From Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell: It”s not just incompetence. It”s a shameful lack of concern: The 9/11 My Pet Goat dithering on an administration-wide scale. Simply stated, the president and his top advisers chose vacation over action. While the media has done a good job in portraying the overall deadly failure of leadership, it has not focused enough on this deadly dereliction of duty.
[Update — 1446, 4 September 05 — From Europe: There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president’s visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of ‘news people’ had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.]
If I get any more cynical, I’m going to puke. Senator Mary Landieu (D-Louisanna) is livid. She saw first hand the result of the 2004 tsunami and knows how bad it can get. She met with President George Bush on Friday and toured the breached 17th Street levee. She wants the president to know that the citizens of the United States expect leadership; photo ops just don’t cut it. Via KTAL TV:
But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe.
Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.
The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.
I sat in front of Mac’s Backs and read Marge Piercy’s early GRRRL. A couple stopped to tell me I looked just like their son who lived far way. Bridget Ginely walked by with her friend Chris visiting from out of town and got my address to send me my free Friday art. I ate popcorn and drank water. I found words that altered me and recalled my own changes. I feel better now. Poetry is like that.
early GRRRL
the early poems of
Marge Piercy
What follows are the lingering embraces and splashes of spring water that I found among Piercy’s poetry.
From The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing
Poems Of The Middle Seventies
Five Thousand Miles
There you sleep and here
I walk wakeful and every day
is a calendar square like a prison yard
to pace. Every day is laid on
me and torn off like a bandage
on a slow dripping wound.
I burn with need
of you deep inside like a coal
mine that has caught fire
and smolders deep in the rock
away from the healing touch
of the rain.
The Summer Invasion, And The Fall
If something moves beautifully
through the grass it must be
bought in a package,
raped, or shot.
Ask Me For Anything Else
Watson has patience and muddy
boots, not Holmes with his
cocaine needle. Old dogs
snore their patience.
Cats pace. Big cats
cut patience from the herd
and run it down panting
for hot breakfast.
[snip]
I am empty with wanting,
not like a box
but like a tiger”s belly.
What is permitted
… My friend, of course
I will dance with you, how beautiful
that so much is permitted
when so much is feared.
The New Novel
the best part of me
locked in those
strange paper boxes.
Women Of Letters
When we had finished typing, we too got drunk
and still there were more boxes carried up
in the morning, boxes singing
like mad linnets of pain”s needle.
From Living In The Open
Poems Of The Early Seventies
The Clearest Joy
The clearest joy
is the ceasing of great pain.
Make Me Feel It
My poetry and my politics have come unstuck
Goddess, I am down to the brief hassles of the body,
[snip]
Sweet mama, a life is as far as I can walk on it.
I have been lazy and lax,
I have been wanton and wobbly,
but take me up. Strop me.
Frighten the too easy wits out
till I leap and chatter and flash green,
let your hairy lightning blast me open and quaking.
I fear nothing like this silence
filled with the satisfied nibbling of myriad teeth
of the little appetites.
Sage And Rue
Herbs give sparingly. They will not sustain
you but render palatable what does.
River Road, High Toss
thorniest blackberries grow
in languid arches studded with spikes
trussed with long berries dripping juice
like a parable of pleasure and pain.
Two Higher Mammals
But we are woman and man,
other and murderous brother,
[snip]
Loving leaves stretch marks.
Thinking clearly still hurts.
To be good for anything
is furious struggle
The Box
Now we walk at the wall very fast
holding hands and trying to act as if
we believe in an opening.
If we come through the stone
we come through
in an unknown place.
For Inez Garcia
… As fear rises like mud in my throat.
From Hard Loving
Poems From The Late Sixties
Your Eyes Are Hard, And Other Surprises
… do the hairs of your belly
remember my sweat?
This Is A Poem For You
We shimmer with sweat.
We are playing out our knowledge of each other.
We are asking riddles with our hands
and solving them with our hips.
We are a soft clumsy organism.
Music blows through the long tangled pelt,
the red mouth is open to roar and taste,
the eyes are wide and bright and moist,
the paws are raised.
