us or them

Why is it that when good old U.S. citizens are in need, the government (federal, state and local) turns the other way and even seems to slide something up the anus without any Vaseline? This is what the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is doing to the folks who have been uprooted from their homes and livelihood as a backlash of Hurricane Katrina. In fact FEMA has issued a statement suggesting that that evacuees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita will loose funding for hotel accommodations.

This means more than 12, 000 families (New Orleans alone) made homeless last year will have no place to stay. To make things worse, people who lose homes can only get federal rent assistance as opposed to their mortgages replaced. I just don’t know why we always fucking over our own kind. Other than the fact that they are mostly African Americans, it just doesn’t appease the senses to try and understand such behavior.

Thanks to U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval these families will have no where to go on short notice, but the government, will no longer have to foot the bill, which has thus far accrued a cost of nearly 275 million dollars for accommodating these individuals in hotels. In total, about 54,000 families were still living in hotels in hard hit states of Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

My problem is that we do not have money for these individuals but we still continue to give – willy-nilly money to rich countries that do not need such assistance. Over the period from 1974 to 1989 alone, the U.S. government gave Israel a total of $16.4 billion in U.S. grants based on congressional research. Since 1949, or the creation of Israel, we have given the Israeli government about $84,854,827,200 according to figures from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. This means that on average, Israel gets anywhere from $3 billion to $5 billion annually from the US – money of which they are not required to pay back.

I suggest that we take this money and provide for our own kind, unless the US is prepared to get some land in Israel and send these folks there. The League of Nations/UN did such in 1949, why not do such now. We just take the Israeli land and it will be all good for these 50,000 plus families. They way I figure it is either us (the US and the citizens of this country) coming first or them. No if ands or buts.