[H. Paul Pressler IV]

New Orleans has always carried its load of "Dead Weight," people who simply DO NOT LIKE TO WORK. Among these people are the Young and Old and Black and White. I have always called New Orleans a "Den of Slack."

However, now that Katrina has pushed the Dead Weight out of New Orleans the City will have a much better chance to be reborn in greatness.

But first, Baton Rouge must kill the Welfare State that has become Louisiana and then let the rest of the country shoulder its burden by taking in the Refugees that Katrina created.

[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".

[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.