From Breaking Camp
Poems Of the Early to Mid-Sixties
Lapsed
Memory smells
like carefully dried love
where I shelter
inside failure”s toughening husk,
where each on labors
secreting the amber
that turns gnats
and midges and stinging flies
into jewels.
The Miracle
Somewhere hair of gauze
eyes of a frightened jay
you are kicking
your shrill new hungers
and sucking watered milk.
Somewhere they are just starting
to tease your arms
with pins.
Early, Early Poems
Storm Outside, Storm Inside
for the friction of body hard on body
as two stones cracking on each other
hit till one stone finds its flaw.
Grand Tour 1957
I was going to Europe, where culture was stored in cathedrals
and made in cafés, where the Left was alive
I had read in a book by Sartre, consumed
illicitly in the philosophy department
hidden like a Batman comic
behind the text of Kant.
I wore black and lived on beans.
Uncollected Poems
Poems Spanning Several Decades
Eye Contact
Rarely have lovers
stunned me with insight.
On Technique
… Now like a woman
who danced wildly at evening at a party
wriggling her hips, bouncing her ass
around and comes home at last too tired
to fuck, she sits at her desk,
the sheet before her vast and white
in the avalanche of silence.
For A Radical Poet
I want to understand why
I can no longer enjoy your poems
about revolution.
The Music Wars
If we could shut off our ears,
turn down the volume control
on the night, what would we see?
A hundred thousand peacocks
each displaying his tail,
slowly turning, strutting, posing.
The Air Like Stained Glass Cuts Me
You could not love, but only redecorate.
Turn About
In the twilight of the room
the mirror beckons like a pond.
Dive in. Pass Through.
In that room on the dark
side of the mirror moon
are all the things you lost.
[snip]
If only you can remember
how to pass through the glass
like gauze curtains that tear
before you, like water
parting to let your warm body
drown in its cool embrace.
Always Unsuitable
Oh mamas, I would have been your friend.
I would have cooked for you and held you.
I have might have rattled the windows
of your sorry marriages, but I would
have loved you better than you know
how to love yourselves, bitter sisters.
It’s all more than a little overwhelming this afternoon. I confess that I never really got upset about the 11 September attacks. I was never afraid because of them. But watching the report by Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera has really shaken me. I’m off to Coventry to sit in the sun and watch people be oblivious for a while; to read and write poetry; to recenter.
I finished reading Anthony Wild’s Coffee: A Dark History last evening. I took a lot of notes from the book and posted them my Electronic Chap Book. There is a lot to absorb in the book about the history, politics and science of the world’s No. 1 mood-altering substance, but I wanted to get people’s reactions to this bit about Fair Trade coffee: raison d’être
Consider the following (fictitious) scenario.
The owner of the Ahab Coffee house employs ten waiters and waitresses. They live in the damp basement under the shop with their families in squalid, cramped conditions. They have one gas ring among them to cook on, rudimentary sanitary facilities, and they sleep on flea-ridden mattresses on the floor. The children have no access to education, and health care is prohibitively expensive. The waiters and waitresses are paid just enough to prevent them from starving, and their wages are docked if they commit any kind of misdemeanor, real or imagined. They are not protected by any kind of employment legislation, have no contracts and no job security.
The well-heeled clientele of the Ahab Coffee House notice the miserable and careworn condition of the serving staff and complain about it to Captain Ahab, the genial owner. He agrees that it is indeed an appalling state of affairs, but says there is nothing he can do about it, because if he puts up his prices to enable him to improve the workers” conditions, all his customers will go around the corner to his nearest rival and then the staff would all be kicked out onto the streets and even more miserable than they already are.
However, recognizing that there is a genuine concern amongst his customers, he agrees to the following: he will undertake to employ one waitress who will be paid a salary that will enable her to rent an apartment of her own where she can live with her family, who will work on a long-term contract with reasonable hours, and with sick pay, holidays and retirement benefits. Thus Fair Trade, as she is called – her parents were unreconstructed hippies – comes to work at Ahab”s, and the customers are relived to note that she does not have the pallid complexion and sniveling demeanor of the others.
