[Mb-civic] How the Free Market Killed New Orleans*

[EAN at sbcglobal.net]

How the Free Market Killed New Orleans*

By Michael Parenti

The free market played a crucial role in the 
destruction of New Orleans
and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed 
with advanced warning
that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit 
that city and
surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played 
the free market.

They announced that everyone should evacuate. 
Everyone was expected to
devise their own way out of the disaster area by 
private means, just as
the free market dictates, just like people do when 
disaster hits
free-market Third World countries.

It is a beautiful thing this free market in which 
every individual
pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby 
effects an optimal
outcome for the entire society. This is the way the 
invisible hand works
its wonders.

There would be none of the collectivistic regimented 
evacuation as
occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful 
hurricane hit that island
last year, the Castro government, abetted by 
neighborhood citizen
committees and local Communist party cadres, 
evacuated 1.3 million
people, more than 10 percent of the country's 
population, with not a
single life lost, a heartening feat that went largely 
unmentioned in the
U.S. press.

On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane 
Katrina, it was already
clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American 
lives had been lost
in New Orleans. Many people had "refused" to 
evacuate, media reporters
explained, because they were just plain "stubborn."

It was not until Day Three that the relatively 
affluent telecasters
began to realize that tens of thousands of people had 
failed to flee
because they had nowhere to go and no means of 
getting there. With
hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call 
their own, they had
to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the 
free market did not
work so well for them.

Many of these people were low-income African 
Americans, along with fewer
numbers of poor whites. It should be remembered that 
most of them had
jobs before Katrina's lethal visit. That's what most 
poor people do in
this country: they work, usually quite hard at 
dismally paying jobs,
sometimes more than one job at a time. They are poor 
not because they're
lazy but because they have a hard time surviving on 
poverty wages while
burdened by high prices, high rents, and regressive 
taxes.

The free market played a role in other ways. Bush's 
agenda is to cut
government services to the bone and make people rely 
on the private
sector for the things they might need. So he sliced 
$71.2 million from
the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 
44 percent
reduction. Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and 
upgrade the system of
pumping out water had to be shelved.

Bush took to the airways and said that no one could 
have foreseen this
disaster. Just another lie tumbling from his lips. 
All sorts of people
had been predicting disaster for New Orleans, 
pointing to the need to
strengthen the levees and the pumps, and fortify the 
coastlands.

In their campaign to starve out the public sector, 
the Bushite
reactionaries also allowed developers to drain vast 
areas of wetlands. 
Again, that old invisible hand of the free market 
would take care of
things. The developers, pursuing their own private 
profit, would devise
outcomes that would benefit us all.

But wetlands served as a natural absorbent and 
barrier between New
Orleans and the storms riding in from across the sea. 
And for some years
now, the wetlands have been disappearing at a 
frightening pace on the
Gulf' coast. All this was of no concern to the 
reactionaries in the
White House.

As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like 
to say that relief
to the more unfortunate among us should be left to 
private charity. It
was a favorite preachment of President Ronald Reagan 
that "private
charity can do the job." And for the first few days 
that indeed seemed
to be the policy with the disaster caused by 
Hurricane Katrina.

The federal government was nowhere in sight but the 
Red Cross went into
action. Its message: "Don't send food or blankets; 
send money." 
Meanwhile Pat Robertson and the Christian 
Broadcasting Network---taking
a moment off from God's work of pushing John Roberts 
nomination to the
Supreme Court---called for donations and 
announced "Operation Blessing" 
which consisted of a highly-publicized but totally 
inadequate shipment
of canned goods and bibles.

By Day Three even the myopic media began to realize 
the immense failure
of the rescue operation. People were dying because 
relief had not
arrived. The authorities seemed more concerned with 
the looting than
with rescuing people. It was property before people, 
just like the free
marketeers always want.

But questions arose that the free market did not seem 
capable of
answering: Who was in charge of the rescue operation? 
Why so few
helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard 
rescuers? Why did it
take helicopters five hours to get six people out of 
one hospital? When
would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where 
were the feds? The
state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the 
buses and trucks? the
shelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies 
and water?

Where was Homeland Security? What has Homeland 
Security done with the
$33.8 billions allocated to it in fiscal 2005? Even 
ABC-TV evening news
(September 1, 2005) quoted local officials as saying 
that "the federal
government's response has been a national disgrace."

In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) 
irony, offers of
foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany and 
several other nations.
Russia offered to send two plane loads of food and 
other materials for
the victims. Predictably, all these proposals were 
quickly refused by
the White House. America the Beautiful and Powerful, 
America the Supreme
Rescuer and World Leader, America the Purveyor of 
Global Prosperity
could not accept foreign aid from others. That would 
be a most deflating
and insulting role reversal. Were the French looking 
for another punch
in the nose?

Besides, to have accepted foreign aid would have been 
to admit the
truth---that the Bushite reactionaries had neither 
the desire nor the
decency to provide for ordinary citizens, not even 
those in the most
extreme straits. Next thing you know, people would 
start thinking that
George W. Bush was really nothing more than a 
fulltime agent of
Corporate America.

-------
Michael Parenti's recent books include 
Superpatriotism (City Lights) and
The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), both 
available in
paperback. His forthcoming The Culture Struggle 
(Seven Stories Press)
will be published in the fall. For more information 
visit:
www.michaelparenti.org.




This message has been brought to you by ZNet 
(http://www.zmag.org). Visit our site for 
subscription options.