A while ago I sent money to Bob Casey, the presumed Democratic opponent of Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), during the flap over Santorum’s bizarre remarks on the clergy sex abuse scandal. As a result, I get periodic emails from the Casey campaign alerting me to particularly stupid things that Santorum has done lately.
And today’s email contains a doozy: a link to a Pittsburgh news broadcast in which Santorum said the following:
I mean, you have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.
Ah. That makes sense. The total devastation of the city of New Orleans is the fault of those poor souls who couldn’t get out in time. So let’s put them in jail. If we can find one that’s not flooded, that is.
What a jerk.
What a jerk indeed. Infuriating.
I think you intentionally misread this as assigning blame for the disaster to ‘poor people’. Unlike you guys, we don’t assume people have supernatural powers to control the weather. It seems to me the intent behind this quote it is undeniably correct: things would have gone better if there weren’t all the ‘hold outs’ standing on top of their roofs after the (repeat after me) mandatory evacuation order had been given.Let’s try that again. There were people who could have left, but instead stayed after the mandatory evacuation order was given.Now – my near-term question is, after the mandatory evacuation order was given, why did the local government have 200+ busses locked up, unused, in a gated parking lot, instead of ordering everybody they saw to get on a bus the day of the mandatory evacuation order? (Answer – because they are democrats and ordering people to do something is ‘fascist’ – but letting someone in need die because of another’s stupidity is ‘democratic’.)Anyway, Santorum’s point is that the resources that were spent in rescuing perfectly healthy, if stupid, people off of rooftops could have gone to any number of things, like 1) evacuating hospitals quicker, 2) getting food and water to shelters more quickly, 3) rescuing the unhealthy people from their rooftops. All of which they did anyway – just slower.There is and should be a different standard applied to, for instance, the elderly who couldn’t get out of their homes, to the stupid who could but decided to ‘ride it out’ but became overwhelmed. The problem is – once the catastrophy hits, it’s impossible to tell who was unlucky and who was stupid – so you have to work equally hard to save them all. And that’s a bad way to marshall resources in a disaster. No triage is really possible, given the circumstances.So – the obvious question is – what do we do about next time? How do we disincentivize stupidity? With ‘tougher penalties’. Because, in the end, that’s what we’ve got.Admittedly, the left won’t like that kind of idea, since 1) it requires people to take responsibility for their actions or be penalized significantly for not taking responsibility and 2) any general disincentive to stupidity will effect democratic party turnout come election season.
Pfffft.
Perhaps we could just punish people who choose to live in hurricane prone areas? The Senator seems to have a grudge against people who make choices he doesn’t agree with after all.I’ll assume that jrp has never been ordered by the local officials from his/her home before. You weigh the options. You think about the same warning that came the month before and ended up being nothing. You think about the fact that it’s kind of hard to round up your family of four and all of your irreplaceable possessions into a four-door sedan. You realize that even if you did, you might be sitting in traffic when the storm hits, rather than in your home. You think, just how far do I have to go to get a place to stay and how much is that going to cost? You think about the million or more other reasons why you don’t want to have to flee from your home.It’s easy to say everyone should have left after the storm passes. It’s not so easy before hand. These people have already had some pretty harsh punishment for not leaving them. The Senator’s words do nothing to help the situation, however well-intentioned you may believe they were.
If you have the stomach for it, try to read Ben Stein’s defense of GWB here:http://www.spectator.org/util/print.asp?art_id=8693where he says things like GWB “is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been”. Nice hyperbole! I try to take it apart piece by piece on my blog.
Hey David, Is bob casey anything like his father regarding right to life?He was governor of PA and dem party marginialized him.Do you really know where your money is going?Just warning you. God forbid a donation goes to anyone who may have a little problem with abortion.
What do you mean a general disincentive to “stupidity” (I don’t agree with your choice of words, btw) will reduce turnout?Is one of the penalties you’d like to see be making it a felony to stay when ordered away from your home? Thus making it illegal for them to vote or run for office – thus helping fix the election so only “right” (right wing) thinking people can win. And also making it hard for them to get jobs so they can’t get food or health insurance and die off. Is that what you want?I used to be a conservative, still believe in the good parts of it, but the callousness and racism and “you’re on your own – and it is YOUR fault if your poor – you probably should be in jail, never allowed to vote, and allowed to die from lack of health care” attitude sickens me. The liberal “no need for responsibility” attitude also sickens me.I want conservatives that have REAL compassion and common-sense.After Katrina, I’m just not seeing it from the Bush admin.