Victim Culture

I could write from now until the end of time on the idiocy that the American left and their minions in the media are responsible for, not the least of which is this mentality that people are not capable, resourceful and sentient beings, but helpless, stupid victims deserving of our sympathy; or, at least, our money.

Comes now this story from the AP, headlined "Katrina victims may have to repay money." (emphasis mine)

Those poor souls who died in the storm were victims. The survivors, don't forget, are also victims. I've got to excerpt a pretty big part of the article, but hang in there.

NEW ORLEANS - Imagine that your home was reduced to mold and wood framing by Hurricane Katrina. Desperate for money to rebuild, you engage in a frustrating bureaucratic process, and after months of living in a government-provided trailer tainted with formaldehyde you finally win a federal grant.

Then a collector calls with the staggering news that you have to pay back thousands of dollars.

Thousands of Katrina victims may be in that situation.

A private contractor under investigation for the compensation it received to run the Road Home grant program for Katrina victims says that in the rush to deliver aid to homeowners in need some people got too much. Now it wants to hire a separate company to collect millions in grant overpayments.

The contractor, ICF International of Fairfax, Va., revealed the extent of the overpayments when it issued a March 11 request for bids from companies willing to handle "approximately 1,000 to 5,000 cases that will necessitate collection effort."

The bid invitation said: "The average amount to be collected is estimated to be approximately $35,000, but in some cases may be as high as $100,000 to $150,000."

The biggest grant amount allowed by the Road Home program is $150,000, so ICF believes it paid some recipients the maximum when they should not have received a penny. If ICF's highest estimate of 5,000 collection cases — overpaid by an average of $35,000 — proves to be true, that means applicants will have to pay back a total of $175 million.

One-third of qualified applicants for Road Home help had yet to receive any rebuilding check as of this past week. The program, which has come to symbolize the lurching Katrina recovery effort, is financed by $11 billion in federal funds.

ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann said in an e-mail Friday that the overpayments are the inevitable result of the Road Home grant being recalculated to account for insurance money and government aid given to Katrina victims.

Got that? Skip the melodrama in the beginning and read the fourth paragraph again: this is money that people received that didn't belong to them and that they weren't entitled to. If the bank transfers $1 million into your account wrongfully and you spend it, guess what? You still have to find a way to pay it back.

And then it gets worse, if you didn't think that was a possibility. Some folks got the maximum - $150,000 - who weren't entitled to a penny. In all, $175 million, quite possibly, that needs to be repaid. Funded how, again? Oh, yeah, $11 billion in federal funds.

Let's pause for a minute and reflect on that. $11 billion to rebuild New Orleans (and parts of the Gulf Coast), and we're coming up on, what, three years this summer? The Chicago fire of 1871 burned down nearly the entire city between October 8-10, 1871. By 1873, the city had rebuilt, surprisingly with no federal disaster aid. Fortunes were made (and lost) in those two years, but that's how free markets work. Steel beam construction was a slightly important innovation out of the rebuilding effort, and Chicago grew up stronger and better than it had been before the fire.

I've said it before regarding Katrina: there was indeed a failure of government in getting people out and responding to the storm. But the failure wasn't that of the federal government. It wasn't really even the failure of the state. No, it was the failure of the self, and the absence of self-government; and the continued dismal state of the region is further indictment that a dependent people are as sad a condition as exists.

How has this country lost the can-do spirit of men like Andrew Higgins? And New Orleans, of all places: shouldn't you look to his example?

Katrina's Lesson

I don't watch the news.

I make a point of getting my news from the internet and from conservative talk radio. The local television news is just depressing - it is a virtual obituary, only spiced up to get ratings. And the national "news" shows are thinly veiled vehicles for opinion-forming.

Inevitably, though, you'll come across an article or two that pulls you in no matter how hard you try to avoid it. As an added benefit, some are so blissfully off the mark that it makes my job rather easy.

Here's the real lesson to take away from Katrina...

Imbalanced government is ineffective. When individuals, families, neighborhoods and church communities (not to mention cities, townships or counties) abdicate their responsibilities, another sphere of government must step in. Given the tangible and intangible distance between the largest spheres of government and the responsibilities of the smallest spheres, it is natural that for the State or Feds to respond will take a long time, and then not likely well.

How else could the feds respond? There are 966 (or so) miles between Washington DC and NOLA; even if the feds had a "disaster warehouse" and packed supplies and provisions as soon as the storm hit the city, it would still take fifteen hours to truck the material that distance. For responsibilities of the smallest spheres of government, the most distant spheres are going to be horrible at doing the job that needs to get done.

Commentators remark on how "the government" failed the people of NOLA, and in one respect, I agree. Self-government was entirely needed and wholly missing from the scene when the storm hit the city. I also agree with the knucklehead who wrote the article linked above: the US truly does need change. While some might argue it needs less government, I'd only slightly disagree: we need less external government and more internal self-government.

It is my unwavering opinion that until we work on a proper balancing of the largest spheres of government, people will continue to look to external government to handle the responsibilities that are rightfully the domain of the smallest spheres of government.