Narrator Still Missing

It seems quite possible that our narrator has been missing because he (gasp!) has been forced to seek employment. His grandfather would not be pleased, but maybe if his grandfather had been smarter, the narrator's trust fund would have been of ample size. Of course, there is the death tax, but we actually don't mind the death tax, being the limited-redistribution friendly trust-fund liberals that we are.

Anyway, both Marcus (our new, rather conservative, de-facto leader) and the nameless narrator are absent right now. Marcus and a few others went down to Graceland and are on their way back as we speak.

Marcus's absence has allowed the remaining liberals to control the posting in between marcus's visits to Kinkos.

Here's more from the flood in New Orleans from the washington post:

To those who wonder why so many stayed behind when push came to water's mighty shove here, those who were trapped have a simple explanation: Their nickels and dimes and dollar bills simply didn't add up to stage a quick evacuation mission.
--snip--
"I don't own a car. Me and my wife, we travel by bus, public transportation. The most money I ever have on me is $400. And that goes to pay the rent. And that $400 is between me and my wife." Her name is Dorth Dunbar; she was trying to get some rest after days of peril.

Dunbar estimated his annual income to be about $20,000, which comes from doing graphic design work when he can get it. Before the storm, when he and his wife estimated how much money they needed to flee the city, he was saddened by the reality that he could not come up with anywhere near the several thousand dollars he might need for a rental car and airfare.

"If I took my wife out to dinner, it was once a month," he said, sounding as if even those modest good times had come to an abrupt end. "We'd go to Piccadilly's. Never any movies. Really, it's a simple life. I go to work, come home, talk to my wife, go to bed, then back to work again. A basic existence."


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Situations like the one above are a consequence of our economic system and our general priorities as a society. These priorities are reflected in our choice of a president, but the blame for this kind of poverty does not lie with President Bush anymore than it lies with Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan. Sure, poverty has increased under the new Bush but it would not have disappeared under president Gore, for example.

But certainly, our society has revealed that it does not believe that everyone should have the right to flee a natural disaster. It has revealed that this right, like many others, should be bestowed upon those with enough resources to marshal the market forces in the correct direction (that would be any direction that leads out of town in this case). Seeing people die in this flood reveals to the United States what its priorities are.

The basic fact is that given ample resources many of those who stayed and suffered or stayed and died could have been evacuated. Local and state officials pleaded for evacuation, but neither the state or the federal government offered help to those who could not afford to evacuate. Who should they have called if they didn't have enough money to rent a car or take the bus? What should the elderly have done if they had no relatives in the area and were unable to drive or travel alone?



Most states and localities have no answers to these types of questions? Why? It is because most of us have deemed this questions unworthy of being answered. It might take too much time and effort to ensure everyone's safety.

We're sure that Marcus might argue that we could make highways 100% safe if we wanted to. We could legislate a 20mph speed limit and patrol them like crazy to ensure that no one would every die on our highways. We don't do that, however, because it would be expensive and it would sacrifice travel speed. In that situation we have revealed that we have other priorities besides safety. We try to balance out a priority of safety with our other priorities.

So, maybe its possible we could have saved everyone in New Orleans but it would have been too expensive or it would have interferred too much with our other priorities. Now is the time we all need to revevaluate our priorities and decide what kind of society that we want to live in.

We, certainly don't want to live in this one. Love it or leave it? Nah, love it and change it? Well, we have other priorities besides changing our society. For example, we'd probably break our string of seeing every movie that comes to the local theater if we did political work. Or we might have to spend too much of our trust funds and end up getting actual jobs. Frankly, that is so beneath us. It is our place in live to direct the action from the sidelines. It is our purpose to broadcast our opinions and let the marketplace of ideas reject them if it so pleases.