Katrina, the Fires and Race

RUSH: Kathy in New Canaan, Connecticut, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program. It’s nice to have you here.

CALLER: Thank you, sir, for taking my call. It’s such an honor. First of all, I’d like to say hi to my husband Tom, and my question for you — and I wanted to get your thoughts — you know, it’s a tragic event in Southern California with the fires and all the damage and loss of personal property and so forth, but wouldn’t this kind of instill a flow of economic, um, oh… I’m sorry.

RUSH: You’re talking about, perhaps, the fires stimulating economic growth?

CALLER: Right. Whether, if it’s the contracts or builders or Home Depot or nurses or landscapers, isn’t that a good thing? And I never hear about that from the Drive-Bys.

RUSH: Well, I admire your desire to look at this positively — and, of course, a lot of this will happen. But this is economic replacement. This will be growth for some of the industries you’re talking about, contractors rebuilding houses and so forth, but you had a lot of property loss here.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: And it’s going to be hell for some of these homeowners to collect on their insurance. It just is. And it’s going to be awhile, and they’re going to have to decide whether they want to rebuild, if the environmental regulations don’t change and you can’t thin these forests out. These things happen. The Santa Ana winds happen every year, and the combustibility of these places throughout the state. The fire is going to happen. It can’t happen at the same place very soon because, of course, all the fuel has been destroyed.

CALLER: Now they have to worry about landslides.

RUSH: Yeah, the mudslides, this coming winter. Absolutely. Then, in addition to that, all the ash that will be running down mountains and so forth. They got problems out there. This is a massive, massive rebuilding scale. Now, you could say that it’s good for the economy, but if you give the homeowners who lost their property and the business owners who lost their businesses, and ask them if they would just as soon have a fire every year to stimulate the economy, they’d tell you no.

CALLER: No, no.

RUSH: But I appreciate your looking at this, trying to find the positive here. It’s a can-do spirit out there in Southern California and places where this happened, and they’ll do their best to rebuild. It’s just like San Franciscans did after the earthquake —

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: — with the Bay Bridge and a number of the interstates out there, and there will be people that will come in and get some of this done quick and will surprise everybody, the records that will be set. There will be bonuses paid for people that come in under budget and early on some of these things. Still, it’s a tragic thing. It’s like talking about the economic boon to the area that New Orleans was going to get following Hurricane Katrina. Speaking of that, you know, we keep hearing comparisons between Hurricane Katrina and the fires. Juan Williams was on Fox yesterday. I don’t have time to play the audio, but he was on Fox yesterday saying that race was a factor. You have white people out there, versus blacks in New Orleans. ‘Rich white people,’ so the government got out there and they were out there and in gear fast, and everybody was in gear fast. You know, nobody ever talks about Gulfport Mississippi and all these places in Mississippi that were literally leveled during Hurricane Katrina, and they’re back on their feet or they’re in the process of getting back on their feet. You never, ever, hear about the misery and the destruction that they went through, because they’re not whining and complaining about it. They’re out there fixing it, just like they’re doing in California.