Sandy brings the Third World to the USA’s urban dependency culture

Recently, at an Illinois State University football game, the do-gooders there organized an “awareness” walk where the college kids would bring a used milk jug, fill it with water, and walk 5 kilometers with it to bring “awareness” to the people somewhere in Africa needing to do the same thing everyday to provide water for their families.

Of course, anywhere there are college coeds, there will be college guys galore.  Some of those guys will be young, naive, and idealistic while others, the alpha males, will be there with an entirely different goal in mind that has nothing to do with Africa.

I remarked to my significant other and one of the VIPs for the event, “In America, we would build a pipeline, aqueduct or just run a hose.”

That’s the difference between the Third World and the First World.

So when a storm hits the deeply blue northeastern United States, where urban dependency is as deeply entrenched as it was in pre-Katrina New Orleans, is it really surprising that it brings Third World living conditions to an area accustomed to being looked after and provided for ad nauseum?

Of course, there were lots of cries – actually DEMANDS – for help from people who should have left when they were warned to do so.  As if these people have a God-given right to make other people risk their health and well-being, and indeed their lives in some cases, to rescue the heedless and irresponsible from their own imprudence.

Others left as advised, only to return to garbage lining the streets, some utilities not working, along with storm damage to their structures.

Barack Obama’s FEMA has done a poor job assisting following the storm.  Yes, Barack Hussein showed up a day or two later for a photo op, but aside from that, life is but slowly returning to normal for many.  At the state level, help hasn’t been much better.  Like B.H.O., New York State’s Governor Andrew Cuomo showed up for a photo op in his 5.11 Tactical pants, while his emergency management director was busy directing work crews to clean up his own property instead of helping the state’s residents.

To his credit, Cuomo fired the self-serving state employee.

Perhaps one reason for the slow clean-up is a lack of state funds, as well as local funds.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New York state on Wednesday asked the U.S. federal government to pay all the costs of cleaning up and repairing damage from massive storm Sandy that tore through the Northeast this week and crippled New York City.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said he is asking fellow Democrat, President Barack Obama, to pay 100 percent of the estimated $6 billion bill, at a time that state and local government budgets remain constrained by a weak economic recovery.

It’s now two weeks after the storm and some affected areas are very much like a Third World nation.

How bad is it?  Imagine Doctors Without Borders helping to provide medical care – in the U.S.A.

Imagine walking or riding a bus for six miles to buy groceries, medicine or do laundry.

A storm-ravaged New York neighborhood struggles to survive

New York City (FoxNews) – After traveling six miles by foot and by bus to bring food home to her five children in Brooklyn’s Coney Island neighborhood, Cherry Barnett broke down in tears.

“I’ve had it,” she said. “I don’t want to live here anymore. We can’t live like this.”

Barnett’s apartment building, called Ocean Towers, was one of thousands in the path of superstorm Sandy, which tore up the Atlantic Coast, devastating homes, flooding basements, wiping out businesses and leaving millions without light or heat. While utility companies, aided by crews from out of state, have slowly gotten power back to much of the region, Barnett and her children endured 10 days in the dark.

The juice finally came back on three days ago, but only one elevator in the three-building complex works. Barnett can get up to her third-floor apartment, but her seven-year-old daughter, confined to a wheelchair, hasn’t been outdoors since the Oct. 29 storm. And there are countless older folks in the building who remain stuck in their apartments, dependent on neighbors and strangers to bring them food.

Down on Surf Avenue, businesses are shuttered, leaving local residents unable to get basic necessities like food, medicine, or even do laundry. Once the sun goes down, residents say it’s too dangerous to venture out anyway.

 

 

“Once the sun goes down, residents say it’s too dangerous to venture out anyway.”

What’s wrong with that picture is a the total dependence of urban dependency types upon others – specifically government and government services and handouts – for their health and well-being.

In the vast majority of the nation, there’s a much stronger sense of self-reliance and personal responsibility for one’s own health and safety and that of one’s family.

Of course, hand in hand with urban dependency is an extremely low rate of firearms ownership and use among the law-abiding residents.

Would-be ne’er-do-wells think long and hard, or maybe even think twice if they aren’t completely retarded, about victimizing those they believe might be able to fight off ne’er-do-well predation with effective and lethal affect.

Unfortunately, generations of urban dependency have led these people away from personal responsibility for securing their own well-being, along with the tools with which to control their destiny.  Independence and self-reliance are utterly foreign concepts to many of these folks.

One resident, an older woman, had the following to say to the reporter who interviewed her.

“It’s very hard,” said Mary Edwards, 69, who lives in the complex. “There are no stores here anymore. There’s nothing. We can even come out of our apartments at night. We need a curfew on Coney Island.”

Her answer to her misery?  More liberty-limiting government action in the lives of residents in the form of a curfew.

Folks, you just can’t fix stupid.

And fixing urban dependency is a tough second.