My Tall Ideas

First off this is not an anti Paul Shirley article, although I don’t really agree with him.  However, I think that Paul made a few decent points in his article and that a lot of it does give one food for thought especially about finding a better way for the world to respond to natural disasters.  If you choose to donate money to causes, you have to not be naive enough to think that 100% of that money is going to go to the cause.  A lot of it is going to go to administrative costs.  Wake up people that is just the way it is.   Until someone comes up with a better solution this is what we have to work with.  Now, can we try to make the majority of the money go to the cause, you bet, but it is never going to be 100%.

As far as giving money to beggars, I have to say that I am with Paul on that one.  I don’t give money to them.  I don’t know what they are going to spend it on or if it is really going to help them or not.  But, I will give them food.  I lived in China for three years and have seen real poverty and beggars that are really begging to survive.  Every time I would take leftovers from a restaurant and a beggar would come up to me I would give them the food instead of money.  At least I knew that they were getting to eat.  That at least helped them for that day.

However, I think his so called “letter” to Haiti was not being intellectual at all.  It was just a letter from a cynical smart-ass.  There was nothing helpful or insightful in the letter one bit.  He said that his article was taken out of context when re-posted on other outlets.  They may have left out a lot of the article but not the “letter.”  The letter was included on pretty much every outlet, because it is harsh and there is no compassion for those people whatsoever.  That is sad.  People are dead and starving.  To have the audacity to say what he said in that letter takes a lot of nerve and no heart.  Even now criminals in Haiti are trying to take advantage of starving children by luring them with the promise of food and then kidnapping them for human trafficking.  But, lets not help them at all.  They have only gone through a tremendous shock and their lives and homes have been utterly destroyed.

Most people take for granted how nice we really have it in America.  Yeah… this last year has sucked pretty bad with the economy, unemployment, and housing markets tearing us apart, but we have it a lot better than they do in other countries. The last year we have had in this country is the norm that a lot of people in third world countries, like Haiti, live with everyday.  We have access to better resources for our homes, food for our children, and even though unemployment is high right now there are more jobs available here then in other countries.

Paul talks about how the Haitians are mostly responsible and should be in fact helping themselves.  Do you really think that the USA helps it self?  No, we really don’t if you look at it in terms of money.  Break the United States down by the States.  Do our taxes in Kansas go to help people in California when they have an earthquake or one of their many forest fires?  Of course it does.  What about Greensboro or any other town ravaged by a Tornado here in Kansas?  Other States’ taxes went to help with that I am sure.  Then they just “rebuilt” Greensboro.  But, I suppose those people should have been smarter, as well as most Kansans, and not built our cities and homes in “Tornado Alley”, and that goes for Paul’s family too.  You are able to help earthquake-proof homes but you can’t really tornado proof them.  According to Paul’s little caveman paragraph we should of been smart after the first tornado and just moved away like the caveman next to the river should have done.  But, nope we stayed right here in the middle of it.  In fact Meriden, KS, which is mine and Paul’s hometown, has “historical tornado activity [that] is slightly above Kansas state average. It is 190% greater than the overall U.S. average” (www.city-data.com).  We even have the Humboldt Fault line that runs right through Kansas, and its not very far away either.  It is estimated that it can produce an earthquake of about 6.5 magnitude on the Richter Scale every 2,000 to 5,000 years, and we have no ideas when the last one was.  The one that hit Haiti was a 7.0 magnitude.  Yet we still live here and still rebuild our cities.  Sounds like we would rank up there with the Haitians in this sense.

Let’s talk about when the Federal Government declares a state of emergency and sends in Federal Aid.  Do you think that is all American money?  It may be American dollars and American people you see who are coming to help, but America is in debt remember.  We have money for disaster relief, welfare, education, stimulus programs, etc… because other countries buy our debt.  We use other countries like credit cards.  Those countries are helping us just like we help other countries.  It may not look exactly the same because you don’t see their help to us directly like you see our help to others, but it is the same nonetheless.  They are buying bonds and we use that money for federal programs and to help our citizens.  What would happen if other countries stopped buying our debt or even worse called in our “loan”?  What is going to happen to our country if that happens?  What is going to happen to you and me when our government has no more money for education, paying police, firefighters, or our military?  We might want to think about that before we just go around saying that we shouldn’t help other countries with money and aid.  Because other countries sure as hell help us.

Tags: america, American, bonds, China, debt, donate, federal government, Greensboro, Haiti, Haiti earthquake, Haitian, human trafficking, humboldt fault line, kansas, meriden, Paul Shirley, richter scale, stimulus, topeka, tornado, USA, welfare