Found:Article on post Katrina Exploitation that blew me away

Every single person in this world is where they are because of choices. It may be their parents choice to have a child in the middle of the Iraq conflict. It may be the choice of a company to shut down the factories and fire the husband of a wife and three kids. Our choices lift us closer to what we think we want and simultaneously weigh us down with the byproducts. Chasing money robs us of time for friends, family, opportunities we’ll never know. Focusing more on friends and family makes financial situations tighter.

What of the person who loses their job and has nothing to fall back on? Nothing. No savings. A car and bills and a rent they can no longer afford to pay. There is a system called welfare in this country. There are other social programs. Depending on the situation such systems can be a lifeline back to a better place or a life preserver to hold them afloat while they linger and collect paychecks. Abuse of the system is going to happen by its very nature. Does that mean it should be stopped? Is there a better way than such a system?

Politics is seductive. Vote for me and I’ll impose trade sanctions to protect our jobs. Vote for him and he’ll raise taxes because he’s too stupid/inexperienced/the wrong guy. The world we live in is filled by shades of gray. Police are not around because we enjoy the need for law enforcement. Rules and laws are created because without them people with greater power than others have used it to take what they want without a care for the people whose lives they destroy by stealing from them, lying, abusing the society they live in. Americans are not different people compared to the rest of the world so much as the ideals we as a people have chosen have been enforced through our schools, our courts, and the everyday decisions of the people in our government. These ideals are NOT carved in stone. Laws change. Governors, senators, congressmen, presidents change. The men and women we choose to make decisions are either lifting our nation up or dragging it down.

At least, that’s how its supposed to work. When the laws are taken off the books for ‘extreme circumstances’ you see people’s true colors. Pissed off does not begin to describe how I felt when I ran across this article about Hurricane Katrina.

http://www.alternet.org/katrina/56958?page=entire

How did we let this happen? How do laws get brushed off the books and no one hears about it? Sure, FEMA screwed up big time. The government screws up all the time. But how did basic standards- paying people for the work they’ve done, regulating the strings of contractors/subcontractors to prevent the abuse they inflicted in the weeks and months after this vicious disaster continue to be tolerated without clamping down on the problem? What is preventing this from happening again?