Good lord. I can't believe the number of people that are agreeing with this guy. I'm replying there too.
This storm looks like a BIg ONE!
WAIT. didn't the relief effort in the 1927 flood do a bunch for hoover winning the white house the next year? i think the facts are a little screwed up in that copy/paste rant
Yes it did.
While I don't agree with everything this column has to say, I think it outlines the issue a little bit better than the rant above. This at least gives some historical perspective and theoretical argument to back its ultimate point of government non-involvement.
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/tamny200509140845.asp
A Deluge Instructs
The Mississippi flood of 1927, and its lessons for 2005.
By John Tamny
With the $62 billion thatâ??s been approved for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts set to run out in the coming weeks, a competition between the Democrats and Republicans has seemingly begun over which party can be more generous with the peoplesâ?? money. So far, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg is the leader of this spending movement, having â??bidâ? $200 billion last week. The initial outlay of $62 billion already is a record disbursement for a U.S. natural disaster, and arguably has its roots in the unprecedented federal response to the 1927 Mississippi River flood that similarly crippled New Orleans and much of the South.
The 1927 relief effort was unparalleled. According to historian John Barry, who wrote the 1997 book Rising Tide, there was at the time â??a fault line in American thought about the role of government and how much responsibility it had for its citizens.â? Before 1927, this fault line had not been crossed.
Indeed, in 1887 President Grover Cleveland vetoed a $10,000 appropriation for drought victims in Texas based on his contention that the federal government had no â??warrant in the Constitution â?¦ to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds.â? In 1907 the federal government demanded that banks in New Orleans put up $250,000 before the surgeon general would help fight the yellow fever epidemic there.
Despite the fact that the 1927 flood left 1 percent of the U.S. population homeless, had an estimated death toll in the thousands, and burdened the Red Cross with nearly 700,000 refugees to feed, there was great reluctance on the part of Southern leaders to initiate federal action. When President Calvin Coolidge refused to call Congress into session to respond to the flood, they backed him.
The consensus during that era was that government should do nothing in times of a localized natural crisis. This was in particular true of the federal government. According to Barry, â??direct aid had always been considered charity, and charity stigmatized recipients.â? When a 1922 flood in Tennessee left 35,000 homeless, Gov. John Parker refused all outside help â?? even from the Red Cross. In the aftermath of the â??27 flood, Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay similarly refused aid given his belief that â??the people in the local communities should be expected to provide for themselves, rather than depend on outside assistance.â?
Commenting on the events of 1927, the Chicago Journal of Commerce stated that if â??relief of sufferers were to become a government task, the self-respect of recipients of funds would be decidedly damaged.â? A New York Times editorial said it was fortunate â??there are still some things that can be done without the wisdom of Congress and the all-fathering Federal Government.â?
Still, the federal government did involve itself in the local disaster of â??27, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hooverâ??s unprecedented relief efforts arguably won him the White House the next year. Notably, federal relief was mild by todayâ??s standards, and none of it was direct. Instead, Hoover created government reconstruction corporations that created $13 million in credit for flood victims. At the time the federal government was running a budget surplus of $635 million.
But slopes are slippery, and by 1928 Congress passed a flood-control bill for the Mississippi River that was â??the greatest expenditure the government has undertaken except in the World War.â? The Mississippi River was now a national problem, and U.S. taxpayers were seemingly for the first time on the hook for expenditures made to fix a problem that was local in nature. Not unlike spending estimates that are made today â?? though the total cost for the federal flood-control plan was $300 million â?? the consensus was that it would run to $1 billion. About the bill, Barry noted that it â??set a precedent of direct, comprehensive, and vastly expanded federal involvement in local affairs.â?
Despite this massive flow of taxpayer funds into the South, its economies did not boom. New Orleans, formerly the richest city in America, actually declined.
Sen. Gregg (among others) should take note. Massive aid has never worked to do more than temporarily patch an injured economy, and it wonâ??t work this time. More important, it has to be asked whether or not todayâ??s federal bidding wars between the political parties are examples of â??moral hazardâ? at its worst.
This is not meant to minimize the truly awful impact of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana and Mississippi. But if U.S. taxpayers are going to pay each time a natural disaster strikes within our borders, wonâ??t there be less incentive on the part of states, municipalities, and builders to plan and construct cities and housing developments with local hazards in mind? Just as the existence of the IMF makes it possible for private banks to make bad loans, can it be said that the ability of the U.S. government to tax its citizenry makes city and state governments less cautious, and less mindful of the potential for disasters?
