When Chicago baked durring the 1995 heat wave leaving 750 people dead no one blamed the slow response of federal government or Clinton. No one accused the federal government of being racist and hating poor people even though the most effected areas was poor black neighborhoods.
Now, I am not trying to say that Clinton should have been blamed for anything. It obviously wasn't his fault. All I am trying to point out is we have similiar tragedies and much different responses from the media.
There were advanced warnings: Long before 1995, American public-health officials warned of the dangers of extreme summer weather. Heat waves in a typical year kill more Americans than all other extreme weather events combined (between 400 and 1,500).
A strong emergency response might have compensated for the poor advance planning. As with Katrina, meteorologists identified the treacherous weather system at least a week before it hit Chicago and advised the city to prepare for the worst. Instead, Mayor Richard M. Daley and many of his Cabinet members set off on summer vacations, returning to Chicago only after dead bodies began piling up at the morgue.
The poor suffered the most: Affluent and middle-class Chicagoans had little trouble getting out of harm's way. They either turned on their air conditioners or fled for cooler destinations. Thousands of poor, old, isolated, and sick people, especially those concentrated in the city's segregated African-American ghettos, on the other hand, were effectively trapped in lethal conditions. Neither federal nor local agencies did much to assist them. Instead, city patrols cracked down on young people who opened fire hydrants.
This is in Chicago, one of the most liberal cities in the country. While Clinton was President.
Just another example that government dependency does not work.
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