In fact, Fair Trade is quite a hit, and Captain Ahab notes that her cheerfulness attracts a whole new crowd of customers who like to listen to her tales of how her children are doing in school, how she has at last bought a new television, and how her husband”s lumbago is responding to treatment. And because Fair Trade”s sunny disposition and infectious joie de vivre, Ahab”s Coffee House becomes quite the place to go,
Captain Ahab buys a new yacht, and everyone is happy – except for the other staff, whose lot improves not one jot, indeed actually worsens as they have to work harder because the place has become more popular. pp. 266-7
My Soundtrack: Night Starts Over by Bullette on WOXY.
Harbored seed nurtured;
Cut, ground, mixed, baked, sliced burnt;
Buttered: lechem qaloo
Jeff Jarvis is shaking with the rage and President George Bush poses with helicopters that should be in New Orleans. News organizations afraid of what the Federal Communications Commission might say are bleeping words like ass and god damn. There are times that call for strong language. Can anyone doubt these are those times? Would it be any different if Al-Qaeda had dynamited the levees?
[Update — 1515, 3 September 05 — Clearly the wrong-wing trolls have been unleashed. Reading down through the talking points appearing again and again in the comments on BuzzMachine, you can see that people’s fanatical belief is crumbling.]
The coffee house, not the mathematics. I found this math challenge on the Murray Hill Road coffee house’s tote board. while sipping my Jumping Java, reading Coffee: A Dark History, and watching a Siamese cat enjoy its favorite footstool. Can you discern the next 10 numbers in this sequence:
…sometimes from dodging the bullets. I was going to post Henry Taylor’s Another Postponement of Destruction yesterday. I read it on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. I wish, sometimes, that Garrison would share with us why he selects the poems he does. Are they from the moment or queued months in advance? I held off, wanting to think on it.
Banging out the kitchen door, I kicked
before I saw it a thick glass baking dish
I’d set outside for dogs the night before.
It skidded to the top step, teetered, tipped
into an undulating slide from step
to step, almost stopped halfway down, then lunged
on toward concrete, and I froze to watch it
splinter when it hit. Instead, it kissed
the concrete like a skipping stone, and rang
to rest in frost-stiffened grass. Retrieving it,
I suddenly felt my neck-cords letting go
of something like a mask of tragedy.
I washed the dish and put it in its place,
then launched myself into a rescued day.
My Soundtrack: She Will Only Bring You Happiness by Mclusky on WOXY.
Even in the heart of disaster ravage New Orleans, the social niceties hold sway. What happened to the women and children first sensibility that held sway on the decks of the Titanic? Where is the chivalry Where is the basic sense of human dignity and decency? Remember helicopters hovering to toss bags of rice to tsunami survivors? This is not America’s finest hour. From the Associated Press’ Mary Foster:
At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line – much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the Superdome since last Sunday.
How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us? exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.
The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. The Hyatt was severely damaged by the storm. Every pane of glass on the riverside wall was blown out.
Mayor Ray Nagin has used the hotel as a base since it sits across the street from city hall, and there were reports the hotel was cleared with priority to make room for police, firefighters and other officials.
[Update — 1030, 3 September 05 — From The New York Times, via reader Cailin:
Ms. Baker said the police also came in one night and “took two white people out of here” in what she interpreted as a selective rescue. “It was our first time seeing the police here,” she said. It was not immediately possible to obtain comment from the police in a city without electricity and with little phone service.]
My Soundtrack: Make Me A Believer by Longwave on WOXY.
You can argue that it’s not enough. You can argue that it’s a marketing ploy. You can argue whatever you want. But I won’t. From Bentonville, Arkansas the devastation of Louisanna and Mississippi is very close to home. In addition to taking care of its own, Wal Mart is stepping up in the way we expect Americans to do. Thank you Lee Scott.
Following President Bush’s announcement today that former Presidents Bush and Clinton will lead a nationwide fundraising effort to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart President and CEO Lee Scott contacted President Clinton and the White House and committed $15 million from Wal-Mart to jump-start the effort.
