie with the mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana?

Why wasn’t the city doing more for it’s poor during the evacuation? Why wasn’t it using it’s fleet of school buses and public transportation buses to get people out? Why wasn’t it coordinating with nearby cities to plan, IN ADVANCE, for adequate shelter and refugee housing?

Why isn’t anyone addressing the fact that ALL of the adults in the city CHOSE to live there in the first place. The potential for this type of disaster was a WELL KNOWN RISK. Heck, I knew about it and I live about as far away as you can get in the lower 48 — in Washington State.

While I believe it is tragic that people are in such dire straights, it seems irresponsible to ignore the fact the the primary factors that placed any/all persons in this predicament were the result of local municipal decisions and the personal choices of individual citizens in and around New Orleans and NOT the federal government.

For the record, I live near the base of an active volcano that has long been predicted, by some, to blow its top. Additionally, it has long been predicted that the area will be hit with a major earthquake any day now (they’ve been saying it for at least 10 years). When those events occur, if I’m still living here, I won’t be asking why the government didn’t do more to earthquake proof the city (much of which is built on top of a landfill or old coal mines) or protect us from lava flows. If I survive, I’ll get up, make sure my family is safe and then get to work helping my neighbors.

UPDATED 2005-09-07:

I’m not alone. Here are the best of the pros saying what I said.

Blame Amid the Tragedy
Don’t blame only feds
An Unnatural Disaster

No matter who is ultimately to blame, everyone should be doing what they can to help out. One way to do that is to donate to the Red Cross.

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Abortion On Television

I haven’t posted in a while, but things at work are finally winding down and with the election over, I can actually think about something else.

I was reading Instapundit earlier today when I stumbled across this item about abortion on tv. It is a response to this post by Jonah Goldberg over at National Review Online.

I e-mailed my thoughts to Glenn. My e-mail is posted below:
read more…

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Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s

A former employer of mine is in the news today. Apparently, they’ve been cheating on their corporate taxes for the past 10 years or so. Doesn’t surprise me, really. The first clue should’ve been the maintenance of foreign residence in the Bahamas and Cypress. The only more obvious tipoff would’ve been living in the Cayman Islands.

I guess it just goes to show there really isn’t much to gain by trying to get over on the IRS. Personally, I usually overpay a little. They’ll send it back.

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Assassination Is Nothing To Joke About

I know I said I didn’t want to post current-events political items, but I just needed to register my disgust with the apparently leftist vogue practice of flippantly suggesting that high-ranking Executive Branch should be shot, or, as Star Jones suggests, sending a Weapon of Mass Destruction President Bush’s way.

I realize it is likely hyperbole, but I don’t care which party is in office, this crosses the line. There are just too many whack-jobs out there that’ll respond to this kind of stuff.

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The So-Called “Bush Tax”

A couple weeks back, I was pointed by Dave Winer to this item on Dave Pollard’s blog on increasing traffic to one’s blog. It strikes me that one way to do that may be, in fact, to write about how to increase traffic to one’s blog (which is right out of the Tom Vu/Carlton Sheets handbook if you ask me, but that’s a whole different subject). Having never been to Mr. Pollard’s blog before, I thought I’d have a look around. As I was doing so, I stumbled over this little gem which may rate a post of its own about using graphs of really small sub-sets of very large data sets to misrepresent the truth without actually being technically dishonest. Again, I digress.

Upon seeing the above, I was reminded of the fact that I’ve been wanting to write something seemingly intelligent about the standard liberal tripe about tax cuts mainly benefiting the “rich” (which I still intend to do, though this isn’t it). I thought I might do some initial research into what was being said about the “Bush Tax Cut” and I came across this: The Bush Tax. The basic premise is that states are now being forced to pick up the tab for the programs that were cut to make way for the Bush tax cuts. Because I’m not familiar with what is happening in other states, I thought I’d focus on mine. As I read, I was more and more amazed by the misleading information and in at least one case, factual inaccuracy, they presented as evidence. I’ll take on each of the first three, point by point:
read more…

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License To Drive

Frankly, I’m beginning to believe that it should be more difficult than it is to get a driver’s license. Aside from the usual comments about people in their nineties, with their tortise-like reflexes and their quad-focal glasses, I’d like to suggest that we add emotional capacity for maturity to the criteria.
read more…

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