Joel Kotkin has a long piece on New Orleans, the welfare state, and related topics here. Snippet:
Social workers like New Orleanian Sonya Heisser point out that even the poorest individuals still have control of their own lives. She tells her clients, “I don’t have to go the fast way. I don’t have to sell drugs. […]
From this:
During the first few days of the disaster every commentator, whether liberal or conservative, tearfully bemoaned the fact of “the poor choice those people made” by staying in New Orleans. Opting to stay eight feet below sea level while a category four hurricane is bearing down upon a city whose levees can […]
From the NYT:
All over New Orleans, from brick apartment complexes in the east to crumbling stucco low-rises in the center, constables have been busy tacking eviction notices to often-empty apartments.
Landlords, many of them starved for rent and fearing foreclosure, have been trying to evict tenants who escaped New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. And that has […]
From this:
resident Bush’s advisers insist that he’s not abandoning conservatism in his commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast. But a mark of conservative thinking is properly identifying problems before dedicating billions to solving them. The president hasn’t done that in New Orleans. Instead, in his September 15 speech from Jackson Square, Bush vowed to combat […]
From 10/4's Eased out of the Big Easy from Jesse Jackson:
After his administration's incompetence and indifference had lethal consequences in Katrina's wake, President Bush has been scrambling to regain his footing. He's called for an "unprecedented response to an unprecedented crisis." In religious services at the National Cathedral, he called on America to "erase this […]
Senator Teddy Kennedy offers the following statement while introducing the "Rebuild with Respect Act":
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita exposed the silent slavery of poverty for all of America to see. There’s no excuse for ignoring what so obviously needs to be done to achieve genuine equality and basic fairness in this country. We know we’re a […]
From New Hampshire's Union Leader comes Bringing Bourbon Street to Cape Cod, which discusses the Cape Cod incidents.
…First, people were shocked to discover that huge sections of New Orleans were deeply poor. Now people are shocked to find that some of those same poor people are wasting their government aid. How do they think these […]
What an unfortunate title and article; perhaps "Will New Orleans abandon those who were poor but who might not be poor or that poor with the Democratic machine replaced with a commonsense Republican movement?" should have been considered:
They worry that many poor, black residents of this hurricane-ravaged city simply cannot afford to come back. They […]
From the NYT's "Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post-Storm Poverty Debate":
As Hurricane Katrina put the issue of poverty onto the national agenda, many liberal advocates wondered whether the floods offered a glimmer of opportunity. The issues they most cared about - health care, housing, jobs, race - were suddenly staples of the news, with President Bush […]
Back on 9/3, the Boston Globe offered "Twice victimized":
…In December, the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, convened a poverty summit… One-third of the jobs in Louisiana pay below-poverty wages… Although the country never decisively won President Johnson's war on poverty, it's time to renew the battle… Katrina has been devastating. But the storm's legacy […]
