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Former consumer advocate turned ultra-right corporate shill John Stossel recently shared his thoughts on the price gouging that occurred in the Gulf Coast area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
In praise of price gouging (full article) John Stossel September 7, 2005 [...]
Consider
this scenario: You are thirsty -- worried that your baby is going to
become dehydrated. You find a store that's open, and the storeowner
thinks it's immoral to take advantage of your distress, so he won't
charge you a dime more than he charged last week. But you can't buy
water from him. It's sold out.
You
continue on your quest, and finally find that dreaded monster, the
price gouger. He offers a bottle of water that cost $1 last week at an
"outrageous" price -- say $20. You pay it to survive the disaster.
You
resent the price gouger. But if he hadn't demanded $20, he'd have been
out of water. It was the price gouger's "exploitation" that saved your
child.
In
the days following Katrina, cable news presented loop after loop of
hurricane survivors obtaining essentials from grocery stores and other
establishments. Reporters and all sorts of television talking
heads condemned these actions as “looting.” Little mention
was given to the institutionalized inequities that have created a
desperate situation amongst the lower levels of America’s socioeconomic
strata — a situation that existed long before anyone had ever heard of
Hurricane Katrina. Stossel’s promotion of hyper-exploitative
price gouging in the aftermath of a natural disaster is simply adding
insult to injury.
Now,
don’t expect too much from Mr. Stossel, the self-proclaimed “scourge of
the liberal media.” I remember watching Stossel’s appearance on “The Daily Show”
in which he proclaimed that the “robber barons” of 19th century were
basically a group of good, well-intentioned and upstanding
Americans. An amazing interpretation of history, even from a
conservative standpoint, isn’t it? And how about his so-called “Stossel Rule?”
This kernel of wisdom states: “For every law you pass, you repeal two
old ones.” I guess that’s what we’ve been missing for so
long...Arbitrary rules formulated by self-absorbed television
personalities. Surely this will protect the interests and
livelihoods of the little people, eh?
But
maybe Stossel is not so arbitrary in his analysis of commodity
exchange. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps
he can show us the “invisible hand” that’s guiding the gougers.
He revisits his scenario and explains just how and why that $20 bottle
of water (and the price gouger) saved your baby:
It
saved her because people look out for their own interests. Before you
got to the water seller, other people did. At $1 a bottle, they stocked
up. At $20 a bottle, they bought more cautiously. By charging $20, the
price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who really need it.
The
people the softheaded politicians think are cruelest are doing the most
to help. Assuming the demand for bottled water was going to go up, they
bought a lot of it, planning to resell it at a steep profit. If they
hadn't done that, that water would not have been available for the
people who need it the most.
Or
perhaps those who “stocked up” might share it with their neighbors and
charge nothing at all! Perish the thought! Let’s wrap this
up with a parting thought from John “Give Me a Break” Stossel:
It's
the price "gougers" who bring the water, ship the gasoline, fix the
roof, and rebuild the cities. The price "gougers" save lives.
No,
Mr. Stossell...It’s not the gougers that “bring the water, ship the
gasoline, fix the roof, and rebuild the cities.” It’s the working people of the world
who do all these things and more. And the gougers simply leech
off working people by forcing them to pay inflated prices for the same
goods that they produced, hauled and distributed.
Are
the price gougers heroes? It certainly is a unique perspective,
I’ll grant that much to Mr. Stossel. Perhaps he can throw a
parade for the gougers...It’s not likely that anyone will show,
though. Who could afford the confetti? I’m sure it would be
around $30 a bag if you have to buy it from a gouger. But on the
positive side, I suppose we’d end up with a lifesaving surplus of
confetti on hand.
The
truth of the matter is, those who hoard essentials in times of crisis
and then demand exorbitant prices from the sick and suffering are not
heroes at all. It is far more accurate to say that these people are the
very bane of humanity. And surely the advocates of such extortion
and exploitation are their partners in crime.
Former
First Lady Barbara Bush has inadvertently given us a window on how the
Bush clan views those who are suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina. On Wednesday, Mrs. Bush visited a bit with evacuees in
the Houston area and she shared her thoughts on how the hungry, sick
and displaced masses have fared thus far:
"What
I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in
Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio
program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."
"And
so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged
anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them." (full article)
Perhaps this explains the Bush team’s general lack of coordination and
slow response to the disaster. Could it be that they felt that
the longer they waited to respond, the better off those
“underprivileged” folks would be?
