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Originally Posted by Grey2000
And, I suppose, those terrible, '3rd world' images wouldn't have happened had George Bush not been president ?
Just asking.
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We've had two, recent presidents-OTUS who were from poor, southern backgrounds. I can't say for certain that they would have reacted differently, but their tax policies, and certainly Carter's energy policy, were more slanted towards the best interests of more Americans than the policies of the political cabal that currently comprises the federal majority.
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http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story...8-30-05&cat=AN
More Americans fall into poverty, government reports
By MARY DEIBEL
Scripps Howard News Service
August 30, 2005
- Despite robust economic growth and record corporate profits, the average American household's income held steady at $44,400 for the third straight year in 2004, the government reported Tuesday.
Another 1.1 million Americans fell into poverty last year, bringing the total to 37 million people living below the poverty line, defined as $19,307 for a family of four, the Census Bureau said in its 2004 income and poverty report. The poverty rate was 12.7 percent last year, up from 11.3 percent in 2000 before the beginning of the last recession.
Real median earnings for fulltime year-round workers fell in 2004. Men working full-time saw their earnings decline 2.3 percent, to $40.789, while women's wages fell 1 percent, to $31,223. Reflecting the larger drop in men's earnings, women workers' pay rose to 77 cents for every $1 a man earns, up from 76 cents in 2003.......
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The passage of the bankruptcy "reform" bill and the lack of an increase in the federal minimum wage during this presidential administration impact the ill and the "have nots" more than anyone else. Last fall, a referendum in Florida bypassed the control of lawmaking in the hands of Jen Bush and his republican legislature by forcing an increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6/15 per hour. It took effect in April and was approved by 70 percent of voters.
https://www.acorn.org/index.php?id=2668
IMO, what happened in N.O. is a symptom of what our "two right wing" political parties and their corporatist candidates are moving us towards. We actually do it to ourselves; for they gain and keep power by reacting to the sentiments that the more intuitive political operatives (Rove) "see" in us, and then fanning it into the talking points that ring a favorable chord with voters.
Gretna and Jefferson Parish, LA are our homegrown, "Green Zone"......
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...............At any event, with evacuation gaining traction it was clear that a historic diaspora of New Orleans residents is under way. The last three days have seen a forced, perhaps permanent, scattering of tens of thousands of New Orleanians - first among evacuees who fled the city before the storm and later those who survived it. The loss of so many will affect the character of the city in ways yet to be determined.
Authorities were loading evacuees on commercial airlines, buses and AMTRAK trains bound for destinations as far away as Michigan and Indiana.
But there were complaints that some refugees, hauled out of the city in desperate condition, were being refused safe haven in some places, including some that said they already were filled beyond capacity with storm victims. New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas blasted the city of Baton Rouge and other Louisiana communities for what he called a callous refusal to take in refugees from his devastated city.
"They don’t want them," Thomas said, after bursting into the press room at the Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge. "They have put out the word all over the state: ’Those bad New Orleans people. You don’t want them.’ "
State Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, said the state’s Legislative Black Caucus would charter buses to pick up 5,000 residents stranded along Interstate 10. He said they would deliver them to the closed England Air Force Base in Shreveport and demand that they be sheltered.
Mayor Ray Nagin criticized Jefferson Parish for closing the door to exhausted refugees who trudged over the Crescent City Connection to escape the ruined city and reach high ground on the West Bank.
<b>"We were taking in people from St. Bernard Parish. If we had a bottle of water, we shared it. Then when we were going to let people cross the bridge, they were met with frigging dogs and guns at the parish line," said Nagin during an aerial tour of the city.</b>http://www.nola.com/weblogs/print.ss...int076766.html
"They said, ’We’re going to protect Jefferson Parish assets.’ Some people value homes, cars and jewelry more than human life. The only escape route was cut off.
They turned them back at the parish line." Meanwhile criminal justice officials said they had invented a temporary system for handling criminal suspects arrested in the post-Katrina chaos..................
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The bridge to Gretna is no more than 2.7 miles from the superdome.
Here are links to two maps.....
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/arc..._09/007087.php
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Gretna...1911&t=k&hl=en
It seems likely that much violence, death, and trauma, not to mention the international PR debacle that the management of this disaster response has caused.....could have been avoided if there was not such an aversion to being in close proximity to large numbers of poor, predominantly dark skinned, inner city residents. The fact that access to a dry, safe, and high capacity escape route in close proximity was not used to evacuate refugees in a timely manner, and that the press has provided scant coverage of this, the local politicians acceptance of it while it was happening, and the ignorance of the situation that passed for the reaction of federal officials, as they apparently needlessly squandered huge sums on air rescues and air drops of food and water, subjecting both rescuers and refugees to avoidable personal injury and health risks, speaks to their incompetence and indifference.
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NG07EJ2F11.DTL
DESPAIR OVER DESTRUCTION, BUT POCKETS OF PROGRESS
RESIDENTS RETURN TO WRECKAGE — LEVEE BREAK PLUGGED: JEFFERSON PARISH, LA.
Broken homes, blurry future
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
.............Jefferson Parish is hardly exempt from the disparity between rich and poor, black and white that exists throughout the region and was vividly displayed on national television in the wake of Katrina.
About 70 percent of the population is white, and nearly 23 percent is black, according to the 2000 census. The median household income is $38,435 -- falling short of the national average -- and nearly 14 percent of individuals live below the poverty level.
One home had clear messages spray-painted on its boarded-up windows: "You loot, we shoot" and "Looters shot dead."
Jefferson Parish's divide between races and classes was evident in those who returned to check on their homes -- whites -- and those who were noticeably absent -- blacks.
Much of Jefferson Parish's black community had been evacuated to the Houston Astrodome on buses and had no means of returning.
"They bused people out of the city, and now they don't have a way to get back," said Henry, who is black. "If this was the upper class, it wouldn't be this way, that's for sure." .............
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There is much evidence that Mayor Nagin complained of the Gretna bridge blockade on ABC Nightline, on Sept. 4, yet news.google offers no link to his comments on that news segment......
download abc news nightline program's podcast
http://a.abcnews.com/podcast/050905ntl.mp3
and fast forward about 11 or 12 minutes and hear mayor Nagin describe the sheriff and deputies guarding the foot of the bridge, and hear the sheriff defend himself. Ted Koppel avoids confronting the sheriff by avoiding asking him why he did not simply provide an evacuation route through and out of Gretna to areas further away where...evn if plentiful food, water, and shelter were not available in Gretna, they xould conceivably be available further away
from the most adversely storm and flood affected region.