L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez nails it talking about class and how the government learned from their hideous response to Katrina and responded vastly better in San Diego.
“We’ve evacuated more people than were evacuated in Katrina,” San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender said Wednesday.
Not only was that ridiculously untrue, but one might argue the evacuations in the San Diego area were made necessary by a lack of firefighting personnel and equipment in a region that shuns taxes and happily sticks outside agencies with the tab when the bill comes due.
Talk about being on the dole.
Also, as Lopez points out in his column and Lefti On The News did in our comments, San Diego still had an operational infrastructure and transportation system, and wasn’t underwater. This makes recovery just a tad easier.
Then, scathingly, he lays into those who said the San Diego repsonse was superior because “we have different classes of people.”
You’d think San Diego’s staunch defenders would be thanking New Orleans for making these improvements possible, rather than all but calling the recovering bayou city a jungle filled with savages who got what they deserved.
But we have different classes of people.
Oh, they have different classes, alright. The difference is not in economic status, however. It’s the political differences. George W Bush and company are making a strong showing in San Diego because San Diego is one of the last Republican bastions in California. Even Orange County is starting to become roughly neutral. San Diego, however, remains Republican for incomprehensible reasons. This is why W and GOP are making a bigger deal of San Diego than OC.
Nevertheless, Americans are so numb right now that they probably don’t realize that FEMA did absolutely nothing in CA. I don’t know why, but people tend to believe boneheads like Arnold and W. We had firefighters complaining that they don’t have resources, and Arnold saying they do because Arnold said that they do, and people are inclined to believe Ahnold.
Tragic.