Informed Speculation

Ted Rall is angry. Now, that’s nothing new; Rall is a fine specimen of that breed known as the angry progressive; he’s mad at Bush, he’s mad at America, he’s mad about Iraq, he’s mad about the latest Family Circus cartoon; you name it, he’s hacked off at it.

This time he’s really, really mad, though; he’s angry about Katrina. Again, big whoop, right? Par for the course…the only interesting question is who is he madder at: Bush, Rove, Brownie, or…?

How about you? Yep, you…you did give money to help the victims of Katrina, didn’t you? I bet most of you did…well, the joke’s on you, suckers! In fact, that’s the exact word Rall uses in his headline: Charities Are For Suckers. His tongue has to be well in cheek, right? Who could honestly mean that?

Ted Rall, that’s who:

Hurricane Katrina has prompted Americans to donate more than $700 million to charity, reports the Chronicle of Philanthropy. So many suckers, so little foresight.

Government has been shirking its basic responsibilities since the ’80s, when Ronald Reagan sold us his belief that the sick, poor and unlucky should no longer count on “big government” to help them, but should rather live and die at the whim of contributors to private charities. The Katrina disaster, whose total damage estimate has risen from $100 to $125 billion, marks the culmination of Reagan’s privatization of despair.

That sound you hear is the noise of Rall’s two dozen regular readers retching…

You remember the Reagan years, right? When he dismantled Social Security, abolished welfare, called off Medicaid, and instituted the 100% tax rate on low-income Americans? What, you don’t? Sucker…

Rall’s not through (God, no, we’re not that lucky):

There’s only one reason flood victims aren’t getting help from the government: because the government refuses to help them. The Red Cross and its cohorts are letting lazy, incompetent and corrupt politicians off the hook, and so are their donors.

What the…? Am I insane, or did I not hear the President declare a $200 billion relief program on national television? In fairness, this piece is from a week ago, but even by then, it was apparent the Feds were going to be spending tens of billions.

But Rall, of course, knows that, and he proves it in this passage, an excerpt so ridiculous, so out-of-touch with reality, and so blindingly wrongheaded that I had to read it twice to make sure I hadn’t accidentally wandered off to a Deepak Chopra article:

Disaster relief is too important to be left to private fundraisers, with their self-sustaining fundraising expenses, administrative overhead (nine percent for the Red Cross) and their parochial, often religious, agendas. It’s also way too expensive. In the final analysis, after the floodwaters have receded and the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans have been razed under eminent domain, major charities will be lucky if they’ve managed to raise one percent of the total cost of Katrina. Congress, recognizing the reality that only the federal government possesses the means to deal with the calamity, has already allocated $58 billion–over 70 times the amount raised by charities–to flood relief along the Gulf of Mexico. As Bush says, that’s only a “down payment.”

Congrats go out to Rall: this is easily one of the twelve stupidest paragraphs ever written (even if we include Chopra – well, okay, leave out Chopra).

One wonders what argument Rall is even trying to make: because the government will spend billions, we should not give a penny to those who have been doing this for decades? That the government will spend the money MORE efficiently than the American Red Cross, with its less than 10% overhead? (I would imagine, if the figures were available – and I mean this in all seriousness – that the government overhead will be in the 35-40% range, easily).

Rall’s argument is so internally incoherent that it’s quite inscrutable…because Bush’s government can’t run a gas station, much less a federal agency (and that would be the viewpoint of Rall, not me), we should – give all our money to the government? What? Did I miss something? In fact, government is so efficient, why stop there? Why not just let the government work our jobs, pay our bills, buy our groceries, pay our tabs through and through?

No, this is worse than nonsense, it is madness…and well deserving of our weekly prize. Who pays this guy’s salary, anyway? Time to start angling for a refund…and send the money to the Red Cross when you get it.

UPDATE 09/21/05 6:30 a.m. central: Many thanks to the wonderful Betsy Newmark for the link…