Tinotopia

Here is a first-person account of the aftermath of the New Orleans flooding that showed up today on the Daily Kos.

I’m not sure how true it is; on DK they aren’t even sure of its provenance, so I’m taking it with a grain of salt for now. One of the writers credited has an unusual name, and to judge from Google she is a paramedic and a labor-union rabble-rouser from San Francisco; the other has a name too common for Google to be very helpful. Some of the conclusions drawn are glib, to say the least (Racism!!1; Bush!!!11; Iraq!!!!1; etc.), but the rest of the story is interesting and insightful, and nothing really conflicts with anything I’ve heard elsewhere.

After having their buses commandeered and being kicked out of their hotels, the band of hurricane victims of which the writer was a part wandered from Superdome to Convention Center to Police HQ, only to be turned away at each place, often (according to the story) with lies or hostility. Eventually, they set up camp in the middle of the I-10:

Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. “Taking care of us” had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, “Get off the fucking freeway”. A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of “victims” they saw “mob” or “riot”. We felt safety in numbers. Our “we must stay together” was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

The writers seem to be trying hard to make a point about communitarian-ness (‘Now secure with the two necessities, food and water; cooperation, community, and creativity flowered’), but I see a story of typical American ingenuity and inclusiveness at work — and then thwarted by the state. If the story is true, it belongs next to the tale of Jabbar Gibson as an example of the merits of self-reliance and ad-hocracy.

UPDATE: Apparently this story is originally from here, where there’s also this note:

Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics frorm California that were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans. Larry Bradsahw is the chief shop steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790; and Lorrie Beth Slonsky is steward, Paramedic Chapter, SEIU Local 790.[California]

Now that American IT jobs are fleeing overseas, more American geeks are themselves looking to do work outside the country. This is a challenge, of course, because few countries are as welcoming of immigrants or ‘guest workers’ as is the United States.

And to make things worse, the U.S. government is apparently prosecuting people who do work overseas that the government doesn’t like. Like, for instance, arranging computer security for online casinos.

A recent New York Times article reports that US prosecutors are beginning to use the federal aiding and abetting statute to investigate and potentially prosecute those who, through perfectly lawful activities, assist online gaming companies that flout US law. This includes banks, broadcasters, ISPs and advertisers who help these casinos get their message out.

Thank goodness we’ve got the federal government on the job, helping to make sure that people don’t gamble online. And thank goodness the world is at peace and there are no other things that the government could be doing with these resources. Imagine: if we were, say, under threat from a loose coalition of fascist theocrats determined to destroy western civilization, the feds might have to go soft on gambling. And then where would we be?

While Mayor Tony Williams makes speeches about how he wants to attract 100,000 new residents to Washington, D.C., the rest of the city’s government goes on giving people more reasons to not come into the city at all, even for a visit. Washington Post:

The District government has begun issuing $100 tickets to vehicles with out-of-state license plates that are repeatedly parked overnight on city streets, under the presumption that they belong to D.C. residents who have not registered their vehicles in the city.

The city patrols the streets between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., and records out-of-state license numbers. If your non-DC vehicle is spotted three times, you get a ticket. The article doesn’t say anything about what happens if your vehicle is spotted in three wildly differing places, but I’d imagine you get a ticket anyway; DC is not known for law-enforcement subtlety.

The purpose is to force Washington residents to comply with the law that says that they’ve got to register their cars with the city within thrity days of moving to DC.

Most places don’t have a problem with people refusing to register their cars locally, but the DC government goes out of its way to make the process as difficult, expensive, and unattractive as possible. (Progress is being made, though: soon there will be two places in the city where you can get a safety inspection done — but still only during business hours Monday through Friday.)

And if you do the right thing and register your car locally, you’re putting yourself at the mercy of the DC government’s mind-boggling incompetence. Not long ago, the city changed its registration-renweal and parking-permit stickers. There was an article in the Post, and the police and parking enforcement people were told about these changes. They went on writing tickets on perfectly legal cars for months, because they were not displaying the old-style stickers and permits.

Noam Stopak, 44, of Bethesda said he visits his fiancee in Northwest Washington at least every other weekend. He said when he got a warning ticket on March 8, he called the DMV to explain that he is not a D.C. resident.

A DMV official told him that it didn’t matter where he lived, he said. “I offered to show them my mortgage, my water bill, and they said it doesn’t matter. They said, ‘You can register your car in the District’ . . . or I could just stop coming to the District.”

Ah, yes. It’s really a pity that there are not other problems facing the government in DC, like say failing schools, a rising crime rate, or a total lack of civil order in the streets in certain neighborhoods at night. If DC were faced with any of those things, it might not have time and money to waste on discouraging the middle class from visiting the city.

A few years ago, the big news story was that the government was effectively paying TV networks for weaving anti-drug messages into their programs. Basically, if your programming had enough anti-drug messages in the story itself, you didn’t have to provide the government with free ad time for their own anti-drug ads.

I’ve never been able to find the government’s guidelines for what constitutes an acceptable level of anti-drug hysteria in this program, but I have stumbled onto the next best thing: The CDC’s “Resources for TV Writers and Producers“. The idea is that the CDC would like to see more pro-health messages on TV, and they want to make it as easy as possible for the people who make TV to make this happen. The CDC has a website packed full of interesting script tips and case examples, such as this one for chicken pox:

A young teacher who never had chickenpox was exposed to several children in her classroom with chickenpox. She ultimately comes down with the disease and dies.

There’s an interesting article on National Review Online about the Winona Ryder shoplifting case, scheduled for trial Real Soon Now.

Particularly interesting is that it seems that the facts of the case are not much like anything the DA’s office has been saying.