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Reblogged:The Lessons We Won’t Learn From Louisiana’s Floods

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In case you have trouble understanding politically correct logic in the era of one-party “uniparty” government, here’s the breakdown on the recent floods in Louisiana, when contrasted with Hurricane Katrina, also in Louisiana, more than a decade ago.

When a white Republican president fails to make the federal government do the impossible, it’s an act of racism.

When a (half) black progressive, leftist Democratic president fails to interrupt his golf game to visit victims of the flooding, it’s an act of racism to point this out.

Got it?

The unstated premise is that everything a progressive president (especially a black one) does is right, while everything a white, conservative pro free-market president does is wrong. (Not that George W. Bush was remotely supportive of free-markets, but since he was perceived as such, he took the hit.)

Beyond politics and twisted progressive logic, what’s most interesting about the 2016 Louisiana flooding is the following:

Instead of waiting for the government to come rescue them, the people of Louisiana used their own privately-owned boats to save their neighbors. This “Cajun Navy” drew its ranks and fleet from Louisiana’s large numbers of sportsmen. People who needed rescue contacted a Facebook group and the boats used smartphone apps such as the GPS app Glympse and the walkie talkie app Zello to coordinate. The “Cajun Navy” was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Louisianians and their pets and livestock. [Source: The Foundation for Economic Education, cnn.com, washingtonpost.com]

The point nobody’s talking about? Whether George W. Bush is president or Barack Obama is president, FEMA (the federally funded “emergency management” agency run by bureaucrats and central planners in Washington DC) doesn’t do a thing.

It’s not really George W. Bush’s or Barack Obama’s fault. Both of these men engaged in the pretense that the federal government can and must do what people actually do infinitely better for themselves; but both of them are totally wrong, and both disasters in Louisiana, ten years apart, plainly proves it.

This should be the real story, but it won’t be, because nobody running for office, to my knowledge, thinks it’s anybody’s responsibility for managing disasters other than the federal government.

The people actually going through the disaster beg to differ.

The people of Louisiana also distributed immediate relief to their displaced neighbors much more efficiently than the government was able to. One of the best examples of this was the conversion of a movie studio into a shelter housing over 2,000 people. The Celtic Media Centre is one of Louisiana’s premier film production studios located in Baton Rouge, which was one of the cities hardest hit by the flooding. The studio’s executive director, Patrick Mulhearn, saw how devastated his neighbors were by the high water and decided to open up Celtic as an emergency shelter.

Left to their own devices, the victims themselves, along with those able and willing to help those victims, are the best equipped for doing so.

The premise of big, bloated federal government agencies is that money, and money alone, will solve a problem, and make the execution of problem-solving rational.

Yet that’s not how it works.

People know what they need and they are the ones best equipped, when calling for help, to identify what those needs are. It doesn’t necessarily cost billions of dollars to rescue people from a national disaster. What does cost millions or billions is the rebuilding process, in many cases. But it’s not the government’s job to rebuild entire cities and states. That’s up to people to figure out for themselves, whether it’s through the rational planning of flood insurance, building safer structures, or possibly even pulling up roots and moving.

FEMA and other federal agencies don’t rationally help with either relief or rebuilding. They indiscriminately throw money at the problem, all for the sake of promoting the power of politicians and political pressure groups. They merely go through the motions of throwing money at the problem, with neither the compassion and caring of an authentic charity, nor the rational effectiveness of a profit-making insurance company.

We see how well federalized communism worked after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Republicans and George W. Bush got the blame, but it’s really the inherent ineffectiveness of federal intervention that was the problem. Just as Communist governments in places like Cuba, North Korea and Russia could not do anything other than go through the motions of making it look like they cared about the people, the same principle is at work when it comes to federal behemoths like FEMA, which are worse than worthless. The same goes for Medicare, Social Security and other programs modeled on Communism and socialism which are likewise in the process of bankrupting our government so badly that before long it won’t be able to perform its limited, legitimate functions life border control and defense.

Americans do not seem to be learning from the mistakes of its government. They don’t ask the hard questions. Instead, they fall for the partisan, widespread media line that so long as progressives and Democrats are in charge, you don’t need to worry yourself about anything. But it’s not true. Just ask the people in Louisiana right now. They’re surviving these floods no thanks to the federal government and only thanks to the voluntary and far more rational, less expensive efforts of willing parties who know what they’re actually going through. Yet it’s the federal government that will get the credit for any recovery that ultimately occurs. To paraphrase the late comedian George Carlin, “Ladies and gentleman, it’s all BS … and it’s bad for you.”

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The post The Lessons We Won’t Learn From Louisiana’s Floods appeared first on Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. | Living Resources Center.

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