House of Eratosthenes

Yesterday morning I was kibitzing about Theon Johnson, Katrina survivor, who is subsisting on a steady stream of Halloween 5, Gothika, “Thrill Me” marathon, and donated food while he waits for an anticipated cash settlement of $1,200 from FEMA over and above what the agency has paid for his hotel. The hotel room goes unpaid now, but he can’t be kicked out because of New York squatter’s laws. He thinks FEMA should give him more money. No mention of why. No mention of any attempt to find work, in fact, his routine according to the article is one of showering, going to bed, showering, going to bed, and beating his meat to Halle Berry.

Well, since Johnson is a male, at least he’s probably not the Katrina survivor who phoned in a bomb threat to the Red Cross in Savannah, Georgia.

A bomb threat has put some Savannah Red Cross employees on edge. Police say an angry woman called in Saturday and told employees she was a Hurricane Katrina victim. She was upset that the Red Cross had done nothing for her and said there was a bomb in the building.

I really don’t know from the article what “done nothing for her” means. I would assume it has something to do with not paying for hotels anymore. The hurricane’s been gone for awhile now, and I find it a tad difficult to conclude she’s stranded on a rooftop somewhere, neck-deep in spoiled water and feces, phoning in bomb threats.

One of the most persuasive things “conservatives” say to promote their cause over the cause of “liberals,” is that sure people need help but the private sector is in a better position to provide it than government. To galvanize this point, they often mention that the results of government assistance, compared to the results of private-sector charities and other efforts, are…bass-ackward. They’re slow, they don’t work, in many cases they achieve the direct opposite of what they’re intended to achieve, and they promote a spirit of complacency, selfishness and badwill. Compared to that, private charities police their own residual samplings of graft wherever they may occur, so that such graft is checked. Government may not be synonymous with graft, but it is not renowned for keeping it in check. Not only that, but private charities get more bang for the buck. It is not in the nature of private charity, to put one guy in a hotel by the JFK airport for months at a time so he can watch Halle Berry movies all day and night, smoke and drink out his ass, and make petulant demands for more cash. Because the beneficiaries of private charity are encouraged to help themselves in order to qualify for the funds, the charities end up promoting goodwill instead of badwill.

Some people like the public-sector approach better than the private-sector approach. I’m not altogether sure why this is. In my four decades on the planet, I have never heard or seen evidence of the above points being deconstructed or addressed, one-by-one, by the public-sector-yes-private-sector-no folks. The argument that comes back, instead, is limited to simple “we-must” type stuff; something about “the Christian thing to do”; all theory, no practice. Nothing to persuade me, not adequately anyway, to reconsider my viewpoints on the less desirable results of government assistance.

Kind of interesting. You’d think there would have been something by now. Instead, all we see are bomb threats, and a bunch of bums chocking their chickens in two hundred dollar hotel rooms to endless dreck from the boob tube, while hotel managers struggle in futility to obtain a legal eviction.

I supported the Red Cross during the Katrina crisis, and I’m glad I did. To the best of my knowledge, they did an exemplary job helping the people who really needed the help, compared to FEMA. I wonder what the woman’s complaint was. My gut feel is if I were to find out, I’d be less than impressed.

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Red Cross Evacuated After Bomb ThreatTuesday, June 6th, 2006

Red Cross Evacuated After Bomb Threat
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006