Jesse Jackson: Empty the Treasury Into the Pockets of Katrina Victims

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to hear Jesse Jackson suggest that the government compensate the victims of Katrina with billions of tax dollars, just as the government did in the aftermath of 9/11:

Rev. Jesse Jackson is calling for the creation of a Hurricane Katrina Victims Compensation Fund that could dole out tens of billions of dollars to New Orleans flood victims over and above the $60 billion already appropriated by Congress for reconstruction.

"We need a Hurricane Victims Fund to provide resources to the affected people and families, based on the same compensation and assistance formula of the 9/11 Victims Fund," Jackson says on his Rainbow/Push web site.

The 9/11 fund distributed $7 billion to the families of those killed in America's worst terrorist attack, in exchange for a promise that they wouldn't bring crippling legal action against American and United Airlines, whose planes were hijacked.

I must be missing something here. Is he suggesting that Katrina was a terrorist act? Other than having a large number of victims, where's the similarity?

This is liberalism at its very best. Empty the treasury every chance you get into the pockets of people who are victims of one thing or another and don't worry where the money is coming from. So what if others will have to bear the burden for the expense.

I hate to sound heard-hearted, but if you lost everything in Katrina, it is not the government's responsibility to make you whole again. If you had government flood insurance, for which you paid a premium, that's one thing and the government will pay out. But if not, then the responsibility must fall on the individual to purchase insurance to protect themselves. I'm sorry, but if my house burns down tomorrow, the government is not going to step in and pay me if I'm underinsured. Why should it be different with Katrina?

Jackson's underlying message is that the government needs to be "punished" for its response to Katrina, and of course its racism, in order to make sure it doesn't happen again. It's the classic "keep paying until you stop feeling guilty" response. Well, I'm sorry, but it's not my fault, I don't feel guilty, and I'm not interested in making millionaires out of welfare recipients just because they happened to live in a corrupt city that was ripe for the very disaster that befell it.

I've long had a problem with the 9/11 victims compensation fund. I'm not sure I understand why it was the government's responsibility to pay large sums to the victims families (the average payout was something over $3 million). 5,200 other Americans died on 9/11 from other causes and they got nothing. Americans die every day in a variety of ways and they get nothing. In fact, one of my very first posts nearly a year ago dealt with this very issue and referred to an article on "Why the 9/11 Fund Was A Mistake". It's worth rereading today.