It looks as if the Bush plan is basically the same whether we’re
talking about foreign policy or domestic policy. Whether you're in Iraq
or the Gulf coast, once you lose your home, your livelihood, your
family and your health, you’re simply “better off.” And by then,
you’re just a breath away from being in that “better place” that they
talk so much about in the Bible.
It
seems obvious that George W. Bush’s nomination for Chief Justice of the
US Supreme Court is an attempt at “legacy building,” so to speak.
Seeing as how Roberts is only 50 years old, we can look forward to a
few decades of hearing the words “Bush Appointee” as a prefix to
Roberts’ title and name. But will the soon-to-be "distinguished"
career of John Roberts be a suitable legacy for George W? Can it
overshadow the intelligence failures that preceded September 11?
Will it
divert the attention of historians from a painful yet necessary
dissection of the war in Iraq? Not likely, I suppose. That
is, unless Roberts can accomplish that which his friend, mentor, and
predecessor William Rehnquist failed to do and finally outlaw abortion
in the US. It’s a pretty tall order
to ask someone to roll back the clock to 1972. Or maybe Bush and
Roberts
would prefer 1952....We’ll all find out soon enough.
Despite all this, there’s a good chance that Hurricane Katrina will
ultimately become the defining moment of the Bush presidency and in a
sense we can
expect this moment in time to become the true legacy of George W.
Bush. Bush now
says that no one could have anticipated the breach of the levees, yet
several studies and reports had foretold of likelihood of such a
catastrophe some time before the hurricane — and remember, the
administration’s response to these warnings was to scale back funding
for projects that were intended to shore up the Gulf coast area.
Thousands of dead and misplaced Americans, a savage blow to the
American economy and a widening gap in America’s racial and
socioeconomic divide...Now that’s a legacy that is worthy of the Bush name.
President Bush has vowed to lead the inquiry into the government’s many
Katrina-related failures. Perhaps he can start by reading the
words of Malik Rahim, the former Black Panther and recent Green Party
candidate for New Orleans City Council. A resident of the Algiers
district of New Crleans, Rahim bore witness to the systematic failure
on the part of local, state and federal authorities to protect
citizens both before and immediately after Katrina's impact:
'This is criminal': Malik Rahim reports from New Orleans
New
Orleans, Sept. 1, 2005 - It's criminal. From what you're hearing, the
people trapped in New Orleans are nothing but looters. We're told we
should be more "neighborly." But nobody talked about being neighborly
until after the people who could afford to leave … left.
If you
ain't got no money in America, you're on your own. People were told to
go to the Superdome, but they have no food, no water there. And before
they could get in, people had to stand in line for 4-5 hours in the
rain because everybody was being searched one by one at the entrance.
I can
understand the chaos that happened after the tsunami, because they had
no warning, but here there was plenty of warning. In the three days
before the hurricane hit, we knew it was coming and everyone could have
been evacuated.
We
have Amtrak here that could have carried everybody out of town. There
were enough school buses that could have evacuated 20,000 people
easily, but they just let them be flooded. My son watched 40 buses go
underwater - they just wouldn't move them, afraid they'd be stolen.
People
who could afford to leave were so afraid someone would steal what they
own that they just let it all be flooded. They could have let a family
without a vehicle borrow their extra car, but instead they left it
behind to be destroyed.
There
are gangs of white vigilantes near here riding around in pickup trucks,
all of them armed, and any young Black they see who they figure doesn't
belong in their community, they shoot him. I tell them, "Stop! You're
going to start a riot."
[...]
People
whose homes and families were not destroyed went into the city right
away with boats to bring the survivors out, but law enforcement told
them they weren't needed. They are willing and able to rescue
thousands, but they're not allowed to.
Every
day countless volunteers are trying to help, but they're turned back.
Almost all the rescue that's been done has been done by volunteers
anyway.
[...]
It's not like New Orleans was caught off guard. This could have been prevented.
There's
military right here in New Orleans, but for three days they weren't
even mobilized. You'd think this was a Third World country.
I'm in
the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, the only part that isn't
flooded. The water is good. Our parks and schools could easily hold
40,000 people, and they're not using any of it.
This is criminal. These people are dying for no other reason than the lack of organization. (full article)
Perhaps it’s fair to say that no country can absolutely guarantee the
safety of it’s people in the face of large scale natural
disasters. But consider that whenHurricane Dennis(another category 4 hurricane) roared through the Caribbean in early
July, the city of Havana, Cuba quickly evacuated over 600,000 residents
to shelters and safe areas. Despite receiving a direct hit from
Dennis, the death toll in Havana was less than 20.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA Director Michael
D. Brown still think they have done a good job up to now. Who is
going to tell these guys the bad news?
