Some say Katrina victims' welcome worn out

ajc.com ^ | 11-27-05 | CRAIG SCHNEIDER

[jwh_Denver]

Just wait for these hotel owners to send the government a bill for all the damages done to their rooms.

[madprof98]

Her father drowned, and she has been back and forth to home identifying and burying his body.

I wonder how many times she had to go back to NO to do this. I mean, really . . . ???

[caseinpoint]

You sound like that editorial out of Lousiana that argued the rest of the country owned it to New Orleans to rebuild it because it was such a marvelous city. My answer is, no one "owes" anything to those who can but don't want to work. They are entitled to beg others for handouts to sustain themselves but I don't see that they are "owed" anything, by New Orleans, Louisiana, or anyplace else.

By the way, if you are implying that New Orleans was carrying beyond its fair share of human driftwood, I doubt it. If they were there, it was because the policies of the city were encouraging or sustaining it. You get what YOU deserve. If NO had a system of requiring quid pro quo or some other kinds of behavior that showed progress towards independence, then hard-core driftwood drifts on along with the current to other places. Maybe that is why was NO called "The Big Easy".

[torchthemummy]

Uncle Sugar

I like that.

[KateatRFM]

I got out of Buffalo in 1982 when it was exactly the way you describe it 23 years later. I went to Atlanta, had 20 interviews in a week, got a job, an apartment and a flight home, loaded up the truck and was at work within 6 days. Lived in Atlanta 17 years and then moved here to Toronto.

I'm sorry to hear Buffalo is still just the way I left it in 1982.

[commonasdirt]

For many of the people all the flood did was float their junk from one end of the room to the other. Many of them were sponging off the taxpayers before the flood and they do not know, or rather do not want to know, anything else. And if there is a form to fill out to get an extension to benefits becuase of "trauma" they will quickly learn with the help of poverty pimp social workers how to fill them out.

[proudofthesouth]

Can't his wife help too? Why can't she handle the paperwork and scout places for the print shop while he would be working the 30 hours and their son is in school?

[The Mayor]

No, it has gotten worse since 82

I got here in 91 and it has gotten worse.
They just raised the sales tax to 8.75
County Property taxes going up 14%
Plus all local property taxes going up.

http://www.RusThompson.com
This is my blog on Erie county and the state politics

[DUMBGRUNT]

How did that saying go? "God helps those that help themselves...?"
Is that a quote from the Looter Guy?

[Eva]

I don't know if you are being facetious, but the rest of the country is not going to bear the burden of the welfare state that is Louisiana. The rest of the country has had welfare reform, we don't let people live on welfare for indefinite periods of time, that are capable of working.

How would you like to be one of these hotel owners? I predict that these Katrina slackers will be given a deadline to become independent and if they don't make it, they will be shipped back to Louisiana.

[headstamp]

Yes, I'm sure he is on the phone 8-9 hours a day 5 days a week with insurance companies and applying for loans.

It's all priorities I guess. I'd be more concerned about getting money in my hand and food on the table first thing and pursue the other matters as time permits.

[Nachoman]

This article paints with a pretty broad brush. Thousands of people were affected, and some for the rest of their lives. It will take years to recover from this disaster. My heart goes out to the victims. To focus on the minority of free-loaders diminishes the magnitude of this tragedy.

[ladyjane]

He said he has been offered a job at $10 an hour for 30 hours a week.

"I'm an evacuee. I ain't no refugee. That job offer is an insult!"

[hinckley buzzard]

Recently he asked a department store cashier if the store was offering a discount for evacuees

Beats working at that $10 an hour job, I guess. Almost three months after the fact, still asking for special treatment and looking for loans instead of working.

And we are supposed to feel bad because he hasn't bothered to get his son a ten dollar table at Salvation Army to do his homework on.

[Political Junkie Too]

The deadline has sent many evacuees scrambling to find housing, but several nonprofit groups helping them say it will be difficult to move thousands of evacuees into new housing in a matter of weeks.

It hasn't been a matter of weeks, it's been a matter of months. It's only urgent now that there is a deadline.

-PJ

[Izzy Dunne]

I want to know what happened to the Heineken guy.

If he's getting royalties, he's doing all right.

[hinckley buzzard]

Call me jaded, but I knew what was ahead of us.

After the media circus and the craven congressional hustle to shovel billions at the problem, I agree you could see this coming a mile away. We will still be paying for some of these people's bills a year from now, and they will only be angrier and more demanding.

[Palladin]

>>>I was adversly affected when I ran out of Vanilla extract on Thursday<<<

HAHAHA! I know I shouldn't laugh at such bonechilling downtrodden adversity, but I hope your pumpkin pies were already made.

;)

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

AKA root wild hog or die. I get so damned tired of the whining.

Was in Sam's Club the other day and saw, 50 pounds of rice for $10.95 and 50 pounds of pinto beans for $19.95. When growing up, that would have fed five siblings, myself and our single mother for a month, and we would have been damned glad to have gotten it.

Three months of freebies is enough, let them get off their arses and get after it.

[BluH2o]

There was also room for 6 to come back to Buffalo with him, a place to stay, etc ...

No offense to Buffalo ... however, if I'm native to NOLA Buffalo, NY isn't exactly going to be my first choice for relocation ... neither is Minneapolis/St. Paul, Milwaukee, etc..