Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Katrina and Money

Apparently there have been racial differences in police searches around American according to a report published by the Justice Department.
The results were apparently going to be tampered with but the author, a Mr. Greenfield, refused to change the data or censor the report to make the politicians in charge happy.
The report noted that it had "uncovered evidence of black drivers having worse experiences - more likely to be arrested, more likely to be searched, more likely to be have force used against them - during traffic stops than white drivers."
Mr. Greenfield has been forced to move to another job as a result of his refusal to cover this information up.
At this time Hurricane Katrina has devastated large parts of the Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana coastlines.
Most not ably it has nearly destroyed New Orleans.
New Orleans is a predominately black city.
The response from Washington has been agonizingly slow. Even though nearly 18 percent of American oil production has been impacted and nearly 25 percent of American refining capacity has been affected by the disaster the response has been lackluster.
The levees in the center of the city have failed and due to no small coincidence that money to maintain them has been reduced in recent years.
Millions of Americans have seen their lives disrupted and the nation’s fuel supply has been threatened. The response has been slow and fraught with incompetence already.
Where hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and equipment and personnel were made nearly immediately available to the predominantly white and Cuban neighborhoods impacted in Florida (where the President’s brother is governor) the process for relief and action has stagnated in the Gulf Coast region and predominantly black and lower class neighborhoods.

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