What’s He Drinking?
Sep 25th, 2005 at 9:26 am by Susie
Bubble Boy is still struggling with reality - versus the neocon wet dreams, I mean:
When President Bush looked out over the devastation of New Orleans’ wet and moldy Lower Ninth Ward, he didn’t see poor people who lost what little they had; he saw future owners.
Bush’s “ownership society” agenda (also known as the “you’re on your own” society) has been waylaid by falling poll numbers, a headache-inducing war and general snubbing of his idea to privatize part of Social Security. But Katrina has given Bush the opportunity to take the rhetoric out of dry dock.
In Bush’s speech to the nation, promising billions in federal help for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, the president said he would address the intractable poverty in the region by creating “new businesses, including minority-owned businesses” and a new class of “entrepreneurs.”
“It is entrepreneurship that creates jobs and opportunity; it is entrepreneurship that helps break the cycle of poverty; and we will take the side of entrepreneurs as they lead the economic revival of the Gulf region,” Bush declared, pledging business incentives and tax breaks.
One has to wonder what is in this man’s Kool-Aid.
It is a fantasy to think that the bulk of poverty-stricken African-Americans who landed in the fetid Superdome - men and women who didn’t even own a car to get out of the hurricane’s path - will return to their former communities, take out a government-guaranteed loan and start a company. Forty percent of Ninth Ward residents over 18 don’t have a high school diploma.
What the returning evacuees will need is good jobs. Jobs with wages that allow them to buy a home. Jobs that provide health benefits and a retirement plan. For most people, it is a decent job, not a small business loan, that lights the path to the security of the middle class.
Before Katrina, there were plenty of jobs in New Orleans. More than 67 percent of households in the Ninth Ward lived at least in part on money made through wages and salaries. Their average household income was $27,500 (median income was not available) - a figure less than half the national average. These people were working, they were just badly paid.
Here’s what’s going to happen. A portion of the evacuees will be scattered across the country to live in vacant HUD housing units. The rest will be provided FEMA trailers to live in for two years and then they will be kicked out. By then they will be forgotten by the press and invisible.
Also there will be FEMA buy-outs of large tracts of flooded land in New Orleans. This will be resold to developers. The buy-out money will go to landlords and banks who have foreclosed on the houses. The developers will build hotels and casinos with laundered mob drug money.
Don’t forget, you heard it here first.
Just as an aside, my mother’s home was filled with two feet of water during Hurricane Katrina. Her homeowner’s insurance won’t cover the damage because they claim it was caused by floodwater, although they said they’d reimburse her for anything damaged above the water line. Her roof stayed intact, so she suffered no loss due to rainfall. They’re reimbursing her for food lost in her refridgerator and freezer. (She’s been known in the past to fill her freezer half-full of shrimp and crabmeat during the summer months, so she can make seafood gumbo anytime she feels like it during the rest of the year.) Her power was out for over three-and-a-half weeks, and she only recently got her telephone service back. Her flood insurance won’t cover the damage because they claim it was caused not by floodwater but by “wind-driven water.” A greenhouse in her backyard was blown across her fence and they’re replacing her greenhouse and fence. She hasn’t checked with her bank yet to see if she got the $2000 promised to displaced survivors by the government, although while she’s busy repairing her house and replacing the contents, (mostly, at her own expense), she’s been promised a trailer to live in by FEMA (undelivered as of last Thursday). Before the storm, she packed herself, a few belongings and her cat and drove to a sister’s house further north. Her house is only fifteen feet above sea level and a mile from the Gulf so she knew better than to stay. She and some of my sisters and brothers-in-law have been doing most of the cleanup by themselves, since contractors are in short supply these days. On her first day back to survey the damage, she brought her cat with her, expecting the damage to be slight. Her cat ran away and hasn’t been seen since. My father died of Alzheimer’s just over four years ago. I’m glad, in a way, he wasn’t around to go through all this, although it’s made it hard for my mother to deal with on her own. She’s in good hands; plenty of family; plenty of friends; well-provided for by my father. She’s got a strong spirit; she’s been through much in her 75+ years. She’ll survive even this … with or without our federal government’s help.
[ I could go on and on, but I've bored you enough already... "thanks for listening"]
Philip, I hope your mother is okay. Even with family, friends and enough money, it’s a terrible ordeal to go through.