About one thousand people died from Hurricane Katrina. Our national government was scalded for its response (while the state or local governments were given a pass). The media convinces the public that our national government is evil and does not care about it citizens (especially African-Americans). We really need to think about what information the media is feeding us. Would you or the media prefer to live in Myanmar or China? Think of their government’s response to its citizens after a devastating cyclone and earthquake hit those countries and killed nearly 200 thousand people. Thousands died in the aftermath from disease because of their government’s incompetent response. Their governments also failed to take in humanitarian support from the United Nations and other countries that could have saved thousands of lives. The next time the media tries to fill our brains with propaganda; it will serve us well to think of the big picture so as not to be easily influenced by their agenda. The media wants you to believe our government is failing its citizens and will not report stories fairly. This is especially true if they have personal vendetta against the President. I am sure the medias response would be different had this occurred under Obama’s watch. If we look at the big picture, we are extremely lucky to be living in this country and nobody should forget that.
Rebuilding New Orleans is problematic at best. Is it wise to rebuild a city that is below sea level that will be hit by another hurricane in the future? No, it makes absolutely no sense because another disaster is waiting to happen. Secondly, the wide range of scandals and fraud that have cost the government billions of dollars has exasperated the slow rebuilding rate. It is somewhat ironic that most of the fraud and scandals are associated with New Orleans. The Mississippi Gulf shoreline took a direct hit from Katrina. However, New Orleans, obtained most of the damage because the levies broke. They were only designed to withstand a category three hurricane. It should not come as a surprise that the levies could not withstand the water surge since they got hit with a category four hurricane. The Mississippi coast got hit with the highest winds, and there was significant damage. However, Mississippi got cleaned up with very little scandals and fraud. Mississippi certainly had its issues during the clean up effort, but it did not get the press that New Orleans received. Granted it should have been cleaned up faster, since New Orleans had much more damage. Also, the potential for fraud and scandal is higher in New Orleans since they received most of the funding. But we should not have to make excuses for New Orleans and their handling of the clean up effort.
Even before the Katrina scandal, Louisiana seemed to have a scandal in the news every six months. Their police force had been labeled as the nations most corrupt, and one of their House of Representative members, William Jefferson, is currently being investigated for racketeering and fraud. In fact, newly elected governor Bobby Jindal’s main objective is to clean up Louisiana’s image from corruptions and scandals. The amount of scandal and fraud from Katrina should not surprise anyone since there is a pattern and trend of corruption in the region.
The federal government certainly made many mistakes and is accountable for allowing the fraud and scandals. However, the people of Louisiana and the local government have done more to slow the progress of repairing New Orleans since they are primarily responsible for the scandals and fraud. After all, it did not happen in Mississippi. Twelve months following Katrina, Mayor Nagin visited his city of New Orleans two times from his Houston, Texas home. President Bush visited eight times. Nagin is the Mayor of this city, and it is his job to be there and help with the reconstruction. Instead, Nagin sat in his nice Houston, Texas home, and every time he got a chance to speak, he criticized the federal government. To make things worse, he generally followed his federal government criticism with a racist and insensitive remark to help further divide his city and the country. He is another example of a poor minority leader, yet he was still re-elected shortly after Katrina.
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