Re: Property Rights vs. Human Rights in the USA

Top posted intentionally: The probable pisser in all of this is that
according to an article in today's paper 231 million was authorized to build
a bridge in Alaska to an island with only a handful of residents, while it
was estimated (at least at one time, don't know how current the estimate is)
that it would have taken only 42 mill. to repair the levees. David Brooks
on the Lehrer Report gave about half a dozen historical examples of sea
changes in the US political scene that resulted from atrophies like this
one. Maybe some changes for the better will come from this.
"Icono Clast" <IClast@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1125836642.06e46ca4c59e4dc372431460c6d321b1@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Hatunen wrote:
>> One of the reasons for repairing the levees is the very real possibility
>> of another storm; with teh levees already gone even a Category 1 might be
>> a problem.
>
> In other words, the sort of preventive care that wasn't taken before
> must be now. Of course I agree but I still think the greatest
> urgency, and therefore the first priority, is getting the people in out!
>
> Icono Clast said:
>>> [Helicopter p]ilots and assistants could be the lightest-weight
>>> people available to do the job thus allowing the weight saved to
>>> be used with supplies.
>>
>> When you need a chopper pilot you pretty much have to take what's on
>> hand.
>
> You can still select the lightest on hand
>
>>> I've heard of nothing of the sort being done. (We can live a
>>> while without food, but not water.)
>>
>> It's an interesting dilema: do we send the choppers out as quickly
>> as possible to rescue people clsoe to death in attics or stranded
>> on top of roofs, or do we spend a lot of time loading them up with
>> food and water and taking it to elevated freeways?
>
> Do both simultaneously: Take the helicopters in with supplies and,
> after distributing them, take them out with rescuees.
>
>> No matter what you decide, someone will bitch.
>
> Icono Clast said:
>>>>> 2. Communications are out. They have not equipped aircraft
>>>>> with loud speakers that could inform those on the ground on
>>>>> what's goin' down.
>>>>
>>> Hatunen said:
>>>> What, exactly, do you expect them to tell the people on the ground?
>
>> Icono Clast said:
>>> Oh, things like "Help is on the way" even if it isn't true.
>>
>> Ah. Lie to them. They already were assuming help was on the way, though.
>
> Yes, lie to them. Give them hope; with hope comes strength.
>
>>> Or "If you can go toward (a landmark) you can get some water
>>> (food, transportation, etc.)".
>>
>> Another lie?
>>
>> If they could have gone anywhere they wouldn't have been crowded onto
>> those elevated freeway sections.
>
> I didn't have those people in mind; I was thinking more of those who
> were isolated in homes and on roofs, etc.
>
>> We certainly don't want a lot of Jean Valjeans being hunted down by
>> Javerts, but in any case the authorities had already said that people
>> taking food and other necessities weren't to be stopped.
>
> True. And those stealing electronics would, in the end, have to leave
> the ill-gotten goods behind anyway.
>
>> But I reckon we can safely assume that after two days all the neessities
>> were gone and the looters were reduced to stealing boom
>> boxes and computers.
>
> Yes.
>
>>> I'm saying, and today it's being said by commentators, too, that
>>> had the stranded victims not been poor and Black, things might
>>> be different.
>>
>> I'd be far more surprised if it weren't being said by black commentators.
>
> You've seen me. You know what color my skin is.
>
>> And it's rather a leap to claim that the rich would have been
>> treated differently, since it appeared all locally available
>> resources were in use trying to help the black people. The problem
>> was there weren't enough local resources.
>
> The non-poor had resources of their own, such as personal transportation.
>
>>> Well, looks like we'll be spending tens of billions because they
>>> weren't spent.
>>
>> maybe. or maybe not. We'll see.
>>
>>> And in a month or so we'll learn how many people died because
>>> they weren't when they shoulda been.
>>
>> Already beign done. The test, though, is the question how much resource
>> should be spent to protect what level of risk, knowing that Murphy's law
>> will surely apply.
>
> You're the professional best qualified to answer.
>
>>>> Not to mention that everyone likes to call flood control
>>>> projects "pork barrel".
>>>
>>> Many are, I don't deny. Some aren't.
>>
>> Egen the ones that aren't are considered that by anyone not in the
>> pork area. Can YOU make a clear distinction between which are pork
>> and which are necessary?
>
> No.
>
>>>> When it comes down to it, your beloved home town has many
>>>> similar problems when it comes to spending for worst possible
>>>> case events.
>>>
>>> Yes, it does. My disgust has turned to anger and, in a not quite
>>> abstract way, fear as, at any instant, San Francisco or Seattle
>>> or Anchorage or Los Angeles or New Madrid could be hit with a
>>> Great 'Quake. It's also possible that, when El Niño returns to
>>> the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley, levees there could break. If
>>> they do, crops will be lost and water supplies to populated
>>> places will get contaminated.
>>
>> Yep. So how much should you spend on protection? What is a reasonable
>> level of protection and what isn't? Seismic retrofit of
>> all the structures subject to another New Madrid quake is probably
>> out of the question (the last New Madrid quakes knocked down
>> scaffolding at the Capito building in washington, then a-building).
>>
>> I have serious doubts about San Francisco's (and the Bay Area's)
>> survivability after another 1906, despite the constantly upgraded
>> building codes, especially after 1957.
>
> That's the one that terrified me and made me profoundly understand
> our insignificance to Mother Nature. We are no more noticed by her
> than the ants we kill as we walk down the street.
>
>> Loma Prieta was nothing, a mere blip in comparison to another 1906
>
> Unquestionable.
>
>>> Ed Jay said:
>>>>>> The former head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that
>>>>>> handles the infrastructure of the nation's waterways, said the damage
>>>>>> in New Orleans probably would
>>>>>> have been much less extensive had flood-control efforts
>>>>>> been fully funded over the years.
>>>>>> <http://tinyurl.com/bynbc>
>>>>
>>>> Yep. But how many California congresscritters will vote on protecting
>>>> New Orleans? And, of course, you come head to head
>>>> the the old problem of poltical philosophy: why weren't the
>>>> New orelaners taxing themselves heavily so they could improve
>>>> the flood control themselves? And should they have been?
>>>
>>> Valid points, of course. Will the lesson have been learned?
>>
>> Which lesson?
>
> Ben Franklin's.
>
>> to depend on yourself and not the feds? And there is the law of
>> unintended consequences. I've seen it said that one protection New
>> Orleans once had was the long expanse of delta leading to the
>> Gulf, but all the flood control works along the Miississippi and
>> Missouri, along with the flood control dams has altered the silt
>> deposition in the delta such that the delta is disappearing.
>
> Unintended consequences are always a risk. The above was apparently a
> losing bet.
> ___________________________________________________________________
> A San Franciscan in (where else?) San Francisco.
> < http://geocities.com/dancefest/ >-< http://geocities.com/iconoc/ >
> ICQ: < http://wwp.mirabilis.com/19098103 > ---> IClast at SFbay Net


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