Mayor to feds: 'Get off your asses'
Transcript of radio interview with New Orleans' Nagin
Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 11:49 a.m. EDT (15:49
GMT)
(CNN) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin blasted the slow pace
of federal and state relief efforts in an expletive-laced
interview with local radio station WWL-AM.
The following is a transcript of WWL correspondent Garland Robinette's
interview with Nagin on Thursday night. Robinette asked the mayor about
his conversation with President Bush:
NAGIN: I told him we had an incredible crisis here and
that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it
justice. And that I have been all around this city, and I
am very frustrated because we are not able to marshal
resources and we're outmanned in just about every respect.
You know the reason why the looters got out of control?
Because we had most of our resources saving people,
thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old
ladies. ... You pull off the doggone ventilator vent and
you look down there and they're standing in there in water
up to their freaking necks.
And they don't have a clue what's going on down here. They
flew down here one time two days after the doggone event
was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of
goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed. (full transcript)
The FY 2005 budget for the US Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) was $40.2 billion. This includes the budget for Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) who is supposedly responsible for
the coordination and deployment of support and resources following
large-scale disasters. So here we are in 2005 with the Gulf coast
reeling in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and we finally get to see
the DHS in action: While babies and the elderly die of
dehydration and exposure, tens of thousands of newly homeless people
sit waiting on rooftops and parking lots. They have no food, no
water, no first aid and no sanitation. So what are we paying for,
anyway? It looks like plastic sheeting and duct tape are still
the best ideas to come out of the DHS so far.
It’s probably
true that it’s difficult to plan accordingly for a disaster of these
proportions. It’s the response to the disaster that has become
extremely troubling. It’s difficult to look past the distinctions
of class and race amongst the suffering people of the Gulf coast.
Most of the people who sit waiting for aid are poor African Americans
who were unable to leave the area before the hurricane struck.
And attention has now turned not to the thousands of individual
tragedies unfolding along the Gulf coast but to the “lawlessness” that
has followed. Yesterday evening’s installment of “Live and Direct with Rita Cosby”
featured a loop of footage depicting looting at a Louisiana Wal-Mart
while Cosby and her guests (legal officials from Louisiana) ranted
about the way these individuals were behaving. It was almost as
if Ms. Cosby and her guests expected folks to simply lay down and
die in an orderly fashion instead of taking food out from the mouths of
hungry CEOs. Seriously, what should we expect?
Evacuations have
obviously been a priority up to now, although news reports indicate
there are sporadic delays due to “safety concerns.” Interestingly
enough, earlier this evening I saw a spot on MSNBC featuring a report
by Tony Zumbado who is on the ground in New Orleans. Zumbado did
not address the reports of gunfire, snipers and roving gangs that other
outlets have seized upon. His focus was the growing despair that
he observed all day long today amongst the throng of desperate
humanity. When asked about safety and claims that aid and law
enforcement had to leave because of unsafe conditions, Zumbado simply
stated, "It's not unsafe to be here...”
What about
dropping food and medical supplies in places where evacuation is still
difficult? And how about those earthen levees? Are troops
still filling the sandbags or have the orders finally come down to
start stacking them somewhere? Folks, I typically resist the urge
to look for scapegoats, but it’s awfully difficult to ignore so many
missed opportunities, particularly when the human toll has been so
tremendous.
The Huffington Post,
a “megablog” that is generally bland and awful, is actually featuring
some insightful analysis of disaster relief efforts. Among the
most notable writers is Harry Shearer of Simpsons and Spinal Tap fame, who has written some short but decent material on the matter (including a post on the Zumbado interview mentioned above).
Finally,
consider this: President Bush, who is preparing to tour
hurricane-damaged areas, leads an administration that has actively
opposed “attempts to shore up the coastline where Hurricane Katrina
made landfall.” (source)
Further, under Bush’s watch, funding for the Southeast Louisiana Urban
Flood Control Project (SELA) eroded significantly from 2003 to 2005 (source).
It seems as if Mr. Bush thought the money would be of better use if it
was used to blow up things and kill people halfway around the world.
So what’s Dubya
going to tell his suffering constituents when he visits the Gulf
coast? Empty rhetoric doesn’t feed the hungry or cure the
sick. Just ask the people of Iraq.
