OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS
in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!
Barack Obama created
more debt for the middle class than any president in US
history, and also
had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.
the top 1% of the world’s wealthy.
The Guardian noted that there were “two Irmas,” two experiences of the hurricane: one for the wealthy, for whom it was a mere inconvenience, and one for the poor living in neighborhoods like Miami’s Liberty City, deprived of the means either to escape the storm or to make even minimal preparations to ride it out.
Millions face
devastation from Hurricane Irma in southwest Florida, Tampa metro area
By Patrick Martin
11 September 2017
11 September 2017
Hurricane Irma came
ashore in southwest Florida Sunday late afternoon, with winds exceeding 120 mph
hitting Naples, Ft. Myers and other Gulf Coast communities. A storm surge
estimated at 15 feet or more hit Marco Island, an affluent area near Naples.
So powerful was the
storm that wind speed instruments in both Naples and Marco Island were
destroyed.
As of this writing,
high winds have begun to blow in the Tampa metropolitan area, population 3
million, with the hurricane bearing down on the area and expected to hit around
2 a.m. Monday morning. Although the hurricane has been downgraded, authorities
expect the Tampa Bay area to be hit with damaging winds from 75-100 mph, along
with storm surges in the low-lying area.
Some 7 million people
are without electric power throughout the state, according to Florida Power
& Light, including nearly ten thousand crammed into a shelter at Germain
Arena in Estero, near Naples, where there were long lines to gain admission on
Saturday.
More than 100,000
people are in shelters across the state, and in the Tampa metropolitan area
shelters were totally full and closed to late arrivals. The Tampa-St.
Petersburg area has not been struck directly by a hurricane in nearly a
century.
Heavy flooding was
reported in the Florida Keys, where the storm first made landfall on the US
mainland early Sunday morning, and along the Atlantic Coast, including Miami
and Ft. Lauderdale.
While Miami and
cities further north along the Atlantic were spared a direct hit by the center
of the storm, Irma is so extensive that it spread across the entire peninsula,
producing storm surges from the Atlantic Ocean as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
High winds collapsed
at least two tower cranes on constructions sites in downtown Miami, although no
one was reported injured in either incident. A tornado was reported near the
Miami-Ft. Lauderdale International Airport.
In response to a
request from Florida Governor Rick Scott, the White House declared the entire
state a disaster area. This was a legal formality, enabling the Federal
Emergency Management Agency to begin releasing funds and emergency supplies.
The full dimensions
of the disaster will not be known until the brunt of the hurricane has been
felt in Tampa-St. Petersburg, as well as the impact on rain, wind and storm
surge throughout the state.
One of the key areas
of concern is Lake Okeechobee, which supplies water to both the Everglades and
much of Florida’s agricultural region. Communities on the edge of the lake are
protected by the Herbert Hoover Dike, named after the president under whose
administration it was first proposed. The more than 80-year-old earthen
structure faces assault from both sides: wind storms on the outer perimeter and
rain-fed rising waters on the inner.
The US Army Corps of
Engineers, which maintains the Hoover Dike as it did the levees around New
Orleans before Hurricane Katrina, conducted a controlled release of water from
Lake Okeechobee on Saturday, claiming it had lowered the lake level
sufficiently to ensure against flooding. Governor Scott nonetheless ordered the
evacuation of seven towns near the lake as a precautionary measure.
While much of the
media coverage has been limited to the daily tracking of the storm, virtually
nothing has been said about the lack of any serious government measures to
protect the population or the deep social divide which has been revealed by the
storm.
The Guardian noted that there were “two Irmas,”
two experiences of the hurricane: one for the wealthy, for whom it was a mere
inconvenience, and one for the poor living in neighborhoods like Miami’s
Liberty City, deprived of the means either to escape the storm or to make even
minimal preparations to ride it out.
In Miami, police have
invoked a reactionary law known as the Baker Act, allowing them to detain
anyone believed to pose “a danger to themselves or others” and send them to a
mental institution for evaluation, where they can be held for 72 hours against
their will. This was being used to round up any of Miami’s more than a thousand
homeless people who refused or were unable to go to shelters.
Denise, a resident of Tampa, spoke to the World Socialist
Web Site as the storm approached her home and her power was flickering
on and off. “They’ve built so much here but none of it has been thought through—it’s
backwards. You’ll see multi-million-dollar houses along the water in places
like Bayshore. Then a short distance away you’ll find homeless people
essentially camping in swampy areas, back behind nice subdivisions, where the
city can’t build anything.
“There used to be
public housing but it’s all been replaced with condos and stuff that is not
affordable. There are no programs to help people, whether you’re working or not
working. Tampa has seen an influx of the homeless from Orlando because the
tourist industry doesn’t want them there. But Tampa doesn’t want them
either—they want yachts, stadiums and luxury houses. There was a story last
year about the Tampa police putting a homeless mother with three small children
back on the bus and shipping her back to Orlando.”
BLOG: YOU CAN BET THE RICH WILL GET THEIR PLACES FIXED FIRST AND QUICK and it will never happen for the rest of us.
Like in Houston and
New Orleans before it, the hurricane in Florida will hit the working-class and
poor residents the hardest. The economic impact of the storm will be especially
devastating to the more than 50 percent of Florida homeowners who lack flood
insurance. There is an estimated $1.73 trillion in real estate in the path of
Hurricane Irma, and even the restricted number of insured will file enough
claims to wipe out the reserves of the National Flood Insurance Program,
already $25 billion in debt. Thirty percent of all federal flood insurance
policy holders live in Florida, the agency said.
More than half of the
homeowners in Hurricane Irma’s direct path lack flood insurance, according to a
recent study by the Associated Press, highlighting a growing political crisis
for lawmakers that is years in the making.
The combined economic
impact of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma could produce a significant downturn in
the US economy. Harvey’s cost, estimated at $180 billion or more, amounts to
one percent of US GDP. Irma’s cost is expected to be even greater.
TRUMP OFFERS VICTIMS OF HARVEY AND IRMA $15 BILLION or
about HALF of what California hands their Mexican welfare state!
IS IT YET TIME TO REBUILD AMERICAN AND END THE
BUILDING AND REBUILDING OF MUSLIM DICTATORSHIPS OVER THERE?
HARVEY:
COSTLIEST IN HISTORY
Should
we stop rebuilding Muslim dictatorships and fix our own???
THE WATERS ROSE AND CIVIL WAR II COMMENCED.
HOUSTON: ONLY THE POOR DROWN IN THIS COUNTRY!
THE HOUSTON FLOOD -
CRONY CAPITALIST LICK THEIR LIPS OVER REBUILDING.... FIRST, LIKE
KATRINA, CUT WAGES AND INVITE HORDES MORE ILLEGALS IN TO WORK CHEAP!
"Like
Katrina, Hurricane Harvey has lifted the lid on the ugly reality of
American society, exposing colossal levels of social
inequality, pervasive poverty and ruling class criminality."
"The reason why these warnings have been
ignored is not hard to fathom. They have been resolutely opposed by
corporate interests, including the real estate industry, Wall Street and
Big Oil. Their ability, operating through bribed politicians of both
parties, to veto and block elementary measures to protect the American
people, exemplifies the complete subordination of all social needs
under capitalism to the selfish drive of a corporate-financial oligarchy
to accumulate ever greater levels of personal wealth and profit."
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