South Dakota News
This text was written by a county emergency manager out in the western part of South Dakota shortly after the recent snow storm.
WEATHER BULLETIN

Up here in the Northern Plains we just recovered from a Historic event may I even say a "Weather Event" of "Biblical Proportions" --- with a historic blizzard of up to 44" inches of snow and winds to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed ALL roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10's of thousands. FYI:

* George Bush did not come....
* FEMA did nothing....
* No one howled for the government...
* No one blamed the government...
* No one even uttered an expletive on TV...
* Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit...
* Our Mayor's did not blame Bush or anyone else...
* Our Governor did not blame Bush or anyone else either...
* CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, or NBC did not visit - or report on this category 5 snow storm...
* Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.....
* No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House....
* No one looted....
* Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something...
* Nobody expected the government to do anything, either...
* No Larry King, No Bill O'Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and
*No Geraldo Rivera
* No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand, No Hollywood types to be found and
* Nope, we just melted the snow for water...
* Sent out caravans of SUV's to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars...
* The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn't ask for a penny...
* Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snow bound families...
* Families took in the stranded people - total strangers...
* We Fired up wood stoves...
* Broke out coal oil lanterns or coleman lanterns...
* We put on an extra layers of clothes because up here it is "Work or Die"...
* We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for 'sittin at home' checks...
* Even though a Category "5" blizzard of this scale has never fallen this early, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves...
"In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% most of the world's social problems evaporate."

Interesting

This is my favorite line.

interesting to note the most northern part of South Dakota is only about 45 degrees north

Is South Dakota being punished for the evactuation of the shuk in Chevron?

A different breed of people live in certain parts of the USA, self reliant and of the non-whining variety too.
They roll with punches.

Uh huh, it's all down to the people.
Nothing to do with people being trapped by floodwaters, having their houses blown down, etc.

Exactly. Nothing to do with the disasters. Its how you react to them. Some have been raised on the liberal attitude of dependency;that the Government owes you everything since you are helpless with out it.While others are raised on self reliance and a 'can do' attitude! With the former,the disaster becomes so much more pronounced.

and what lies at the root of their different breeding?

I think you might find that some disasters are worse than others and that it's not just about being "dependent".
Katrina destroyed enormous swathes of New Orleans. It effectively requires a government solution--it's not about replacing some windows and putting up new light poles.

BTW, the irony of your statement is that farmers (especially large scale ones, and that's mostly what's left these days) are more dependent on the government than any Southern welfare mother. Farm supports are one of the largest "entitlement" programs in the federal budget. You know why all soft drinks are made with high fructose corn syrup? US government price supports on corn.

i guess this county emergency manager wasn't told about his governor's communication with the federal government or FEMA's recommendation for the allocation of federal funding to cover about 3/4 of the damage and the agency's on-the-scene recovery assistance

True Katrina was a particularly devestating disaster,however the reaction of those affected demonstrated years of Gov't dependency on the most basic levels. They couldn't think for themselves!


The difference is obvious. Those farmers are working, not getting hand outs. The government happens to be their biggest customers.
BTW,the Mayor and Governor were not "southern welfare moms". This dependency on government conditioning adversely effects those in charge as well.

it's easier to work when there's still a place that exists to work at. five months later that still doesn't exist for a lot of new orleans' natives.

sort of. taxpayer bailouts are used to remedy overproduction, which is a product of other federal agricultural "handout" programs - direct subsidies, price supports, marketing assistance schemes, etc. - that are as much a holdover of 1930s federal government largesse as TANF (aka "welfare").

They're getting paid to produce items no one wants. Whatever happened to free enterprise?
I just find it very ironic that the supposedly-capitalist, pro-free trade right wing, hater of the dependency culture, is busy adding to farm price supports rather than reducing them.
(And if you really think there's no dependency culture in agribusiness, you need to read more.)