So a few weeks ago, I’m listening to this Fresh Aire interview with David Cay Johnston of The New York Times about his book Free Lunch it which he makes the claim that the wealthy are essentially looting the general public via the government to make themselves even richer. Now, some of his claims, I think, are a bit overblown. Still, when he points out that one of the reasons given for the increase in crime in LA is that the police spend huge amounts of time responding to false burglar alarms, you have to admit that there’s something amiss.
So, tonight, I’m listening a podcast of this lecture by Naomi Klein when I’m hit with a big “What the fuck is wrong with people?” moment. In her lecture Ms. Klein describes being in New Orleans shortly after Katrina and being in a car accident. Suffering minor injuries (a gash on the back of her neck, and a concussion), she tries to bargain with paramedics to let her go as they load her into the ambulance. She’s seen the medical facilities refugees are in, and figures that she’d be better off not going there. Before she can successfully make her case, she passes out from the concussion.
When she comes to, she finds that she’s in a very luxurious hospital room (she compares it to a spa). Curious as to where she is and not being able to leave (and also noticing that there’s not too many patients about) she begins asking her doctor questions. When he explains to her that she’s in a private hospital in New Orleans, she says that it must have been chaotic in the hospital during the hurricane. The doctor replies, “I don’t know. I wasn’t on duty.” She’s stunned, since doctors from all over had been heading towards New Orleans when they heard about the hurricane and here was a doctor who was in the area and didn’t think, “Hmm. There’s probably going to be people hurt. I’d better go to the hospital.”
Now, some of the things she brings up in her lecture, I’m not quite certain if her points are necessarily valid, but the overall picture she paints is much grimmer than that story about the doctor. In Argentina, Bechtel is put in charge of a city’s water supply and shortly after that collecting rain water is made illegal. (Bechtel is apparently thrown out of the country at about the same time it’s awarded the contract to rebuild the water system in Baghdad.) She also describes HelpJet which is a charter air service, for those who can afford it, that will evacuate you pretty much anywhere you want to go, if it looks like a hurricane is coming.
I can’t really do her lecture justice in summarizing it here. You just have to listen to it to get the full impact, but one of the points that she makes is that if we rely on private entities to handle certain matters, then there’s no incentive to fix the public entities which do the same, or similar tasks. What got my alarm bells ringing, though, was her account of events during the recent California wildfires.
Blackwater, the firm made infamous for it’s work in Iraq, was not only running around saying, “If you hired us, we could help!” but was lobbying to be put in charge of border patrol. Both these ideas strike me as Really Bad[sup]TM[/sup]. It does, however, get, IMHO, worse.
You see, AIG, the insurance company, offers, for a “mere” $19K/yr, the services of a private fire department. While the wildfires were raging, this department was busy keeping those customers houses from burning down. I couldn’t help but think that if you’d gone up to those customers before they’d bought the policy and said, “We’re raising your taxes $19K/yr to pay for improvements to the fire department.” they’d have had the heads of every elected official involved.
I gotta say that if her point of “The common reaction to a disaster is now, ‘How can I make a buck from this?’” then we are well, and truly, fucked.
