Thank you!

I couldn’t agree with you more. Katrina revealed the plight of the poor in New Orleans, and thus, the rest of the United States. We have a severe problem with poverty here for the richest country in the world. We could do something about it for less than 4 months of the cost of the Iraq war by providing better safety nets and subsidies, but the upper class, especially in the Senate, seem to outright hate the poor. They sure seem to hate the unemployed about as much. They refuse to do anything to help and block everything they can. Why such a large part of the population isn’t in “the national interest” is beyond ridiculous.

There are a lot more poor than rich, and if the poor ever organized, the rich would have their hands full with a big problem of who would do all the crap they won’t do themselves. In fact, what made America what it was post World War II were labor unions, and the minimum wage was a living wage. There wasn’t such a big income difference between the CEO of a company and the lowest-paid worker. The CEO made about 5-15 times that of the lowest paid worker. Now, CEO’s and other executives make 100-500 times what the lowest paid worker makes, and probably more.

The country is way out of balance, and unless we do something to re-balance it, the country will be in for a long recession and a bleak future. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire to the richest 2-3% of the population will help a lot, and I hope no one caves on that. If they renew those particular tax cuts, it will add $800 billion to the budget deficit immediately. Spending isn’t okay, until it’s to protect the rich and provide corporate welfare. Then we can deficit spend all we want. Ordinary people are expendable.

Sherri

I hate to say it, but the reason it’s taking so long to recover is New Orleans and its mixed-races, heavy European culture, and poor people that have been poor for generations are only valued by other Americans as a nice place to visit. Visitors have no idea what it takes to run and maintain a city that thrives on tourism and a state that thrives on fishing and seafood, oil, chemicals and shipping.

What makes us thrive is tied directly to our wetlands and the bad decisions that were made since the 1930’s about destroying the wetlands. To continue to provide oil and gas, seafood and hurricane protection, we’ve got to restore our wetlands as fast as we can. Eventually, without those wetlands, the coastline will come up all the way to Baton Rouge in about a century. New Orleans may still be there, but it will be a city inside a concrete bowl sitting out in a large body of water. To get there, we’ll have to take bridges, elevated trains, or fly.

The poor population is mainly of African and Caribbean descent, in other words, former slaves. The Bush 43 Administration didn’t care about New Orleans and her poor because, frankly, they don’t contribute to Republicans and they have a lower tendency to vote. They have no political power. They also are quickly and easily forgotten, even though they clean our hotels, cook our meals, wait our tables, bus our tables and wash our dishes, wash our commercial laundry and work in many unseen domestic jobs better-off Americans no longer feel they need to do themselves.

President Bush dismantled FEMA, and put his friend, Brownie, in charge. Brownie had no idea what he was doing and his agency was in shambles so no one else knew what they were doing either. FEMA was a major disaster away from falling apart, and Katrina was what did it.

Poor people’s subsidized housing was torn down and isn’t being rebuilt fast enough. New Orleans no longer has a bus system. The bus system was used by everyone, not just the poor. But for many poor people the bus system allowed them cheap, reliable transportation to and from work, and everywhere else they needed to go. We didn’t have school buses. If you wanted to take a bus to school, you caught the city bus. Buses took office workers directly into the central business district and cut way down on traffic. You could take a bus or drive to a pick-up area or ferry landing, then catch a CBD bus or take a ferry across the river and catch a CBD bus to get just about anywhere in town pretty fast.

When I lived in New Orleans, I didn’t drive downtown unless I was forced to by time constraints. I took buses, ferries and trolley cars where ever I could. Depending on where you were going, you could also walk. Not only was driving a pain, parking was a bigger and very expensive pain.

We still have a ton of work to do, and I was happy to see President Obama visit New Orleans on Aug. 29 with his family, meet with people in poor neighborhoods, give extensive interviews, and eat at a local po-boy shop. They got no special treatment it seems. When his order was ready, they hollered “Barack, order up” and he had to go and get it himself. That was probably by his request because the Secret Service would wait on them hand and foot if allowed. It cracks me up that President Obama goes by “Barack” whenever he can avoid being called Mr. President. The only people who probably got to call George W. Bush “George” were his wife, parents and siblings. His parents actually called him Junior.

President Bush never showed up on anniversaries, spent money in the city, put resources on dealing with the plight of the poor or reassured anyone that anything would get done. I’m seeing President Obama here a lot for both New Orleans and the BP oil leak, and he is providing help when the previous administration did nothing but stand in the way of progress.

Thanks for reading and commenting!
Sherri