Tag: Louisiana

by Greg Palast is a documentary that must be seen if one is to understand what’s going on in New Orleans after Katrina and the Federal Flood. Palast’s tough, gutsy journalism reminds me of what “60 Minutes” was, back in the day when that program had cojones. Palast, investigating what really happened in New Orleans on 8/29/2005, interviews then-LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden. Van Heerden says speaking to Palast could endanger his job due to the political connections of higher-ups–and we all know what happened to Van Heerden.

Palast also interviews flood victims discouraged in one way or another from returning home and the nefarious machinations behind attempts to discourage their return.

Here, then is “Big Easy to Big Empty.”

And this is why: He must hate Louisiana and her people. Coburn, whose state obviously never has had a major disaster (judging from his behavior) introduced an amendment to the Senate healthcare bill stripping it of the $300 million Mary Landrieu had had added to help Louisiana make up for what would be a catastrophic Medicaid shortfall.

Talk about kicking somebody when they’re down–Louisiana seriously needs this money.

Often when people including those in government and the mainstream media who should know better refer to the events of 8/29, it is merely as “Katrina” or “Hurricane Katrina”.

There were actually two catastrophes that happened that day: the storm, which passed to the east of New Orleans, devastating the Mississippi and eastern Louisiana Gulf Coasts, which was a NATURAL disaster, and the falling apart of New Orleans’ federally-built and maintained levees, which was a MANMADE disaster due to poor engineering.

While the use of Katrina as shorthand to cover the two events is easy (I’ve even done that at times) it’s misleading because of the implication that the flooding of New Orleans was a natural disaster. And this matters–more below the fold.

I’m smarter than President Obama!  Really.  It’s true.

I’ll bet he can’t write beat poetry worth shit.

He has not memorized every single story in Nathan Ausubel’s “Jewish Wit & Wisdom.”  And let me tell you, that’s a LOT of stories, like hundreds and hundreds of them!

Yeah, I’m smarter than President Obama.

I’ll bet he doesn’t have a clue as to how the internet has expanded the political consciousness of certain DFH’s and activists of all kinds who have leaped into the new paradigms like fearless parachute divers.

Come to think of it, THEY’RE smarter than President Obama, too!

Among all of his other accomplishments, Ted Kennedy can be remembered since Katrina and the federal flood happened as a legislator who proactively did what he could to help New Orleans’ and the rest of the Gulf Region’s people after the catastrophe.  

The deathers are all worried about how old folks will be treated under Democratic health care legislation.

Perhaps they have forgotten how old folks were treated under Republican rule:

How many old folks died because our federal government saw no role to play in protecting and caring for its citizens?

See, the trouble with not looking back is that we don’t remember what we ought to remember.

Katrina is something to remember.  Always.  The federal flood, they call it on the NOLA blogs.  The federal flood because the Army Corps of Engineers cut corners and didn’t make the levees right.  The federal flood because heckuva job Brownie and Bush’s happy cronies didn’t give a shit about the folks suffering but only cared about going to the cash register to hear the “ca-ching” that meant their usual profit off of human suffering.  Blackwater profited.  Halliburton profited.  A whole lot of Republicans profited.

(NOTE: This diary was originally posted on Daily Kos by azureblue, a musician who got his start in New Orleans. Per a request he made to readers in a comment under that diary, I am crossposting it here–because he and I feel this is an idea that needs as much attention and exposure as possible so hopefully Obama will pick up on it.)

The title says it all, but this grew out of a discussion last night about Obama’s love for jazz, and the possibility of him having jazz players at the inauguration:

Over at the NOLA blog Gentilly Girl, Morwen has a very disturbing story about an “idea” put forth by State Representative John LaBruzzo.

I didn’t watch Bush’s speech.  I can’t abide looking at or listening to him.

But from what I’ve read on the blogs, he is maintaining the Republican talking point of blaming this economic problem on homeowners, citizens, everyone but the big business monopolies who created this situation.

The old saying is that the fish rots from the head down.

So now we have a Representative from Jefferson Parish suggesting poor folks be sterilized.  That the solution to poverty is to just get rid of those pesky poor people.

According to Raw Story:

State Representative John LaBruzzo of Metairie said many of his constituents are tired of paying for children from poor families and that is why he is considering proposing legislation that would pay women on government assistance $1,000 if they choose to be sterilized.

“You have these people who are just fed up with working their buns off to try to provide for their own family and being forced by the government o provide for others’ families who just want to have unlimited kids,” he said.

LaBruzzo said he is studying voluntary sterilization for women whose sole financial support comes from the government in the form of welfare or other public assistance. His idea would be to give the women $1,000 if they had their tubes tied.

His proposal has come under harsh criticism by some civil rights groups.

The ACLU called it a misguided and mean-spirited attempt to eliminate poverty by eliminating the poor.

This is eugenics, of course.  Like … hmm … oh yeah, the Nazis did.  Because LaBruzzo finds the beauty part of this plan in the fact that once we get rid of all those undesirables, the “right” kind of people can repopulate the difference, huzzah!