As part of this commitment, Wal-Mart will establish mini-Wal-Mart stores in areas impacted by the hurricane. Items such as clothing, diapers, baby wipes, food, formula, toothbrushes, bedding and water will be given out free of charge to those with a demonstrated need.
Wal-Mart previously donated $2 million in cash to aid emergency relief efforts and has been collecting contributions at its 3,800 stores and clubs, and through its web sites: Wal Mart Facts, Wal Mart, Wal Mart Foundation, Wal Mart Stores and Sam’s Club.
Through its Associate Disaster Relief Fund, the company will also give displaced associates immediate funds for shelter, food, clothing and other necessities.
My Soundtrack: Train by Goldfrap on WOXY.
Across the Internet, mixed with the efforts to raise money, reunite families and somehow make sense of the tragedy of the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, there is rage. The greatest nation our civilization has ever known has fallen on its face and seems unable to get up. New Orleans police are going AWOL. Politicians from President George Bush on down have failed. Here are five samples:
From Jimi Izrael — For now, twist the top on the Grey Poupon and take your ass down to the Dirty. You and your staff. Any magazine writer can write — get some reporting done, for Christ’s sake. Why don’t you and Benzino and nemquash beef, team up and get a convoy of water, toilet paper and hip-hop journalists (journalistz who write through the filter of hip-hop) and roll-out? Get your crusty lips off my nutts and you hand off your funky and walk it, homeboy. This shit is real. This is the realest. Nobody cares how rich or yellow you are. Bust a move, Jack.
Oh… I bet you’re wondering why I’m not on my way down there… hold that thought… I’m gonna try to ride for my shop, but if you got the dough and want me to show y’all how its done, I’ll ride for yours too, Homey… get atcha boy…
This is the first note of two, homeboy… you made a misstep getting at Y’boy. We gonna fix it. In the between time, you know how to reach me. You don;t me, but I gotta lotta respect for you and what you’ve accomplished. And after this is done, I’ll (probably) still have it. Let’s keep it like that.
From Johnah Goldberg — So the question is, would the money have been better spent if the Republicans hadn’t gotten their way? And, though it sickens me to say so, that is at best an open question. I have the utmost faith in the kleptocratic and dysfunctional governments of New Orleans and Louisiana to waste and steal money.
But, we were supposed to be preparing — at the national level — for a major terrorist attack for the last four years. I just don’t see much evidence of that preparation. Congress re-assembled lickity-split to deal with Terri Schiavo — a decision that didn’t and does not bother me the way it bothers some.
But however you define the issues involved in that case, in terms of real human suffering they are very hard to stack-up against what’s happened in New Orleans. Congress should have convened yesterday and rescinded the highway bill. It should have broken-open the farm bill like a piñata and reallocated the monies therein.
For supporters of the war, this spectacle is going to be particularly hard to accomodate because it is in the interests of the political classes to keep their pork and it is in the interests of the antiwar left to frame this as a choice between Baghdad and New Orleans. That should not be the choice. The choice should be between the highway bill, ag subsidies and the like. The Don Young Highway should at least be renamed to the Go Suck Eggs New Orleans Highway.
From Jeff Jarvis — This terrible tragedy has now become a scandal.
Aaron Brown just asked a correspondent whether he thought he”d ever stand on the soil of the United States of America and report what he is reporting from New Orleans.
Through a lack of quick action and resources and any semblance of planning, the people left in New Orleans have been condemned to thirst, hunger, filth, disease, fear, crime, danger, and in too many cases death.
The convention center in New Orleans is a symbol of shame. How can we not figure out how to get water there? Babies are starving. People are dying. There is no authority; police have pulled back to defend their own stations or, according to CNN, deserted their posts.
Authorities – from Bush down to cabinet officials down to legislators down to state officials down to the soon-to-be-former-mayor down to those police – have failed these people. No one would argue that this was going to be smooth or easy. But the basics – water, food, safety, goals – are abandoned.
