Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (37650)	9/8/2005 2:54:40 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 360941

What We Saw Was a Failure of Leadership by Walter Bera President Bush, is your summer vacation ruined? For me, it was only a long weekend. I'm that small businessman you keep saying you're helping. If I took five weeks off, my business would fall apart. What about you? How do you think you're handling your job? Your five-week vacation was at your ranch. I saw the photos of you driving a truck and clearing brush. I know you were still involved because you proposed teaching "intelligent design" in the public schools. And you stopped the morning-after pill from becoming an over-the-counter med next to the aspirin. (You know, unwanted pregnancy does give women big headaches.) Was it intelligent meteorology that informed you that God wouldn't unleash a Category 4 hurricane on the Southern red states that helped you win the last election? Secular meteorologists knew Hurricane Katrina would hit New Orleans days before. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and the local FEMA officials ordered a mandatory evacuation. Most people, the estimated 80 percent with the means, fled. Left behind are mostly the poor, the old, the disabled and the black. Where were you? Still vacationing well after the hurricane hit on Aug. 29. The next day, you went to California to talk up what a great war we have in Iraq. I was watching TV news channels and freaking out about what was happening to the beautiful city of New Orleans. On Aug. 31 you finally seemed to wake up, officially announcing the end of your vacation. You recommended that people not buy gas unless they need it. Remarkably, your Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff, disputed on TV that there was any trouble at the convention center, even as we watched it turn into a living hell. Michael Brown, your federal FEMA appointee, was no better. And you defended them. Chertoff said he'll investigate why his "boots on the ground" didn't inform him of the situation. Buy a TV! Brown's FEMA fights with local authorities over the organizational chart, turning away trucks of water from Wal-Mart and preventing the Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel. And you take personal responsibility for ... nothing. Fox News began its disinformation campaign by blaming Mayor Nagin for leadership failure. Sickeningly, I know that the now-formulaic, Karl Rove-inspired personal attacks on people who dare to criticize you have just begun. What now? Thirty to 40 percent of the Southern states' National Guard troops are in Iraq. Their suffering is compounded by loss of their homes, loved ones and jobs. You can order up the rest, but what does that do to your Iraq strategy? I'm glad India is sending blankets to us. That, at least, is a useful response. I am so ashamed that the richest country in the world did not jump to protect and help its poor, its sick, its underprivileged. The TV images showed over and over the cost of the class war you have waged for the last five years. Your party controls both houses of Congress, the White House and soon the Supreme Court. Has a life of privilege left you that self-absorbed and heartless? Aren't you supposed to represent all of America? I hope this tragedy moves the Democrats and legitimate media to finally get some steel in their spines and do their jobs. They have to support, investigate and report on the estimated 1 million American refugees who needed and need the government's help. We should say no to the permanent repeal of the estate (read ultra-rich) tax so we can help Americans who are now truly destitute. Now that Americans realize they will pay more for gas, we should impose a "user fee" on it. You can't just use the high prices from this crisis to pad the profits of your oil-company friends. We can use the money to treat the effects of global warming, like superstorms, and develop logical responses to our energy, transportation and environmental needs. With the South in disarray and an America where your propaganda is no longer in control, are you and your kind afraid of the consequences of your disregard? And finally, President Bush, it is not the private charities' or faith-based organizations' responsibility to fix the South and its now very visible problems of race, class and deteriorating infrastructure. It was, and still is, yours. At least until you're gone. Until then, I have to go back to work. Your failure of leadership has ruined my vacation, too. Walter Bera is a psychologist and the founder of a psychotherapy center in Minneapolis. © 2005 Star Tribune commondreams.org

To: tejek who wrote (37650)	9/8/2005 7:11:37 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 360941

UN hits back at US in report saying parts of America are as poor as Third World I haven't seen the original report, but nothing in the article you quoted lists anything about the comparative wealth of different sections of different countries. I imagine it is true that parts of America are as poor or poorer than parts of the third world, but only very small parts of each, and the poorest parts of America compared to the richest parts of the third world. The richest parts in the third world would for the most part have to be very small parts, not whole states or provinces or cities of any size, more like neighborhoods where the wealthiest live. Child poverty is a particularly sensitive indicator for income poverty in rich countries. It is defined as living in a family with an income below 50 per cent of the national average. Which means it isn't a measure of poverty but rather inequality. Blacks in Washington DC have a higher infant death rate than people in the Indian state of Kerala So one ethnic group, in one moderate sized city has a higher infant death rate than one state that can be found among all the state, provinces, and other political units of the poor third world countries. Certainly its something that reflects poorly on DC, but its hardly supportive of the idea that any significant part of the US is as poor as any significant part of the third world. That includes DC and Kerala. DC is wealthier then Kerala or any other Indian state, despite its record of mismanagement and poor government. Tim