Katrina Kids: Sickest Ever

ion in the midwest oh and for those of you who do not live with this everyday or have not seen things first hand do not present an argument that you know nothing about. instead why not talk about government waste and where exactly your tax dollars go and then start a discussion on how all that wasted money(golf trips and private jets) could go to humanitarian efforts.

I am one of these kids who grew up in 'a crooked government, corrupt school system (perhaps spell check would assist you) and with racial profiling more than you can imagine. HOWEVER, instead of blaming a failing system, I stopped the cycle. Blaming the government for your own actions is ludicrous. I moved to Houston and felt first hand the support this community and local govenment has given. Some of the people who chose to come here after Katrina kept with the lifestyles they lead in Louisiana, to rob, to steal, to take advantage of the government and live for 3+ years on assistance when there were plenty of jobs to be acquired. Then Ike came, and our community has once again helped each other. However at the time right after Hurricane Ike, the Governor of Louisiana made a joke that Houston and surrounding areas were come to LA to get 'discount hotel rates' and so forth. All of which was untrue. Hundreds of thousands went to that State, the State they had just helped, and were told the Governors comments was 'just a mere joke'. No one ever said that what happened after Katrina isn't sad, but passing the buck needs to stop. It does not take years to re-establish your life. If you have to move to secure another job, do it. If your child is sick, you know. You have options. I know all of this too well and I think its time to move on. I'm one of those who went out and found those options and helped myself, instead of waiting for the government to send a check. Lets move on people!

Research some of the other articles this lady has cooked up. There's a ton of strawman arguments and poorly gathered and compared statistics. She often compares one problem with well research statistics in favor of her story, to another problem where the research statistics were not gathered or carefully admitted.

Like for example, her Medicare article. I know the woes of medicare... my grandmother fights it. However, it's poorly comparing a moment in time where the current usage will run it dry by 2019, but admits this high usage is due to the baby boomers and will lessen as time goes on?

Or her article about mothers working. She carefully hides her intent. She wants us to believe mothers in priveleged families are better off not working, than mothers in unpriveleged families. She makes the point that kids in unpriveleged families do better off if their mother works, and kids in priveleged families do better off if their mother does not work.

Basically she's trying to construct a feminist argument for mothers working, and use the privileged end to attack Palin.

Does it make sense? How? I mean, the way I'm reading it, poorer families have smarter kids if their mothers stay away from the kids. Richer families have smarter kids if the mothers don't leave the kids alone. Do poorer families have bad moms? Maybe that question should be in her article.

This reporter is bad at covering up her huge and often retarded bias. I imagine both sides of the aisle have their eyebrows raised at these articles.

Why does the government have to help everyone? Whatever happened to helping oneself and self sufficiency and taking care of oneself and the pride that comes from being able to do that. This mentality that the govenment owes it to some of the people to recover and be well etc. is not good. It enables people to remain dependant on "someone" or "something" for survival they never learn to care for themselves.

Wow! The sloppy work of the government never seizes to amaze me! Also, what good is a study if no one moves to action. Don't just write about it! Move to action, find the kids and do something about it! The taxpayers need documentation, accounting and a true report of how many people were helped. Write about where the money went and publish that so the whole country can see what is being done with their donated dollars.

how much of the government money is spent to "store" the feilds of new fema trailers in purvis,ms while they are rotting....how much of the money from the auction of these new and unused trailers or the money from the sale for scap could be used to help the children....but instead these trailers sit in the fema ocean ever katrina not being moved or used......and how much of the "katrina" childrens illness are due to the faulty levee system in nola and not the storm? Towns like Waveland, ms still have their court house and chamber of commerse in tents......there was complete devistation on the ms gulf coast and yet when you read about the ill effect of the storm that wiped out many of my freinds home and all but destroyed mine you don't here about it from the perspective of the people that are trying to improve their own situation. I feel sorry for the children but in reality the majority of the adults that have the children that this particular article is talking were not living in great conditions before the storm....Government houseing of any kind should not be the answer to anyones problems......hard work and the knowledge the individual is responsible for their own situation and ultimately the only one that can inprove it...if anything point the finger at the adults who allow their children to live in a place that makes them sick...i personally would move hell and earth to protect my daughter.

What was the medical condition of these children prior to Katrina? What were the causes of their condition? Many children (as well as adults) had health issues before Katrina.

There's two sides to this story.
I've worked with Fema when they helped me. I asked questions, provided answers, etc.

It's true, there was some disorganization on Fema's part. This was mostly them not knowing where their trailers were. However, I have some good answers for that part.
1. Someone registered a need for a trailer under my Aunt's name. My aunt got a call one day asking about her trailer. She did some research, but by the time she found the trailer, the people had moved out. They got the trailer because they needed a place to crash between buying and selling houses.
2. When we bought our house the lady selling the house moved into a Fema trailer on her yard and lived there until she bought another house. When she moved into her new house she left the trailer for some time. During a visit the inspector labeled the trailer under our house because we now owned the house. However, since the trailer belonged to the woman when she moved, she took the trailer. Fema could no longer find the trailer.

3. A lot of people are required to give Fema contact information whenever they leave the trailers. No one I knew in a trailer did this when they left. Thus Fema doesn't have contact information to give to LA state.

4. Crowding in trailers isn't supposed to happen and is against the law. However, people I know shared trailers with people who didn't need one. College friends lived together in the trailer to avoid rent.

what I don't understand Is this country of ours is suppose to be the greatest country in the world. There are thousands dieing just trying to come here legally or illegally. Why is it that our politicians, our government will spend millions to billions of dollars over seas to other countries at the drop of a diome, but when it comes to caring for our homeless, unemployeed and children,adults that get sick due to what our government says is safe homes or trailers to live in,why is it that our government turns its' back on our citizens. Another thing that is so troubleing is the fact that our government will spend billions of dollars to bailout these corporations,these banks, and now the car industry but for our citizens they will only spend a few dollars. Its is these citizens that pay the taxes to our government, that purchase the commodities from these large corporations. What our government needs to do is help and protect our working class citizens. Stop the bail outs, have these foreign government in these countries that we are helping start paying for this help. Our troops are being killed overseas and these governments don't pay a thing for our support. Lets demand that our government and our troops get paid for what it does.

Just another left wing point of view. When I think of the aftermath of Katrina the thing that stands out the most are all off the people who have been raised on well-fare for generations who did nothing but stand there with "help me" signs. Well, what did you expect from this government?

the study was done before the children were moved from the trailers. the article says that the last of the fema trailer camps were just closed. its a matter of follow up care at this point.

This has got to be thesadest story I have read this morning. I am in total agreement with this lady about working to make ends meet. I don't like to see children suffer, but it is time the system changed and make these guys take care of their children. I don't care if they are working for the dump the state of Louisiana need to make these dead beat dads take care of their children. If these father's can't take of their children than the mothers should be given some type of training and child care and get to work. They are not doing their job either by letting these men get away without helping them.

I have one question, how do they know all these kids are so sick if, and I quote the article, "The first step is finding them". If they haven't been found, then how did they do their research. If they did their research on the kids, then they wouldn't need to be found. Any statistics can be skewed to the favor of the people doing the study, by picking and choosing their data collection.