From Andrew Sullivan — I have to say this seems to me to be a new situation. This has morphed from a natural disaster into a social meltdown. The Louisiana governor seems overwhelmed (Barbour seems much more effective); New Orleans”s civic authorities seem non-existent (and bear responsibility for the insufficient preparation for this potential and widely predicted nightmare); and the president’s response has been decidedly weak.
His call to restrain from using gas was, well, Carteresque. It seems to me inconceivable that we cannot impose basic law and order in a major American city five days after a hurricane has hit. This is a very basic governmental responsibility and all I can say is that I see no evidence of competence or effectiveness so far.
FEMA had no solid evacuation plan? The feds had no plans to maintain order in such a situation? The explosion of complete lawlessness is beginning to make Haiti look like a pleasant place to live. This is America? Where order is so distant that snipers can prevent the evacuation of a hospital?
The fundamental reason for my inability to support a second Bush term was his demonstrated incompetence in performing the basic functions of government. It seems to me that the people of New Orleans are now as much a victim of this as the people of Iraq.
I guess we can merely be thankful that Rumsfeld hasn’t yet appeared to say Stuff happens. Yes, it does. When your government seems unable to do the most basic things required of it.
From Daily KOSJust in case you missed the amazing performance of the Republican leadership yesterday…
President George W. Bush said, I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees. Well, no one except the entire world and even Mr. Bill.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went shoe shopping on Fifth Avenue, but not before she played tennis and yukked it up at Spamalot.
The Viceroy in charge of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff said We’re much better prepared than we’ve ever been. I’m not sure if that was before or after he reminded us that September is National Preparedness Month, so be sure to stock up on duct tape.
The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael D. Brown leapt into action, mustering all the emergency disaster management skills he learned as a lawyer for the International Arabian Horse Association Legal Department (from which he was fired). His money quote: Paula, the federal government did not even know about the Convention Center people until today.
The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert said, eh, maybe we should just forget all about rebuilding New Orleans. Because it might cost money and stuff.
The Pentagon, headed by Donald Rumsfeld, reassured America that, yes, the Country music hoedown with Clint Black on September 11th is still on, pard’ner! And maybe we’ll even break the record for the longest line dance.
The head of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, sent out an email stressing that now — for God’s sake, people — NOW is the time when we must repeal that which is causing our country to go down the tubes: the estate tax.
And Vice President Dick Cheney was still on vacation.
It’s all about leadership folks. We are desperate for some.
Several of us Cleveland bloggers got an email last evening from Bill Callahan at Callahan’s diary. Bill received a call for help from Will Reed of Technology For All in Houston, Texas. Will had been in Cleveland back in June to speak about community broadband. According to the email forwarded by Bill:
Technology For All is working with its community and corporate partners to set up a Community Technology Center at Houston’s Astrodome, which will soon be home for 25,000 evacuees from the New Orleans Superdome.
We are pleased to have the opportunity to help in this way and have made an initial commitment to install a 40 station CTC. We expect we will need to expand that, but want to move quickly with what we can do and then assess the additional need.
TFA also anticipates working with public leaders and officials to assist in the deployment of a Wireless Mesh Network in the Astrodome. Those details are under discussion. Pam Gardner (713.454.6415) on our staff is coordinating volunteer efforts to set up the CTC and then provide programming assistance.
TFA will need additional computers (Pentium 4 or faster), software, volunteers, $’s and organizational capacity to pull this off. Thanks in advance for your assistance. As more details are worked out we will pass them along.
Shipping computers from Cleveland to Houston is probably not a practical action, but if you know of anyone in the area who might be able to help Will, get the word out to them.
Right now, it’s money that is needed most. You can click on the American Red Cross logo above to connect to its donation site. If you can, please also click on TFA’s logo and make a donation to help it get the Community Technology Center up and running.
We have a house to build.
My Soundtrack: Bucket Of Butterflies by Modey Lemon on WOXY.
