Katrina fall-out

Television coverage of Hurricane Katrina gave the world an intimate,
often
ugly view of what life is really like in the inner cities of America.

No. What we see here is not an insight view of what you call inner cities.
the general public sees all of America. They (most of them) only see those
TV reports and believe that this is the same for all of the USA.

Really? I would hope that your reporters would be smart enough to know the
difference -- but perhaps your reporters are as thick as ours?

American inner cities are really quite concentrated, relatively small
geographic areas. They are very scary places that often the police fear to
enter, that are kept placated by (a) throwing lots of tax dollars at them,
and by (b) allowing all sorts of illegal, self-destructive behavior to
flourish, such as drug sales and usage.

This is apparently done in the mistaken belief that -- so long as "they only
kill each other" -- the rest of America can get on with business. It's an
awful thing, is terribly unfair to the inhabitants, and should be a major
concern of both political parties.

Of course, neither party cares, and neither addresses the issue in any
meaningful way.

But please try to spread the word that 99% of America is nothing like what
you have seen in the horribly biased Katrina coverage of late. (Although it
is getting better, at least in the U.S. We've been seeing more and more
coverage of the positive things that are going on in Louisiana...)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

According to Tom Sowell, Harlem was originally an upper class black
neighborhood that banned the Irish.

If true, that's rich...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

When the budget for improving the levees was cut by the Feds, New
Orleans tried over and over again to get the money reinstated as a basic
safety measure for the city. Bringing the issue to a vote in the city
would have done nothing to free up the federal funds, which is where the
money had to come from.

What would have happened if the citizens of N.O. had raised funds to
reinforce their levees themselves?

*Gasp!* Imagine!

Unheard of, I know, but couldn't the locals have actually taken action for
themselves?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Doof" wrote:

in the 1960's after they we're "freed"?

To which event are you referring? And why the quotes?

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

"Jay Honeck" wrote:
When the budget for improving the levees was cut by the Feds, New
Orleans tried over and over again to get the money reinstated as a
basic
safety measure for the city. Bringing the issue to a vote in the city
would have done nothing to free up the federal funds, which is where
the
money had to come from.

What would have happened if the citizens of N.O. had raised funds to
reinforce their levees themselves?

*Gasp!* Imagine!

I imagine the citizens of the Midwest would then be getting a free ride.
Most of the grain exported from the central U. S. goes out through the
port of New Orleans, and much of the crude oil and other commodities
necessary to grow that grain come in the same way.

Unheard of, I know, but couldn't the locals have actually taken action
for themselves?

If they had the money. Perhaps from tariffs on goods shipped to Iowa?
This might sound like a good idea, until one considers the prospect of
local politicians getting their paws on such loot.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

Jay Honeck wrote:
When I was sixteen I worked at a grocery store on the fringe of a poor
section of a city. There were a lot of welfare recipients who shopped at
this store to buy their weekly groceries.

I witnessed many of these folks spending US gov't money on very poor food
choices. Couple that with the fact that most of these folks get
absolutely
zero exercise and it doesn't take a superb imagination to understand why
many look the way they do.


America is the only country in the world with fat poor people.
Cheapest "dinner out" is Micky D's. I had a really poor student with a
heart condition caused by obesity (in the 8th grade).

Margy

In article 42,
James Robinson wrote:

"Jay Honeck" wrote:

New Orleans survived for roughly three centuries. Yeah, maybe its
eventual destruction was inevitable, but frankly, the same could be
said of just about any city, if your timeframe is large enough.

True, but it has been brought to light that many contemporary N.O.
leaders knew -- and regarded as inevitable -- that their city was
living on borrowed time in the short-term. We're not talking geologic
time here; we're talking about in a single person's life-span.

For them to have known this, and not taken any discernible action, is
criminal.

Yesterday NPR interviewed the former city planner for N.O. (she was in
that capacity until 2000, I think), and she spoke extensively about
the levee system and its known weaknesses. Unfortunately, she also
admitted that the bureaucratic boondoggles (the levees were controlled
by an entirely separate government agency, outside the control of the
city) ultimately prevented the issue of levee strengthening from ever
being presented as an option to the voters.

In short, New Orleans government completely and utterly failed the
citizens of New Orleans. They never even brought the issue to a
vote, despite knowing the danger!

On the contrary. They understood that the levee system was part of the
overall Mississippi waterway system, under control of the Army Corps of
Engineers. You cannot separate the part in New Orleans from the rest,
as it all has to work together, particularly when many of the Corps
management schemes upriver have exacerbated the New Orleans problem.

When the budget for improving the levees was cut by the Feds, New
Orleans tried over and over again to get the money reinstated as a basic
safety measure for the city. Bringing the issue to a vote in the city
would have done nothing to free up the federal funds, which is where the
money had to come from.

That may not be completely true.
Does the Corp control all the levees?
Or only those adjacent to the Misissippi and the canals?

The main problem is NO didn't follow their carefully thought out
disaster plan. They had a plan that they worked on very hard and for a
very long time. Chances are the plan would have broken down at some
point but they never gave it a chance. They never even started using
the plan. They just sat their with their thumb up their ass and blamed
the federal government. The mayor and the governor are 100% at fault.

Our local NPR station did an hour long interview with one of the
reporters that wrote the 2002 Time-Piciune story. He had some
interesting things to say.
go to

www.wosu.org
click on NPR 820
click on Open Line
select the 10 AM program for 7 September 2005

Jay Honeck wrote:
When I was sixteen I worked at a grocery store on the fringe of a poor
section of a city. There were a lot of welfare recipients who shopped at
this store to buy their weekly groceries.

I witnessed many of these folks spending US gov't money on very poor food
choices. Couple that with the fact that most of these folks get
absolutely
zero exercise and it doesn't take a superb imagination to understand why
many look the way they do.


America is the only country in the world with fat poor people.

Please be careful how we "snip" -- I only wrote the very last line of that
post, above.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I imagine the citizens of the Midwest would then be getting a free ride.
Most of the grain exported from the central U. S. goes out through the
port of New Orleans, and much of the crude oil and other commodities
necessary to grow that grain come in the same way.

I don't think 25% is "most".