Political Dogs: Red Cross Criticized

Red Cross Criticized

by Dave
9/29/2005 07:49:00 AM

The Red Cross is being criticized again but this time is quite a bit different than the criticisms levied at the charity in the wake of 9-11. This time the criticisms deserve our attention but upon further analysis seem to be rather unfair.

September 11 was quite a bit different than natural disasters. Many people were killed and a relative few injured but by and large those who survived simply got on trains boats or buses and went home. The surviving family of victims as well as other folks needed psychological help more than they needed the basic necessities of life which is what the Red Cross is good at delivering. There was no need of massive encampments of tents to provide shelter and care to survivors. There was no need of survivor kits or any other sort of material. But the Red Cross used September 11 to raise more than a billion dollars. Then it was learned they would use nearly $200 million for much needed capital improvements. We were disgusted as we came to the realization that the organization was not involved in a massive relief effort because one was not needed. Everyone screamed that they were using a tragedy and eventually the head of the organization stepped down and they gave much of what they had collected to other funds for the financial relief of victims' families.

Hurricane Katrina is a different scenario. The only similarity is the Red Cross will likely raise more than a billion dollars for relief efforts. But here there is a need for the kind of stuff they do. Here we do need tent cities. Here we do need survivor kits. Here we do need shelter and care on a scale never before encountered in this country. Yet some organizations see an opportunity to attack the organization because they smell money and they think they can draw a parallel to 9-11. The reports are just now coming out about the size of Americans' contributions to the Red Cross. The media is telling us that the organization has collected more money than all other charities combined.

Black civil rights leaders initially criticized the organization because its membership is predominantly white - not enough black people are on the ground in an official Red Cross capacity. But that's absurd beyond all comprehension. The Red Cross is a volunteer organization. If martians volunteered, they'd be on the ground in the gulf area. There is no discrimination practiced by the organization because they cannot afford to discriminate. They'll take just about anyone. They need you if you are black, brown, purple or pink. So the words of racism in employment have largely died down.

To take the place of charges of racism in accepting volunteers comes a new allegation. Black civil rights leaders are claiming that the Red Cross is somehow delivering more aid to whites than it is to blacks. How can you disprove that? You can disprove this allegation only by undergoing a massive campaign of compiling statistics of what was given to whom and where. The Red Cross has no time for such nonsense. They are giving aid wherever and whenever they can. We don not want them to stop and judge the nature of the aid or to compile statistics to disprove this allegation. And so it will just have to stand for now.

But why are these criticisms being levied? Are they being put out there to rectify the situation and make sure aid flows to everyone equally? No, that's not really it. The reason these criticisms are being levied is because last time the organization was criticized, they caved in and gave much of what they had collected to another organization. And that's what civil rights leaders are hoping to accomplish here. You see if these folks are able to get the Red Cross to give out all they have collected, a lot of that money is going to have to go to the type of organizations which are run by the critics. That money is going to go to where money inside these organizations usually goes - into the pockets of the critics and to fund their lobbying and political efforts. And that, ladies and gentleman, is what this is all about, money.

1 Comments:

Dave,
More on the subject of "Katrina Kriticism" Thought you might like this clip - A bit long but worth the read - I especially like the Kipling poem!
joanfrac

Subject: Canadian Press on Bush

A bit more objectivity than we get from our own press and politicians.

George Bush, the man

David Warren
The Ottawa Citizen

Sunday, September 11, 2005

There's plenty wrong with America, since you asked. I'm tempted to say that the only difference from Canada is that they have a few things right. That would be unfair, of course -- I am often pleased to discover things we still get right.

But one of them would not be disaster preparation. If something happened up here, on the scale of Katrina, we wouldn't even have the resources to arrive late. We would be waiting for the Americans to come save us, the same way the government in Louisiana just waved and pointed at Washington, D.C. The theory being that, when you're in real trouble, that's where the adults live.

And that isn't an exaggeration. Almost everything that has worked in the recovery operation along the U.S. Gulf Coast has been military and National Guard. Within a few days, under several commands, finally consolidated under the remarkable Lt.-Gen. Russell Honore, it was once again the U.S. military efficiently cobbling together a recovery operation on a scale beyond the capacity of any other earthly institution.

We hardly have a military up here. We have elected one feckless government after another that has cut corners until there is nothing substantial left. We don't have the ability even to transport and equip our few soldiers. Should disaster strike at home, on a big scale, we become a Third World country. At which point, our national smugness is of no avail.

From Democrats and the American Left -- the U.S. equivalent to the people who run Canada -- we are still hearing that the disaster in New Orleans showed that a heartless, white Republican America had abandoned its underclass.

This is garbage. The great majority of those not evacuated lived in assisted housing and receive food stamps, prescription medicine and government support through many other programs. Many have, all their lives, expected someone to lift them to safety, without input from themselves. And the demagogic mayor they elected left, quite literally, hundreds of transit and school buses that could have driven them out of town parked in rows, to be lost in the flood.

Yes, that was insensitive. But it is also the truth; and sooner or later we must acknowledge that welfare dependency creates exactly the sort of haplessness and social degeneration we saw on display, as the floodwaters rose. Many suffered terribly, and many died, and one's heart goes out. But already the survivors are being put up in new accommodations, and their various entitlements have been directed to new locations.

The scale of private charity has also been unprecedented. There are yet no statistics, but I'll wager the most generous state in the union will prove to have been arch-Republican Texas and that, nationally, contributions in cash and kind are coming disproportionately from people who vote Republican. For the world divides into "the mouths" and "the wallets."

The Bush-bashing, both down there and up here, has so far lost touch with reality, as to raise questions about the bashers' state of mind.

Consult any authoritative source on how government works in the United States and you will learn that the U.S.federal government's legal, constitutional, and institutional responsibility for first response to Katrina, as to any natural disaster, was zero.

Notwithstanding, President Bush took the prescient step of declaring a disaster, in order to begin deploying FEMA and other federal assets, two full days in advance of the storm fall. In the little time since, he has managed to co-ordinate an immense recovery operation -- the largest in human history -- without invoking martial powers. He has been sufficiently presidential to respond, not even once, to the extraordinarily mendacious and childish blame-throwing.

One thinks of Kipling's poem If, which I learned to recite as a lad, and mention now in the full knowledge that it drives postmodern leftoids and gliberals to apoplexy -- as anything that is good, beautiful, or true:

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise .

Unlike his critics, Bush is a man, in the full sense presented by these verses. A fallible man, like all the rest, but a man.

By joanfrac, at 8:31 AM, September 29, 2005

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Red Cross Criticized

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