Americans have been extraordinarily generous in Katrinaâ??s aftermath, but has their generosity been tempered by the federal response? What about local leadership? Absent the existence of federal outfits such as FEMA and the Department of Defense, does anyone honestly think that the voters of New Orleans and Louisiana would have elected such obvious incompetents as Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco?
The latter question is especially important as our leaders in Washington look to the break the bank with relief funds. Not only is it not compassionate to spend other peoplesâ?? money, if the disaster in Louisiana tells us anything, the existence of the â??benevolentâ? federal government means that ineffective local responses to local disasters will arguably increase in frequency.
While itâ??s certainly not compassionate to say the federal government should finally put its foot down and stay out of local relief efforts, itâ??s perhaps the right thing to do. It may be the only thing that insures better local response the next time something as awful as Katrina strikes
While I don't agree with everything this column has to say, I think it outlines the issue a little bit better than the rant above. This at least gives some historical perspective and theoretical argument to back its ultimate point of government non-involvement.
http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/tamny200509140845.asp
A Deluge Instructs
The Mississippi flood of 1927, and its lessons for 2005.
By John Tamny
With the $62 billion thatâ??s been approved for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts set to run out in the coming weeks, a competition between the Democrats and Republicans has seemingly begun over which party can be more generous with the peoplesâ?? money. So far, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg is the leader of this spending movement, having â??bidâ? $200 billion last week. The initial outlay of $62 billion already is a record disbursement for a U.S. natural disaster, and arguably has its roots in the unprecedented federal response to the 1927 Mississippi River flood that similarly crippled New Orleans and much of the South.
The 1927 relief effort was unparalleled. According to historian John Barry, who wrote the 1997 book Rising Tide, there was at the time â??a fault line in American thought about the role of government and how much responsibility it had for its citizens.â? Before 1927, this fault line had not been crossed.
Indeed, in 1887 President Grover Cleveland vetoed a $10,000 appropriation for drought victims in Texas based on his contention that the federal government had no â??warrant in the Constitution â?¦ to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds.â? In 1907 the federal government demanded that banks in New Orleans put up $250,000 before the surgeon general would help fight the yellow fever epidemic there.
Despite the fact that the 1927 flood left 1 percent of the U.S. population homeless, had an estimated death toll in the thousands, and burdened the Red Cross with nearly 700,000 refugees to feed, there was great reluctance on the part of Southern leaders to initiate federal action. When President Calvin Coolidge refused to call Congress into session to respond to the flood, they backed him.
The consensus during that era was that government should do nothing in times of a localized natural crisis. This was in particular true of the federal government. According to Barry, â??direct aid had always been considered charity, and charity stigmatized recipients.â? When a 1922 flood in Tennessee left 35,000 homeless, Gov. John Parker refused all outside help â?? even from the Red Cross. In the aftermath of the â??27 flood, Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay similarly refused aid given his belief that â??the people in the local communities should be expected to provide for themselves, rather than depend on outside assistance.â?
Commenting on the events of 1927, the Chicago Journal of Commerce stated that if â??relief of sufferers were to become a government task, the self-respect of recipients of funds would be decidedly damaged.â? A New York Times editorial said it was fortunate â??there are still some things that can be done without the wisdom of Congress and the all-fathering Federal Government.â?
Still, the federal government did involve itself in the local disaster of â??27, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hooverâ??s unprecedented relief efforts arguably won him the White House the next year. Notably, federal relief was mild by todayâ??s standards, and none of it was direct. Instead, Hoover created government reconstruction corporations that created $13 million in credit for flood victims. At the time the federal government was running a budget surplus of $635 million.
But slopes are slippery, and by 1928 Congress passed a flood-control bill for the Mississippi River that was â??the greatest expenditure the government has undertaken except in the World War.â? The Mississippi River was now a national problem, and U.S. taxpayers were seemingly for the first time on the hook for expenditures made to fix a problem that was local in nature. Not unlike spending estimates that are made today â?? though the total cost for the federal flood-control plan was $300 million â?? the consensus was that it would run to $1 billion. About the bill, Barry noted that it â??set a precedent of direct, comprehensive, and vastly expanded federal involvement in local affairs.â?
