news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20050914/cm_ucru/charitiesareforsuckers
Ronald Reagan sold us his belief that the sick, poor and unlucky should no longer count on "big government" to help them, but should rather live and die at the whim of contributors to private charities. The Katrina disaster, whose total damage estimate has risen from $100 to $125 billion, marks the cul mination of Reagan's privatization of despair.
American Red Cross leads the post-Katrina sweepstakes, quickly closing in on the $534 millio n it took in just after 9/11. But Red Cross spokeswoman Sheila Graham to ld the AP it needs another half billion "to provide emergency relief ove r the coming weeks for thousands of evacuees who have scattered among 67 5 of its shelters in 23 states." Shelley Borysiewicz of Catholic Charities USA, which has raised $7 millio n thus far, also continues to solicit donations: "We don't want people t o lose sight of the fact that this is going to take years of recovery, a nd we're going to be there to help the people who fall through the crack s" What "cracks"? Why should New Orleans' dispossessed have to live in priva te shelters? There's only one re ason flood victims aren't getting help from the government: because the government refuses to help them. The Red Cross and its cohorts are letti ng lazy, incompetent and corrupt politicians off the hook, and so are th eir donors. It's ridiculous, but people evidently need to be reminded that the United States is not only the world's wealthiest nation but the wealthiest soc iety that has existed anywhere, ever. The US government can easily pic k up the tab for people inconvenienced by bad weather--if helping them i s a priority. That goes double for Katrina, a disaster caused by the gov ernment's conscious decision to eliminate the $50 million pittance neede d to improve New Orleans' levees.
Congressional Budget Office expects to cost $600 billion by 2010. So worried are our public servants about the tax burden placed on the rich that they're looking out for rich dead people. This is why t hey've gutted the estate tax that, at a cost of $75 billion annually, wi ll run half a Katrina a year. Trickle-down economists beginning with Mil ton Friedman shout "starve the beast," but while the social programs are put on a diet, the mean and powerful pig out more than ever. Disaster relief is too important to be left to private fundraisers, with their self-sustaining fundraising expenses, administrative overhead (nin e percent for the Red Cross) and their parochial, often religious, agend as. In the final analysis, after the floodw aters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been r azed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they've mana ged to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recogni zing the reality that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, has already allocated $58 billion--over 70 time s the amount raised by charities--to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexi co. Cutting a check to the Red Cross isn't just a vote for irresponsible gove rnment. It's a drop in the bucket compared to what you'll end up paying for Katrina in increased taxes. Granted, in terms of popularity of likelihood of success, trying to make a case against giving money to charities compares to lobbying against pu ppies. The impulse to donate, after all, is rooted in our best human tra its. As we watched New Orleanians die of thirst, disease and anarchic vi olence in the face of Bush Administration disinterest and local governme nt incompetence, millions of us did the only thing we thought we could t o do to help: cut a check or click a PayPal button. Tragically, that gen erosity feeds into the mindset of the sinister ideologues who argue that government shouldn't help people--the very mindset that caused the leve e break that turned Katrina into a holocaust and led to official unrespo nsiveness. And it is already setting the stage for the next avoidable di saster. It's time to "starve the beast": private charities used by the government to justify the abdication of its duties to its citizens.
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