Posted on 09/07/2005 8:04:44 AM PDT by madprof98
Here in America, the land of opportunity, we gave up on the poor more than two decades ago. Under the careful tutelage of Ronald Reagan and other conservatives, we learned that the poor were simply too lazy to improve their prospects and their misery was their own fault.
We gave up on the white poor and the black poor, even though black Americans had suffered under three centuries of unconscionable oppression before a brief period — less than three decades — when they began to be treated as fully human. We gave up on the Native American poor, though they had been the victims of a historic savagery amounting to a holocaust.
We not only gave up trying to help the poor, but we also bought the argument that trying to assist them, especially through government programs, would just make matters worse. After all, years of relentless right-wing radio have taught us that the poor are illiterate, sick and jobless because of government welfare policies — or because they choose to be. So we turned our backs on the impoverished and tuned them out, leaving them stranded in the worst neighborhoods, worst schools and the worst geography — next to landfills, on top of toxic dumps, in the swamps.
So the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — with its pathetic images of desperately poor people, mostly black people, stuck in New Orleans without food, water or adequate shelter after all the affluent people had fled — should come as no surprise. This is a natural consequence of a political and social culture that has decreed: You're poor? Why would anyone want to be poor? Tough luck. You're on your own.
In fact, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune used just those words to describe the hurricane evacuation plan authorities put in place for residents who didn't own cars. Reporter Bruce Nolan wrote in July, "City, state and federal authorities are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."
At least Nagin and his fellow city officials were trying to figure out how to get the poor out of town if disaster struck. Working with an anti-poverty agency and the Red Cross, they envisioned a private initiative, Operation Brother's Keeper, in which churches would enlist members with cars to offer rides to the have-nots.
By contrast, the ill-informed, incompetent Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is still puzzled by all those poor people who refused to order their chauffeurs to crank up the Bentleys. Last week, he told CNN:
"I think the death toll may go into the thousands. And unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the evacuation warnings. And I don't make judgments about why people choose not to evacuate. But you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there."
If you're somebody like Brown, it's awfully easy to forget that there are people too poor to have a car, a credit card or a checking account, people stranded outside the magic circle, people without friends in high places. With Brown's GOP connections, he landed a job at FEMA after he was forced out as so-called czar of the International Arabian Horse Association.
In fact, it's easy for all of us who live in relative prosperity to forget that most of us are here because we had the good sense to be born to the right parents. While a few impoverished young adults can still scratch and claw their way into the mainstream, it is getting harder and harder to do so as the industrial jobs that created the great middle class are disappearing. (Why do you think so many working-class sons and daughters volunteer for the U.S. armed forces?) Income inequality is increasing in this country; the latest census shows that the number of people living in poverty is rising.
Still, a few predictable voices on the far-right fringe are already thinking up ways to blame Hurricane Katrina's victims for their plight. Some are playing up the lawlessness of a few thugs, others are casting responsibility for the crisis solely on local authorities. Haven't we listened to those callous self-promoters long enough?
Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.
— Cynthia Tucker is the editorial page editor. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays.
No we didn't. The poor gave up on themselves. Poverty in most cases results in a series of pour choices backed by low motivation. There are a number of self-perpetuating folkways in the black communities that hold that their race is inferior and it is pointless to try to beat the system by ordinary means.
Here's an idea. All of these now homeless and poor people can now have a way to earn there welfare dollars. Community service. Put them to work on the cleanup. That is once it is deemed environmetally safe.
If they can father and give birth to checks, um children, they can aid in the cleanup and take some pride in what they do.
James Lee Witt was Clinton's FEMA director. Allbaugh was Bush's. And he was Brown's roommate. Look it up. It's a fact. Those are tough to spin.
At little cost to the leftists, they now can pretend that they care about the very people they've ignored and taken forgranted for a 100 years. The people from New Orleans have been lazy and obediaent since FDR and have passively relied on the local government and dem party for everything. These are the folks that Mexicans take jobs away from. These field African-Americans aren't going to be less passive where ever they go. They will leach off local governments, churchs and individuals as much as they can before lapsing into the inevitable complaints (can't you see the guy looking at his shoes, his mouth seemingly full of grits) about not being given whatever the day's claim is because he is black.No, the leftists will make hay of the victimhood of these blacks pawns for months with every problem, being W's fault and existing only because these folks are blacks. The only saving grace will be that the leftists have a tin ear and overbelieve their own crap.
I must have missed America's Tricentennial celebration. The fireworks must have been awesome.
Most have $ 50.00 or more in their pockets, but don't want to use their own money. They expected SOMEONE to give them handouts as before or SOMEONE else to come and take them away on SOMEONE else's nickle,
I think he held a grudge. Chuck Berry has always been my main man as far as rock is concerned; brilliant songwriter and guitarist - he practically wrote the book on rock guitar - but total jackass otherwise. Kind of a Rockabilly/R&B Amadeus.
Brown will be the first one to leave from this incident. Bush doesn't seem to fire anyone, but I suspect his resignation before the year end.
P.S. welcome to FR
Pretty funny and apt comparison.
She looks just like Oprah...to me.
The 145 buses in this photo is in addition to the 450 buses in the photo by AP and on the politicalteen.com web site.
The first settlements were in the 17th century; there was an "America" for well over 100 years before there was a "United States of."
Anybody got a shovel?
That's true, But they were probably up on blocks.
This tripe from "American" Communist ba$tards DEFINITELY begs the "why are you still here?" question.
Yeah, in the officially published song lyrics he did. But that's not how he sang it! And it was mixed somewhat unintelligible.
Yes, I know. But, were they not Brittish citizens (or other countries), not "Americans"? I guess this is a semantic argument that I will lose. Damn you.
This guy admiots he only knows prosperity, but from his comfy armchair he scolds. "If you're somebody like Brown, it's awfully easy to forget that there are people too poor to have a car, a credit card or a checking account, people stranded outside the magic circle, people without friends in high places. Brown has been doing disasters 24/7 for three years. Who do you think knows and understands the most?
The unintelligle work is CLOSE. I heard it most clearly yesterday.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.