Despite this massive flow of taxpayer funds into the South, its economies did not boom. New Orleans, formerly the richest city in America, actually declined.
Sen. Gregg (among others) should take note. Massive aid has never worked to do more than temporarily patch an injured economy, and it wonâ??t work this time. More important, it has to be asked whether or not todayâ??s federal bidding wars between the political parties are examples of â??moral hazardâ? at its worst.
This is not meant to minimize the truly awful impact of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana and Mississippi. But if U.S. taxpayers are going to pay each time a natural disaster strikes within our borders, wonâ??t there be less incentive on the part of states, municipalities, and builders to plan and construct cities and housing developments with local hazards in mind? Just as the existence of the IMF makes it possible for private banks to make bad loans, can it be said that the ability of the U.S. government to tax its citizenry makes city and state governments less cautious, and less mindful of the potential for disasters?
Americans have been extraordinarily generous in Katrinaâ??s aftermath, but has their generosity been tempered by the federal response? What about local leadership? Absent the existence of federal outfits such as FEMA and the Department of Defense, does anyone honestly think that the voters of New Orleans and Louisiana would have elected such obvious incompetents as Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco?
The latter question is especially important as our leaders in Washington look to the break the bank with relief funds. Not only is it not compassionate to spend other peoplesâ?? money, if the disaster in Louisiana tells us anything, the existence of the â??benevolentâ? federal government means that ineffective local responses to local disasters will arguably increase in frequency.
While itâ??s certainly not compassionate to say the federal government should finally put its foot down and stay out of local relief efforts, itâ??s perhaps the right thing to do. It may be the only thing that insures better local response the next time something as awful as Katrina strikes
Was 1927 the Good Flood? I donâ??t have Barryâ??s book in front of me any more (another library user recalled it the day after Katrina, and they weren't the only one looking for the bookâ??Rising Tide jumped this week to #11 on Amazon's best seller list, and the NYT reports it's just gone back into print), but the picture of 1927 that he drew there was considerably less heartwarming. The majority of people displaced by the flood were black sharecroppers. The whites who owned flooded lands desperately feared that black labor would simply abandon the region after the waters receded. White planters had refused outside assistance after earlier floods for fear it would undermine their control of the region. In 1927, the planters succeeded in taking over relief efforts to see that they did not. National guardsmen were used to keep sharecroppers imprisoned in the refugee camps until they could return to working the land, and local officials charged homeless blacksâ??on credit, ever deepening their debtsâ??for food and medical supplies the Red Cross had intended to be free.
Barry describes how 1927 became a turning point in attitudes towards federal activism and reliefâ??not because the U.S. government stepped in to help the victims of the flood, but because it didnâ??t, and the American public was outraged. Things changed after 1927. The Flood Control Act of 1928 was the most expensive single bill Congress had ever passed, and Barry sees it as a crucial first step towards the ambitious relief activities of the New Deal. But in the wake of the flood and right through the New Deal years, the prime beneficiaries of the new federal paternalism remained the regionâ??s white planters.
http://www.robmacdougall.org/archives/2005/09/the_good_flood.php
Barry describes how 1927 became a turning point in attitudes towards federal activism and reliefâ??not because the U.S. government stepped in to help the victims of the flood, but because it didnâ??t, and the American public was outraged. Things changed after 1927. The Flood Control Act of 1928 was the most expensive single bill Congress had ever passed, and Barry sees it as a crucial first step towards the ambitious relief activities of the New Deal. But in the wake of the flood and right through the New Deal years, the prime beneficiaries of the new federal paternalism remained the regionâ??s white planters.
http://www.robmacdougall.org/archives/2005/09/the_good_flood.php
Originally posted by god's shoeshine:yes they are in fact a big fact is wrong depsression didnt hit til 1929. doooohhh!!!
