Self-Reliance
This from the Denver Post:
This text is from a county emergency manager out in the central part
of Colorado after today's snowstorm.
WEATHER BULLETIN
Up here, in the Northern Plains, we just recovered from a Historic
event--- may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions"
with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90
MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded
hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated
scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands.
FYI:
George Bush did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
No one even uttered an expletive on TV.
J esse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.
Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else, either.
CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5
snowstorm.
Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No
Geraldo Rivera.
No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found.
Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow-engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments
delivered it to the snowbound families.
Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.
We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die".
We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out
of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that
trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks.
Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen
this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves.
"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about
48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world's social problems
evaporate."
It does seem that way, at least to me.
posted by Pat Campbell @ 5:12 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
How True!!! I could say more, but I would just upset the pro-diversity wackos.
That was a great commentary to the people out there.
I live 30 miles East of the Twin Towers (of late). Long Island is 275 miles long and East of N.Y.C. Volunteers from the most distant towns of Montauk Point and Orient Point showed up with their rescue units on 9/11, and shortly afterward.
For the most part your citizens are more self reliant just because your population is sparce and government services are fewer. On the other hand, in the Northeast and the Southeast and areas such as the Gulf Coast the population is that much denser and the self-reliant individual is replaced with persons with professional training that are paid through taxes to protect and preserve our lives and our property.
The people are paying taxes for this kind of protection and any others when the need is there. If none was available they would find a way to survive without that help as many have for hundreds of years.
Snow would likely be melted down and drinkable in Colorodo, however water from pipelines broken in the Gulf Coast area were contaminated by the wells flooded by seawater and further contamination occured from cess pools flooding and coffins floating in the waters. These people were left without potable water or edible food since the power had been destroyed as well.
Would you not hope and pray that your family and livestock could be reached for them to be fed rather than die a horrible death?
People are self-reliant as long as they do not depend on others for their protection of life and their property, once that protection is turned over to professionals those individual attributes are reduced severely. With no help coming, they become helpless. Given hope they will survive via self-reliance.
Actually, very little of this is true. President Bush DID declare a State of Emergency for 14 counties on January 8th, more than a week after the second storm ended. Four days later, January 12th (nearly two weeks after the second storm), he added 6 more counties to the list. The 'prompt' response does sound a bit like Katrina, don't you think?
Additionally, FEMA has granted Emergency Relief Funding. Not, mind you for those of us that lost power, couldn't get to work, or had no means to acquire food (the grocery shelves were virtually empty anyway), but to hundreds, if not thousands of cattle ranchers. Ranchers, mind you, are not typically considered 'liberal', (or poor for that matter), yet they were the ones seeking, make that demanding, aid. You would think that a cattle rancher in Colorado (we get lots of snow), might have their own contingency plans for protecting their cattle in a snow storm, but instead they're demanding aid from the feds.
Consider the smallest cattle ranches in Colorado are maybe 500 acres, but typically they are much larger, say 5,000 to 10,000 acres. More times than not, they have low or no cost grazing permits on land you and I own to feed their cattle.
As you might imagine, land in Colorado is not cheap. An acre near where I live will typically cost between $250,000 and a $1,000.000, with no improvements. Granted, ranch land maybe cheaper, but only until the rancher decides to parcel it up and sell it off to developers. Point being, ranchers are anything but poor. Their land assets alone qualify them as multi-millionaires, yet they are the ones demanding federal aid. Does anyone think for a second that if they receive the aid, we won't see a steep rise in the cost of beef at the grocery, blaming it on the storms?
When you raise cattle in Colorado there are inherent risks. One with an elementary school education might deduce that snow storms, even blizzards, might be one of them. Apparently, where funding is really needed is in the public school systems of the ranching communities.
While its true Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, nor Nancy Pelosi came to survey the "damage," several diplomats did visit, (Cheney for one), flying over the plains without setting foot. They did NOT visit those who lost their jobs to Indians, Chinese and Pakistanis in the last six years now living in shelters that couldn't get back to the shelters when the storm hit, many of which were either hospitalized with frostbite and/or hypothermia, or simply died from exposure. No, they only visited the cattle and the wealthy ranchers that own them in their cozy ranch homes that 99% of Americans could not afford.
While I don't mind the stab at the federal governments' ability (or lack their of) to protect the homeland as was the case with Katrina, I do take objection to the twisting of facts to make a political point as this letter clearly attempts to do. But hey, at least were protecting the homeland of millions of Shia and Sunni that deplore us, despise each other, and want us to leave. And so far, we've only lost 3,100+ soldiers. Thank God Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, etc., etc., stock has gone through the roof or the war in Iraq would be a total loss!
However, in all of this I digress. A Colorado blizzard in December can hardly be compared to the devestation in the aftermath of a historic storm of the likes of Katrina. We lossed an estimated 5,000 head of cattle. How many human lives were lost in Katrina again?
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