Obama's Debt to New Orleans

[babylonsister]

Obama's Debt to New Orleans
By Melissa Harris-Lacewell & James Perry

March 12, 2009

AP Images

Milvertha Hendricks, 84, center waits in the rain with other flood victims outside the convention center in New Orleans, Sept.


When New Orleans flooded in August 2005, the Democratic Party was a shambles, locked out of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. For nearly a decade the Democrats played defense against a Republican onslaught initiated by Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. After September 11, Democrats had joined with Republicans in giving President Bush unprecedented executive authority, thereby helping to erode civil liberties at home and authorize ill-advised aggression overseas. In 2004 Democrats were keenly aware that a solid majority of Americans believed it was unpatriotic to protest the Iraq War. So instead of articulating a clear alternative to Bush's militarism, they nominated John Kerry on the strength of his record as a solider. Even so, they found it impossible to outmaneuver the existing commander in chief.

In August 2005 the Democratic Party had no clear leader, no identifiable platform, no winning national coalition and little political courage.

Then the force of Hurricane Katrina devastated the inadequate levees surrounding New Orleans. Americans watched as the city flooded, the power went out, and food and water became scarce. They watched as emergency shelters became centers of disease, starvation, agony and death. The nation watched in horror, but no mass evacuation began and Air Force One did not land. As the crisis wore on, the public became increasingly confused by and angry about the lack of coordinated response to alleviate human suffering and evacuate trapped citizens. As the waters rose, President Bush's approval sank.

In the midst of this crisis the Democratic Party found its voice. The suffering in New Orleans allowed it the first sustained and successful opportunity to criticize the Bush administration. Along with the newly emboldened mainstream media, Democrats asked: how can a government that is unable to get water to an American city for three days be trusted to prosecute a foreign war? The Democrats' 2006 midterm win, widely understood as a referendum on the war, was also made possible by the images of New Orleanians trapped on the roofs of their homes.

New Orleans's inadequate levees revealed how crony capitalism reduced border defense to profit motivation rather than government priority. Not even the Gulf Coast's critical oil industry was sufficient to make levee maintenance, repair and reinforcement a national spending priority. Michael Brown's incompetent leadership of FEMA revealed the Bush administration's utter disregard for citizen safety compared to personal patronage. The choices that made New Orleans unsafe meant that the entire country was vulnerable.

Not only did the Bush administration's bureaucratic failures in response to Katrina give Democrats a way to effectively critique Iraq but the racial politics of Katrina temporarily and jarringly reawakened America to the painful realities of racial inequality.

more...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090330/harris-lacewell_perry?rel=hp_currently

[tblue]

1. Oh! That was written by that smart, hip lady Rachel has on often. Way cool.

Sometimes things have to get really, really bad before they get better. In this case, maybe it did take a Katrina to happen before we could have a President Obama. But how horrible that is..... Oh, those poor people. That poor lady, scared and homeless. I know Obama will do right by the people of New Orleans. At least, I hope to God he will not again let the 'past' just get swept under the rug.

[MadMaddie]

2. Yea, I like the author too.

I think they should pass the bill she mentioned the Gulf Coast needs to be put on the list of high priorities.

[nolabear]

3. Okay, so give some back!

I was in New Orleans last week, visiting family. If you ain't been there you have no idea. No idea what it's like to ride through mile after mile of complete devastation. There are many areas (upper, middle and lower class neighborhoods) that are sruggling to come back, new construction cheek by jowl with rotting, fallen down houses that still have watermarks at roof height and those eerie "x" marks with the numbers of the dead and who searched them. The Lower Ninth has been largely bulldozed but in a neighborhood that stretches for miles there are few standing or reconstructed structures. The patched places in the levees only differ from the rest in that the concrete is a different color. Brad Pitt's houses are cool but there are just a few of them, and thousands that are gone.

New Orelans will never be the same but its essence is stubbornly trying to remain. The sense of fatalistic humor is still there. But I didn't hear much about a flood of money coming in; all I heard was about the money that's already there still being tied up.

Like that little boy said onthe cut they played over and over after the storm, "We need some help down here!"

Still do.

[babylonsister]

4. He is. You must have missed this...

Obama to send $438 million more to storm-battered Gulf

Source: CNN

Obama to send $438 million more to storm-battered Gulf
Posted: 06:21 PM ET, March 5, 2009


NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) — The Obama administration announced Thursday that it would commit an additional $438 million toward resettling Gulf Coast residents uprooted by storms dating back to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The announcement came as Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano toured parts of the New Orleans area, pledging to speed up aid to those who still need permanent housing.

“What we have seen today makes us disturbed, angry even, to see some of the families living the way they have,” Donovan said. “And we pledge to your our partnership to a new beginning here in New Orleans and across the Gulf.”

Read more:

http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/05/obama-to-send-438-million-more-to-storm-battered-gulf/

[MasonJar]

5. New Orleans is one of America's greatest cities, if not the greatest.

It has been cosmopolitan since the country began. New Orleans stood up against the anti-black attitude of the Reconstruction South for as long as it could. It is the home of inimitable jazz music, including the immortal LOUIS ARMSTRONG. New Orleans was misused by the mindless and corporate/crony attitude of the braindead Bushista. W should have to put his finger in the dyke in NO and stand there until the end of time. Prometheus Bush NOW. He is psyhcho scum, a supreme piece of white trash.

[chimpyisstillsatan]

8. excellent verbing

Prometheus Bush.

[shrike]

9. I adore New Orleans n/t

[chimpyisstillsatan]

6. THE WORLD owes a debt to New Orleans

New Orleans suffered for the sins of this nation. She suffered on the cross of our consumerism, our greed, our spinelessness, and our hate.

New Orleans, through her suffering, has made our redemption possible. Only time will tell whether we are worthy of such an opportunity.

[MasonJar]

7. Too late to edit my post, but I apologize for putting two "h's" in psycho.

Just to confirm: GWB is the embodiment of excretion on the bottom of my shoe. What he did to New Orleans is truly the action of a psycho!!!!!!!! He started out, after all, blowing up innocent frogs...proof enough of his mental depravity. Then he turned his vicious sights on the innocent citizens of Iraq, and capped off his debacle with the destruction of America's great city, New Orleans.