WAIT. didn't the relief effort in the 1927 flood do a bunch for hoover winning the white house the next year? i think the facts are a little screwed up in that copy/paste rant
I have no doubt that this is also true - furthering the point that times have changed (or maybe they haven't changed that much after all, if the relief is still benefitting whites more than blacks).
i suppose if blacks dont own propery than any rebuilding assistance will go to ppl other than landless blacks.
if there is free education, then who's fault is it for not taking advantage of it? at some point, we all have to bear some sort of personal responsibility (both individually and as parents).
as for money spent on education- d.c. ranks number 1 in the nation on the amount of money its spends per pupil (~$12,000 per student v. $7,500 for virginia- 27th in the nation. for the record, montana is just about $7,000), so, logically, shouldn't d.c. have the highest quality of education, since they spend the most on it??
in any event, the flood control acts (and their progeny) were forays into state control that was never envisioned by the constitution (under the auspice of interstate commerce). the state governments were then and still are responsible for the day-to-day well-being of their citizens.
as for money spent on education- d.c. ranks number 1 in the nation on the amount of money its spends per pupil (~$12,000 per student v. $7,500 for virginia- 27th in the nation. for the record, montana is just about $7,000), so, logically, shouldn't d.c. have the highest quality of education, since they spend the most on it??
in any event, the flood control acts (and their progeny) were forays into state control that was never envisioned by the constitution (under the auspice of interstate commerce). the state governments were then and still are responsible for the day-to-day well-being of their citizens.
so would it follow that the current administration's efforts to spend so much on the rebuilding process does not take a conservative view of the constitution?
Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:That's not where I stole that from, btw.
guess Ellis has gone to the Xavier school of posting… http://www.wmi.org/multi_boards/Politics/T12449.htm
But, yes I have learned that to be taken seriously, it's best not to include a link. You didn't think I actually write all of this, did you?
Kosmo: a graduate of the ggw school of googling…
Originally posted by god's shoeshine:i believe you mean a strict constructionist view. . .in my view, you are right. but, all politics are relative.
so would it follow that the current administration's efforts to spend so much on the rebuilding process does not take a conservative view of the constitution?
Originally posted by Ellis D. Fleischbach:Actually I learned everything I know from Markie.. it's good to know that people are passing this one around on the internet :roll:
Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:That's not where I stole that from, btw.
guess Ellis has gone to the Xavier school of posting… http://www.wmi.org/multi_boards/Politics/T12449.htm
But, yes I have learned that to be taken seriously, it's best not to include a link. You didn't think I actually write all of this, did you?
Kosmo: a graduate of the ggw school of googling…
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:i don't really like the term 'strict constructionist' but yeah. should not have used conservative, because i dislike it for the same reason, but whatever. guess at this point the feds have to pay up, damned if you do, damned if you dont
Originally posted by god's shoeshine:i believe you mean a strict constructionist view. . .in my view, you are right. but, all politics are relative.
so would it follow that the current administration's efforts to spend so much on the rebuilding process does not take a conservative view of the constitution?
Ben's Chili Bowl !
Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
Actually I learned everything I know from Markie.. it's good to know that people are passing this one around on the internet :roll:
ok wats the deal with "bens chili bowl"??? its just a web site/page w a pict. thats it!
Some bloke on the radio…not Gerry Ryan, said the evacuation in Texas for hurricane Rita is like evacuating the population of Dublin. Some langer from Cork called in to ask were he could donate to help evacuate the population of Dublin to Texas! I almost drove off the road laughing.
Maybe only Bresnner would get the humour, but it was funny.
Maybe only Bresnner would get the humour, but it was funny.
Originally posted by muschi:Ben's Chili Bowl is a eatery thats near the club and is often one of the first responses given when ever someone ask for places to get food at when attending a show. It became for awhile the stock answer for any question posed here, but that joke is no longer funny. The webpage in question was created by Ellis as ytmnd.com allows one to upload there own images and sounds. Ellis is very "fond" of the site…
ok wats the deal with "bens chili bowl"??? its just a web site/page w a pict. thats it!
From this moment forward muschi, I shall refer to you as "grasshopper".
<img src="http://www.freakingnews.com/entries/13000/13348chJG_w.jpg" alt=" - " />
George W. Bush was just asked for his opinion on Roe vs. Wade; he said he didn't care how the people got out of New Orleans.
<img src="http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0PwAAAA4TJmLzpGPa8AJfGcbYhAw4u28wNLOQD8uRNJ7Qi3Argz*3qMr5T2F3wO1pT9LBaiqz88!p4*GdcDtBTeBEMbzY0h1G/busama.jpg" alt=" - " />
<img src="http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0PwAAAA4TJmLzpGPa8AJfGcbYhAw4u28wNLOQD8uRNJ7Qi3Argz*3qMr5T2F3wO1pT9LBaiqz88!p4*GdcDtBTeBEMbzY0h1G/busama.jpg" alt=" - " />
