I've noticed a similar trend in some of the newspaper stories.  People were forced to leave hotels after only a night or two, because the $89/night charge was more than they could afford.  

What I don't understand is how the relief efforts are really just starting now.  Until just a few hours before it hit, Katrina was a category five storm.  The levees are only built to withstand the stresses of a category three.  The city is below sea level.  Thousands of people didn't evacuate.  Most (if not all) of those people were too poor to travel or to stay away from work for more than a week.  All of this was known at least 24 hours before the storm hit land.  So why is it taking so long to get organized?

If the above blog is true, then someone should obtain this footage and REAL testimony and publish it.

I don't care if it is put out simply through blogs or the media, but if this is true then this MUST be talked about.  If there were people who could not escape this tragic disaster because they could not afford to escape, we must address this.  This is unacceptable.  This is like the poor fighting the war in Vietnam, while the rich bought themselves out of service, out of harm's way.

If anyone has access to such proof, please bring it forth.

-Zen Blade

There is another very weird injustice that's happening.

Authorities are moving into New Orleans, arresting lawbreakers - essentially evacuating society's criminals before those in dire need.

The real disaster appears to be not just Katrina but the delayed response.

We have got to decouple emergency action from this presidency before we all wind up in chaos.

Your fears are well founded. Remember, it's easy for the media to sell their middle class audience on the notion that New Orleans is populated by idiots who stayed behind. People watching in other parts of the country are thinking, "I'd have left."

It would take real, thoughtful journalism to get to the truth about why some people couldn't leave and how our society failed them and left them in harm's way.

That many of the most-affected were living month-to-month and were in trouble and couldn't afford to get out because it was near month's end was mentioned last night on either the NewsHour or Keith Olberman's show.

Olbermann. I saw it, too.

has two relevant stories up, here and here.

I like Scotty's quote, myself:

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan: I think you heard from the president earlier today about his zero tolerance. We understand the need for food and water and supplies of that nature. That's why we have a massive effort underway to continue getting food and water and ice to those who are in need. There are ways for them to get that help. Looting is not the way for them to do it.

Apparently thousands of people are not seeing these "ways."

These guys must be channelling Sam Kinison's "You live in a f**king desert!" routine about the Ethiopains.

But that was satire. 

David Brooks has a lovely piece of finger-pointing pre-emption in the New York Times today. Short version: floods cause communism.

If you are poor and black and taking food from a store you are looting.  If you have any connection to authority and you are doing the same thing you are commandeering.

So while the Bushies might view themselves as commandeering the national treasury in the run up to this disaster, other folks might see it as looting. 

I would go further with the meme suggested by your title and ask: Admission to what?

In light of what happened this time, why is it wise to tell people to evacuate when there is a weather warning without having shelters from them to go to set up ASAP? With their addresses broadcast every which way to Sunday? It's almost as if we've been lucky so far in the past by presuming people will have somewhere to go?

I point this out because I think we are hearing from the poor first only because you rightly point out with this post, they are the most desperate.

But I read several stories of families filling up hotels allover the south, a lot of the "middle class" with credit cards. Give it a day or so, and their credit cards will be maxed out, they will be needing access to identity papers they don't have for insurance claims, prescriptions, doctors records no longer there, doctors no longer there? No job, it's gone. Where to live? Where to send the kids to school? Just move in with the relatives in Minneapolis or what? Where's the FEMA centers going to come from for them when FEMA obviously can't even handle the population left behind?

Not that I'm suggesting a different "triage," what I am saying is: squawking is going to be coming from a much larger group pretty soon And it's going to come from allover the country, once relatives and friends allover the country know what's up.

P.S. I've seen much made on blogs on the picture of Bush playing guitar a few days ago with hurricane Katrina burned.

I think this one I just found is much more apropos to point out. He was trying to sell changes to the security of society on Monday in California:

Bush Renews Drive to Overhaul Social Security

President Bush's efforts to shift attention to domestic policy come after weeks of public focus on the war in Iraq....

August 30, 2005 - By ANNE E. KORNBLUT (NYT) - News

Well now he's got an unsecure society, and no surprise, I just heard a sound bite from him on the tube lecturing that the government will do what it can but "the private sector" has to do its share.

Amen, Bryan.

I've got a godawful feeling that, quite apart from incompetence, racism has played a big role in creating the situation.  Also, I don't think anyone who generally moseys around blogland has a very developed sense of what it's like, in 2005, to be poor already and then have to watch the economy go south for everyone but those at the top.  Things are scary for a lot of people, and are really really scary for inner-city poor and elderly. 

Meanwhile, the developers who built on the wetlands and the politicians who made environmental damage and subsequent disasters possible can hop in their cars and create a new life elsewhere, if it comes to that.  Nothing like having some money in the bank, cut of clothing, and looks that our society gives more credibility to!

Actually Congressional Democrats are reintroducing an amendment to the Bankruptcy Bill that made the rule changes null and void in the case of a natural disaster (the amendment was voted down originally on a party line vote).

Josh, whoever emailed you this story about the interview they saw either wasn't paying attention, at best, or is being disengenious, at worst.

I saw this same interview.  It took place in Mississippi (Waveland, I believe) in one of the coastal towns they just got access to over the last few days. 

Not having enough gas for the car was not part of the problem in New Orleans.  Very few of the poor living in the city owned a car.  They relied on mass transit.

They did, however, have access to the Superdome, as a refuge of last resort, and bus transportation from all points of the city to take them there.  Why didn't more show up?

I'd also like to point out a huge fallacy in many of the current items running on talkingpointsmemo.com  about having supplies, particularly ships, nearby to move in immediately after the storm.  You should realize this is physically impossible, due to the unpredicitable nature of a hurricane's future path?

PW and others

I have only seen faces of color in the 3+ hours of hurricane reporting I have watched in tv.  Is my sample so small it is not representative?

------  

Environmental harm to people?
Anyone seeing any stories about what is happening to people who are sloshing  through or standing in very polluted water. NO infamous for the frequent dumping of all sorts of very nasty chemicals all over.
I have to believe that once the water and food stories diminish the health disaster will be the next horrific stage of this tragedy.

Re: I'd also like to point out a huge fallacy in many of the current items running on talkingpointsmemo.com  about having supplies, particularly ships, nearby to move in immediately after the storm.

True, and I've made the same point. But once the hurricane was past and the flooding disaster was begun, they should have commandeered every barge and cruise ship from Houston to Tampa, used them to bring in supplies and ferry survivors out.

Which is exactly what they've done. 

FEMA tells state and local attendees at their disaster conferences that it will generally take them 72 hours to get their teams in place after a disaster.  By my watch, that 72 hour clock started ticking this afternoon/evening. 

If they don't perform from this point forward, they deserve as much critcism as the pathetic Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.