Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

shit shit shit.
Shit.
Okay
Shit.

Takes more than Trashy Fiction.

Did you read Amy’s account? Cause that made me think of that line by Clinton There’s nothing that’s wrong with America that can’t be fixed by what’s right with America.

http://amyedwards.blogspot.com/2005/09/more-stories-from-austin.html

Wow, this is making it to ALL the blogs.  As well it should. I think it should be in every national newspaper, too.  It was featured in today’s truthout.org issues:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090805A.shtml and elsewhere I read that much of the story was confirmed by reporters.

Headline:
Brown Doesn’t Know Why He Was Removed.

The rage keeps on a-ragin’...

Oh man, why can’t I get links to work lately?  Anyway, it was about how Bush signed a waiver to the minimum wage laws today for the rebuilding efforts.

On the one hand, I know that one of the bigger fears of rural central Florida is that Miami will flush out into their towns after a hurricane, bringing a biblical crime wave with them. 

We’ve been through so many hurricanes now though, that we view evacuations as money making opportunities.  The fast food joints all up and down the state arteries are at double staff for the added business.  Theme parks all offer 1/2 price admissions.  Wanna go to Disney on the cheap?  Visit during a hurricane evacuation. 

Thus I believe that the police probably told a bedragled crowd of 400 that they were not going to just spill out into their hurricane ravaged town on foot. 

Until I hear the other side of that story, I will reserve judgement.

As to the hellish, baby-eating law enforcement scum - do I exaggerate the writer’s viewpoint?  I don’t think I do—I know quite a few of the men who are there flying the Blackhawks.  That arrived from Miami two days before the storm and waited out the hurricane in Pensacola (Who BTW you don’t hear bitching about the fact that they got slammed by Cat 1 winds yet again, ten’s of thousands of whom are still homeless after Ivan.)  The guys were in the air before the hurricane had left the area and they haven’t been home or had a day off since the storm. They are sleeping on the floor in what was left of the Customs building.  For two weeks they were scavenging MRE’s and water from relief trucks because their boss didn’t think they might need—you know—food and stuff, working 18 hour shifts around the clock rescuing people whose homes were floating off the foundations.  They were competeing with the Press for gas to keep the helo’s running.  They were not trying to commit genocide and the readiness of the American public to believe anything they read that sheds civil servants in an evil light just lessens my respect for our seriously screwed up educational standards.

If Liberals want to make any progress at all in the battle for the hearts and minds of middles America, all they have to do is STFU and let this unfold.  Half truths and wild accusations are burying the real stories and doing nothing but alienating the very people who NEED TO understand that something is very wrong and action is a moral imperative.

Me?  I think 75% of that story is complete BS.  But then, I actualy know people who are there in the city.  WTF do I know?

The Typos are because I get seriously pissed off when I read propaganda pieces disguised as true stories from the trenches.

Just curious FerfeLaBat, which story or part of the story do you think is BS?

I’m not gonna comment on the story.  I don’t know what, or whom to believe.

A friend of ours travels to Dallas every three weeks for medical treatments, and always stays at a certain Hilton.  The desk folks know him - and when he checked in two days ago, the guy says, “Hey, you’ll love to know who’s staying with us - Mayor Nagin.”  Our friend grew up in New Orleans.  Back at home, we all wondered what the hell the mayor of NO is doing in a Dallas Hilton?

My mom’s putting up a family of five in a condo she owns in Dallas.  Their house is close to the airport in New Orleans, and sustained minimal damage from Katrina.  No flooding.  Can you imagine their relief?

This morning, a friend of the man called to tell him that his house was looted last night, then set on fire.  Burned that son of a bitch to the ground, all because some asshole wanted a freakin’ television set and maybe a hundred bucks worth of cheap-ass jewelry.  Jesus.  They thought they could maybe go back home in a month or so.  Now they have nothing to go home to.  They’re enrolling their kids in school in Dallas and plan to stay a while.  It sure puts a cloe-up and personal face on things, for me, at least. 

The stories I hear are just so horrific - it’s like a nightmare.  But it’s real.

believe the minimum wage is still in effect

Yep, you’re right.  I meant to say “prevailing” and said “minimum”.  See how easy it is to spread rumours and bad information?  It irritates me for several reasons, which I won’t iterate here (that’s what my own blog’s for, right?), but the main gist of my anger surrounds the fact that when people need a fair-paying job the most, they will be nickle and dimed and likely get less than they deserve for some very hard work.  I’m guessing the materials and supplies won’t be costing less than they would have pre-disaster, so why should the labor - the human element - be the line item in the budget that gets cut?  I would also guess that when a contractor is paying less than prevailing wages the quality of the construction will suffer - but that’s just a guess.

