I linked yesterday to the story of a man who got out on a commandeered schoolbus, and one element of that story may have a followup. He ended up getting out on that one lone schoolbus because the buses that the hotels had gotten together to charter (and pay for) privately to get their guests out had been commandeered by the National Guard (rightly, I feel, under the circumstances) to serve as part of the general relief effort.

Bitch, Ph.D. links to (and quotes) an AP story describing how the guests managed to get to the head of the line after all. This is one of those funny confluences of economics and human nature that manages to lead inevitably to the wrong action. The wealthy will always have better access to resources (including emergency resources) than the poor; that is, fundamentally, what it means to be wealthy. There is a responsibility during a rescue operation to triage not by wealth, but by need, however, and that is what makes this business-as-usual event so offensive. There was no requirement for the National Guard to respect that the hotel guests had bought tickets, yet someone felt that the fact that they had spent money entitled them to something.

How anti-capitalistic that sounds — downright communistic, perhaps: "To each according to his needs." And yet, it is not disputed that the hotel guests were in much better condition than the Superdome refugees, and were at much less risk of further injury or death by waiting a few hours longer. When it's lives at stake, even the rich can wait when they are safer to begin with. Even in a capitalistic society, the government is supposed to be here for the common good and to protect those that need it the most. There's not much doubt that this isn't what happened.

This story is likely to fuel the racism anger as well; I suspect that it will eventually be pointed out in other circles that the percentage of blacks in the Superdome was much higher than the percentage of blacks in the hotels.