Saturday, October 27
Wallet Size, Skin Color Mediate Amerikans' Post-9/11 Catastrophic Experience
The ‘Boo ain’t no N.O.
Plus: George Bush, Flame Retard
By Greg Palast
Dig:
Population of San Diego fire evacuation zone: 500,000
Population of the New Orleans flood evacuation zone: 500,000
White folk as a % of evacuees, San Diego: 66%
Black folk as % of evacuees, New Orleans: 67%
Size counts, too. Size of your wallet, that is:
Evacuees in San Diego, in poverty: 9%
Evacuees in New Orleans, in poverty: 27%
The numbers would be even uglier, though more revealing, if I included evacuees of the celebrity fire in Malibu.
The President didn’t do a photo-strafing of the scene from 1700 feet this time. Instead, we have the photo op of George, feet on the ground, hanging with Arnold the Action Man. (However, I’m informed that the President was a bit disappointed that he didn’t get to wear one of those neat fireman hats like
Rudi G got at Ground Zero.)
In 2005, while the bodies were still being fished out of flooded homes in New Orleans, Republican Congressman Richard Baker praised The Lord for his mercy. “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did,” he said about the removal of the poor from the project near the French Quarter much coveted by speculators.
But as this week’s flames spread, no Republican Congressman cried, “Burn baby burn!” to praise the Lord for cleaning up them ‘Boo, the sin-and-surf playground of Hollywood luvvies.
In New Orleans, God’s covenant with real estate developers has been very profitable. Over 70,000 families remain, two years after the waters receded, in mobile home concentration centers far away from the N.O. re-building boom. Let’s see how long it takes to get Tom Hanks back on his beach towel....read more
*Proxy Class and Race Wars Via Partisan Politics?
Could voting differences in the 2004 presidential race and bare knuckled partisan politics also have influenced how George Bush's federal emergency apparatus responded to San Diego and New Orleans' respective natural disasters? Before you answer that one, consider the following:
In California, the first U.S. state with more ethnics (Hispanics and Asians) than white gringos, Democrat challenger John Kerry garnered over 1,200,000 more votes (53% to 44%) than GOP incumbent George Bush. But San Diego County's comparatively better-off, mostly white residents--represented for years in the U.S. House by recently-convicted defense industry champion grafter and political joke Randy "Duke-stir" Cunningham linked to dubious White House contracts--went for Bush over Kerry by 70,000 votes (Let county totals completely load).
The 2004 voting results in Louisiana and the New Orleans are a mirror image. While 15% more Louisianans preferred Bush to Kerry, Orleans Parrish (let completely load) went overwhelming "blue" for "Quick Concede" artist Kerry and embarrassed Bush: Kerry: 152,610, or 78%; Bush: 42,847, or 22%. Though I haven't verified the numbers, I wager Orleans Parrish gave Kerry its largest margin of victory in any state Bush carried in 2004.
Let's also not forget that on Capitol Hill, also know among more informed Americans as U.S. Fraud Central, where too few ever fall under a U.S. Justice Department investigation unless they aren't convinced to "play ball" with the GOP and Democrat leaderships. In August 2005--weeks after later-White House fired U.S. Prosecutor Carol Lam's office in San Diego opened an investigation into Cunningham's Del Mar real estate wheeling-dealing--federal agents raided the New Orleans home of Harvard-educated but egregiously corrupt Democrat congressman William Jefferson.
Could the famously petty, vindictive born-again Christian George W. Bush have fired a retaliatory shot across the bow of the Democrat Party for targeting GOP kingpin Cunningham with the well-timed raid on Jefferson's New Orleans home? Could the White House's stubborn obstruction of post-Hurricane Katrina aid to New Orleans be merely payback to voters who a year embarrassed Bush by giving the Democrat Party its "bluest" victory in a Red State?
Ah, never mind; it's all probably a coincidence anyway, since nothing of the sort appeared in any mainstream news outlet.
