Mover Mike

I am going to take exception with an article written by Doug Saunders in The Globe & Mail, a British newspaper. In Nasty, brutish — society's net snaps Saunders was appalled by images from New Orleans. You know the ones!

At one point yesterday, as a helicopter-mounted camera showed a teeming swell of furious, gun-toting Louisiana residents mobbing a busload of supplies, a stunned British TV anchor spoke his mind on the air: "I'm having trouble believing that we're watching the continental United States of America. I mean, it looks like Rwanda."

Saunders opines

...the large U.S. cities of the South have a very different sort of group psychology, in which faith in individual fortune replaces the fixed social roles that keep other places aloft during crises.

In U.S. cities like New Orleans, in the analysis of the American-British organizational psychologist Cary Cooper, social cohesion depends on a shared belief that individual hard work, good luck and God's grace will bring a person out of poverty and into prosperity. But those very qualities can destroy the safety net of mutual support that might otherwise help people in an emergency.

"Fear itself motivates people in the U.S. — the fear that you could lose everything," Prof. Cooper said in an interview yesterday from his office at the University of Lancaster. "That creates the best in American society, the inventiveness, but the moment the net is pulled out, it becomes a terrible jungle."

He says looting did not occur in Indonesia and Sri Lanka after the Tsunami, or in the polarized society of Montreal after the ice storm. It didn't occur in New York after 9/11 or the floods in the Dakotas. Why did it occur in New Orleans? He says it is because we are too individualistic, too self reliant, too reliant on hard work. That's BS!

Let's say it! Those disasters he points to were not in African-American communities. Cosby has talked about this. The politicians and black leaders have failed this once proud community. They are not self reliant. They are waiting for the government to get them out of their misery. They are victims and victims can't figure out how to help themselves. Self-reliant people would have followed their elected officials advice to get out of town. They would have organized a means to take care of their own without waiting for instructions. I have been listening to Ringside's song Dreamboat 730. These four lines typify the problem and appeal of gangs:

Come aboard – lets go dreaming
No one’s gonna love you like we love you
We understand you’ve been mistreated
Been kicked around – we’ll get even

You think I'm kidding about politicians letting these people down. The Democrats have the African-American voters in their hip pocket. Look who the leaders of Lousiana are:

New Orleans has a Democrat Mayor, a Democrat City Council, and a Democrat Chief of Police. Louisiana has a Democrat Governor, a Democrat Lt. Governor, a Democrat Attorney General; 24 of 39 Louisiana State Senators are Democrat, 67 of 105 Louisiana State House Representatives are Democrat, there's a Democrat Representative in the House from New Orleans, and one of two Senators in the Senate is a Democrat.

We need more emphasis on self reliance not less. We need to stop thinking of the government as our parents, because really, the government will always fail us. It will never anticipate. We will always be left asking, "How could this happen? Why didn't the government do something?" Government is made up of people who don't get ahead by being self reliant. They exist to get along. The peg that is higher on the board of life gets pounded down!

Speaker Hastert says “It doesn’t make sense” to rebuild New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

George Friedman founder of Stratfor writes in an amazing piece New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize (available at Le Metropole Cafe, free trial subscription available)

During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize.

(Photo: A cargo vessel appears to swallow St. Louis Cathedral in the heart of New Orleans' French Quarter as it steams down the Mississippi River. Encircled by levees, most of New Orleans lies below sea level—as much as eight feet (two meters) below in places—due to subsidence and compaction of the underlying soil. In the event of a major hurricane, this "soup bowl" geography could spell disaster for the city, which would have to be pumped out if it flooded. (Robert Caputo))

New Orleans isn't just of oil importance, which has been adequately described, but the largest port in the US and the 5th largest in the world. Through the port flows our bounty collected from the fertile heartland to world markets. And through the port flows the raw materials needed for our industry like steel for General Motors. There may be alternative ways to get these things to market, but the river is the cheapest on a value to weight ratio.

Friedman argues what has been lost is more than the infrastructure and the port facilities, which can be quickly repaired, but the workforce.

The oil fields, pipelines and ports required a skilled workforce in order to operate. That workforce requires homes. They require stores to buy food and other supplies. Hospitals and doctors. Schools for their children. In other words, in order to operate the facilities critical to the United States, you need a workforce to do it — and that workforce is gone. Unlike in other disasters, that workforce cannot return to the region because they have no place to live. New Orleans is gone, and the metropolitan area surrounding New Orleans is either gone or so badly damaged that it will not be inhabitable for a long time.

The strategic importance of New Orleans to a properly functioning US economy seems to have been taken for granted and IMO not reflected adequately in stock market action. Speaker Hastert, Friedman says

It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist.

Update:

What's going on here! Remember this story from New Orleans after the hurricane: "

John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard. [One] said, 'We want that generator.' [Carolan responded] 'I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum . . . they scattered. You've heard of the law west of the Pecos? This is the law west of Canal Street.'"

From the NY Times on September 8, we read that police are confiscating weapons from residents of New Orleans, even if you have a permit to carry.

No civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms, said P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police. "Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons," he said.

But that order apparently does not apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property. The guards, employees of private security companies like Blackwater, openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles

I'm sure John Carolan would agree with this Larry Elder column from September 5, How many do guns defend?

Criminologist and researcher Gary Kleck, using his own commissioned phone surveys and number extrapolation, estimates 2.5 million Americans use guns for defense each year. He further found 1 in 6 of those who used guns defensively believed someone would have died if they had not resorted to their firearms. That corresponds to approximately 400,000 of Mr. Kleck's estimated 2.5 million defensive gun uses. Mr. Kleck points that if only a tenth of the people were right about saving a life, the number saved annually by guns would still be at least 40,000. (emphasis added)

We only read about the deaths from guns. Elder says

In 2003, we know 12,548 people died through nonsuicide gun violence, including homicides, accidents and cases of undetermined intent.

I'll take the 40,000 saved vs. 12,548 dead any day of the year. It borders on insanity to give up your gun!

You know you can't depend on the government to protect you when the mayor of Montgomery, according to WSFA12, says Buy a gun

"I've said it one time. Get a gun and teach our folks how to use them and shoot 'em."