Have Coffee Will Write welcomed its 40,000th homepage visitor last evening at 10:54. The visitor — ISP ip70-187-65-236.cl.ri.cox.net — used a Macintosh to surf over from bloglines.com. The count is based only on those guests who come in through the front door, so to speak. Those who use direct links to individual posts don’t trip the counter, so the total is actually higher. On to six digits!
[Update — 2043, 2 September 05 — Amazing. People are dieing of thirst, hunger and gunshots in New Orleans and somebody at FEMA had time to rearrange the charities on its Organizations Accepting Donations and Volunteers sections and bumped Operation Blessing from the No. 2 spot to No. 3. Gee, I wonder who ordered that change?]
[Update — 1855, 1 September 05 — From a comment to BuzzMachine:
According to an investigation by the Virginia attorney general”s office, Robertson employed airplanes from one of his charitable, not-for-profit organizations, Operation Blessing, to improperly ferry supplies in and out of his diamond camps.
The attorney general”s investigation found that while Robertson was appealing for donations to Operation Blessing to aid the victims of the Rwandan genocide on The 700 Club, Operation Blessing”s fleet of aircraft was in fact flying a total of forty-four hours for the charity while logging 272 hours for Robertson”s for-profit African Development Company.
Virginia law-enforcement officials declined to prosecute when Robertson – who had contributed $35,000 to the attorney general”s election campaign – agreed to reimburse Operation Blessing for the flight time. The adc was working diamond mines in Zaire.]
Evangelist Marion Gordon Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing scored the No. 2 slot on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s How You Can Help victims of Hurricane Katrina list. The Virginia Beach, Virginia-based organization is second only to the Red Cross on FEMA’s list. There are 19 other organizations on the list. According to the organization’s financial page:
Over eighty-five percent of all Operation Blessing support goes to aid men, women and children in need.
And how does Operation Blessing pay for pay for that aid? According to the most recent figures (FY 2003) on the OB website, it received $8.8 million of ministry support; $56 million of gifts-in-kind and $0.12 million of investment and other income. The expenditures were: $64 million for ministry and program, $0.62 million for fundraising and $0.58 million for administration.
What kind of disaster relief does OB provide? When disaster strikes, Operation Blessing is there. With emergency relief supplies, water, food and medical care, Operation Blessing teams meet urgent needs worldwide and remain alongside disaster victims as they recovery.
So if Pat Robertson is doing such good work, why does he feel it necessary to not put the name the world knows him by best on Operation Blessing? Do you suppose it’s out of humility?
Nah, me either.
My Soundtrack: I Wanna Know Girls by Portastatic on WOXY.
Fifty-two cards and
the jokers (the small one is
guaranteed) mazel tov!
Update — 1050, 1 September 05 — It disgusts me to write this, but it seems that the headline I should have written for this was: Property Is More Important Than SOME People. If this is the reason that Mayor Ray Nagin ordered nearly the entire New Orleans police force to shift from search and rescue to fighting looters, then perhaps the flood waters are the only thing keeping New Orleans from burning. From Jack Shafer at Slate:
Race remains largely untouchable for TV because broadcasters sense that they can’t make an error without destroying careers. That’s a true pity. If the subject were a little less taboo, one of last night’s anchors could have asked a reporter, Can you explain to our viewers, who by now have surely noticed, why 99 percent of the New Orleans evacuees we’re seeing are African-American? I suppose our viewers have noticed, too, that the provocative looting footage we’re airing and re-airing seems to depict mostly African-Americans.
If the reporter on the ground couldn’t answer the questions, a researcher could have Nexised the New Orleans Times-Picayune five-parter from 2002, Washing Away, which reported that the city’s 100,000 residents without private transportation were likely to be stranded by a big storm. In other words, what’s happening is what was expected to happen: The poor didn’t get out in time.
This is a tough call. Looters are running wild in New Orleans. But, the mayor’s decision is wrong. On Wednesday night, Mayor Ray Nagin ordered 1,500 police officers, most of the city’s force, to turn from search and rescue to stopping the looting. People are more important than property. Even if looters strip the city bare, police, state and federal officials must do everything they can to help the living; not stuff.
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