On the minimum wage - I wouldn’t worry about people not getting paid well for the rebuilding of the areas hit by the hurricane. In order for contractors to rebuild and get that federal money, they are going to have to go outside the local areas to recruit labor.

Who is going to uproot their life and move to the Gulf Coast for less than minimum wage? Who’s going to do that for minimum wage even?

The answer is NOBODY. They can get those kind of jobs pretty much anywhere in the US. Who’s going to make such a drastic move if they aren’t going to be better off for it?

Just like after the tsunami hit, I guarantee rental real estate in these areas is going to jump drastically in price, because of the high demand by those coming into town to work. No man can afford to pay $1000.00 a month (or more) for a house or apartment for his family to live in if only making $5.00/hr.

So contractors are going to have to pay these people enough money to cover their living expenses, relocating expenses, the higher than normal rent, the higher than normal gas to get to and from the construction sites, etc.

Sure, there might be a couple of idiot contractors who think they can get by with cheap labor, but they’ll get what they pay for, and their labor crews will eventually leave them for the majority of contractors who are going to pay a premium for their labor.

I’d bet good money that there are going to be lots of jobs that pay good money in the construction and related industries down there.

It’s the ONLY way these guys are going to be able to draw the skilled and unskilled labor they need to get the jobs done (and make money themselves).

It’s all about supply and demand. The demand for labor is going to be high, the supply of laborers limited. Thus the contractors will have to increase the pay to bring in more laborers to fill the high demand.

Candy ... FiveandFour ... I am going to do better than dissect the portions of that story that reek to high heaven.  I am going to demonstrate a new way of reading to you.  Perhaps it’s not new, but you only apply it to fiction when you read and not “news”. 

The overlying theme of that piece is ... what?  What point are they trying to convey to the reader?  I made a list as I was reading it of themes and weighted the examples they put in to support some of the themes.

*  Genocide (The eradication of an unwanted segment of the population)
*  Slavery (The callus treatment of a lesser class of humans.)
*  Government is Evil.  (The demonstration that only collectives of cooperative individuals are successful and the idea that government serves only itself and not the governed.)
*  Triumph of the individual over evil.

I could go on.  But the idea is, keep in your head what the writer wants you to think, feel and understand when reading their piece.

Now, since there are no new stories on earth only variations on stories told already, what story does it remind you of?  Me?  I thought I was reading fucking Exodus.  “First we were driven from our hotel ....”  And we suffered.  We found a small piece of earth to call our own in the wilderness and were driven from paradise again by evil overlords ...

Yeah.  You knew already I was a cynical bitch. 

Now.  As to the supposedly solid rendition (by one side of the conversations) of what was said and done by law enforcement to the helpless ones, the trickery, the callus indifference, the total break down of civilization! Umm. No.  Not buying it.

But.  BUT.  The real crux of the bullshit?  Do any of you - ANY of you know any EMT’s?  First responders?  Do you know what they train for?  Do they train to roam about a city in devastation, seeking a way out?  Or do they find the nearest Medical Station and volunteer their fucking services for as long as it takes to help people who need it?

I revise my opinion.  It’s 100% BS.

Now.  I hope I haven’t ruined you for reading anything ever again by my jaundiced views.  If I have, I apologize. 

I just want people who are\were there to tell the truth.  People in charge fucked up.  Mistakes were made.  Identify the mistakes.  Censure or fire the individuals who failed.  Get ready, because Mother Nature could give two shits if you are done cleaning up from the hurricane when she sends the next one.

FerfeLaBat:  So why couldn’t people walk over that bridge and out of New Orleans? What would be the reason for that? Or are you saying that all those other reports about that are lying, too?

Also, when you say that rural Floridians fear a “biblical crime wave” should Miami ever be evacuated, do you agree with that point of view?

Here’s an account I found at Monica’s. They mention the EMTs but also quote officials. . . It’s from the Washington Times. http://washtimes.com/upi/20050908-112433-4907r.htm

Ferfe—does it make any difference to the credibility of the reporter/paper that The Washington Times tends to be staunchly conservative? As in Right of Reagan?

I’m turning it around in my own left-wing brain and I think if a flaming liberal paper came out in support of a conservative point of view, I’d be more likely to take the report seriously. Why? I’d figure that the reporters would search hell and heaven for a contradictory POV/statement evidence….

Oh.

Waterman is a UPI reporter….but still… looks like he went in search of more than just the single account.