New Orleans, Drop Dead

From Sea to Shining Sea ^ | 8/30/07 | Purple Mountains

[PurpleMountains]

I guess I’m really a hard-hearted person, but as a survivor of Florida’s Hurricane Charley, which tore my roof off and forced me to spend many days of back-breaking labor and many months of distress, I have no sympathy for the slobs and vultures in New Orleans who want everyone else but them to handle their problems. I agree with the sentiments expressed in the following articles, and I’ll go on to point out that the incident that sealed my disgust with these whiners was when they re-elected Mayor Ray Nagin, possibly the most incompetent politician in the U.S.A. Who could ever forget those hundreds of school buses sitting in pools of water as people died?

[ConorMacNessa]

It is intersting to note how well Mississippi has come back in comparison to the Big Easy.

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

WHY? Why would we rebuild areas that are prone to devestation cause they are coastal???With my tax dollars???
In NO its just to create a welfare state...On the Fla coast, its to prop up millionaires who could just buy insourance or build another house themselves.

I don’t get it!

[Loud Mime]

I liked how the Clinton and Kennedy families have donated so much to the rebuilding of New Orleans.

/sarc

[stratboy]

I heard that they gave millions (of other peoples money) When it comes to spending other peoples money, they are quite philanthropic and the sky is the limit.

[oyez]

I could go on and on about New Orleans & Katrina, but I think the most important point is that there was plenty of money appropriated to maintain levies and flood control. Much of that money went to other things, like keeping corrupt politicians in office.

.That's correct, Drop Dead. And the same goes to the media for not pointing that fact out.

[Tully Pettigrew 1]

I don’t think you are hard-hearted, I think you have just about right.

[Borax Queen]

Interesting how well people are coping in the Midwest now, taking care of business instead of sniveling and playing the victim.

[pandoraou812]

I think its stupid to rebuild it. What are we going to do when the next storm comes? Just keep tossing money into a city that is going to be under water again & again? I guess I am mean & cold heated, oh well.

[Old Sarge]

I concur.

I lived in Orlando for Andrew, Erin, and Opal. We moved back up here - to twisters.

Wait a second...

[Dawgreg]

AMEN PurpleMountains. I’m more than a little sick of this crap. I told Hub this afternoon they’ll probably set aside for a national holiday........Katrina Day! I’ve lived on the Gulf Coast all my life and the two zinger hurricanes I’ve been through.......well you didn’t see me or my family waiting for handouts. We got up, cleaned up and shut up.

[VR-21]

"and I’ll go on to point out that the incident that sealed my disgust with these whiners was when they re-elected Mayor Ray Nagin, possibly the most incompetent politician in the U.S.A."

I agree with the sentiment about the kind of people who would re-elect Nagin. While he was certainly an incompetent Mayor, he seems to have been a somewhat competent politician. He got re-elected after all.

Successful politicians all seem to have that cockroach-like ability to survive.

[decal]

And don’t forget: Katrina was a Cat 3 when it made landfall - this wasn’t a weather event, no matter what Jim Cantore and the other apologists at The Weather Channel try to drum into you; it was a MALFEASENCE event.

Had it still been a Cat 5, there wouldn’t be any talk of “rebuilding” New Orleans - it would have been wiped from the face of the Earth, and everyone who was unable, or unlucky, or just too stupid to leave would be dead now, stewing in a devil’s cauldron called Lake Pontchartrain.

And New Orleans WILL be hit by a Cat 5 storm, just as surely as San Francisco will experience The Big One.

[cowdog77]

Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:

What would you do?

What would you do if you were black?

Sadly, the two questions don’t have the same answer.

To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, such as wives and others uncared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.

For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you’re black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, you’ll probably wait for the government to save you.

This was not always the case. Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.

No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results.

Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on “racist” President Bush. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans , above and beyond the federal government’s proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as the gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America , “overseeing” billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.

Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform legally and practically fell first on the mayor of New Orleans . We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin, the black who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin’s job. The facts, unfortunately, do not support Nagin’s wailing. As the Washington Times puts it, “Recent reports show [Nagin] failed to follow through on his own city’s emergency response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city’s poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city.”

One wonders how there was “no way” for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You’ve probably seen it by now: the photo showing 2,000 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?

Instead of doing the obvious, Mayor Nagin (with no positive contribution from Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the other major leader vested with responsibility to address the hurricane disaster) loaded remaining New Orleans residents into the Superdome and the city’s convention center. We know how that plan turned out.

About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.

President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans’ black community taken action, most would have been out of harm’s way. But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.

All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks’ moral poverty, not their material poverty, that cost them dearly in New Orleans . Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are to be repudiated, for they will only perpetuate this problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans , to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.”

The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of “Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America.” He is also a black man.