Why New Orleans Went Under

[Yick]

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/peterson.asp



Why New Orleans Went Under



By Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson (Afro-American Pastor)




Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:



What would you do?

What would you do if you were black?



Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.



To the first:Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger.Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.



For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you're black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, you'll probably wait for the government to save you.



This was not always the case.Prior to 40 years ago, such a pathetic performance by the black community in a time of crisis would have been inconceivable. The first response would have come from black men. They would take care of their families, bring them to safety, and then help the rest of the community. Then local government would come in.



No longer. When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out. This, as we know, did not turn out good results..



Enter Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Jackson and Farrakhan laid blame on "racist" President Bush.. Farrakhan actually proposed the idea that the government blew up a levee so as to kill blacks and save whites. The two demanded massive governmental spending to rebuild New Orleans, above and beyond the federal government's proposed $60 billion. Not only that, these two were positioning themselves as the gatekeepers to supervise the dispersion of funds. Perfect: Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America, "overseeing" billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up.



Of course, if these two were really serious about laying blame on government, they should blame the local one. Responsibility to perform legally and practically fell first on the mayor of New Orleans. We are now all familiar with Mayor Ray Nagin the black Democrat who likes to yell at President Bush for failing to do Nagin's job. The facts, unfortunately, do not support Nagin's wailing. As the Washington Times puts it, "recent reports show [Nagin] failed to follow through on his own city's emergency-response plan, which acknowledged that thousands of the city's poorest residents would have no way to evacuate the city."

One wonders how there was "no way" for these people to evacuate the city. We have photographic evidence telling us otherwise. You've probably seen it by now the photo showing 2,000 parked school buses, unused and underwater. How much planning does it require to put people on a bus and leave town, Mayor Nagin?



Instead of doing the obvious, Mayor Nagin (with no positive contribution from Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the other major leader vested with responsibility to address the hurricane disaster) loaded remaining New Orleans residents into the Superdome and the city's convention center. We know how that plan turned out.

About five years ago, in a debate before the National Association of Black Journalists, I stated that if whites were to just leave the United States and let blacks run the country, they would turn America into a ghetto within 10 years. The audience, shall we say, disagreed with me strongly. Now I have to disagree with me. I gave blacks too much credit. It took a mere three days for blacks to turn the Superdome and the convention center into ghettos, rampant with theft, rape and murder.

President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks. Had New Orleans' black community taken action, most would have been out of harm's way.7? But most were too lazy, immoral and trifling to do anything productive for themselves.



All Americans must tell blacks this truth. It was blacks' moral poverty not their material poverty that cost them dearly in New Orleans. Farrakhan, Jackson, and other race hustlers are to be repudiated for they will only perpetuate this problem by stirring up hatred and applauding moral corruption. New Orleans, to the extent it is to be rebuilt, should be remade into a dependency-free, morally strong city where corruption is opposed and success is applauded. Blacks are obligated to help themselves and not depend on the government to care for them. We are all obligated to tell them so.
The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson is founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, and author of "Scam: How the Black Leadership Exploits Black America " Go to the web site www.Snopes.com and pull up his name and read about this strong courageous black man who speaks the truth. Please keep this going.

[Hogeye]

What would you do? What would you do if you were black?

Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.

To the first: Most of us would take our families out of that city quickly to protect them from danger. Then, able-bodied men would return to help others in need, as wives and others cared for children, elderly, infirm and the like.

For better or worse, Hurricane Katrina has told us the answer to the second question. If you're black and a hurricane is about to destroy your city, you'll probably wait for the government to save you.

A common error/trick here is to conflate race and poverty. One should ask: Isn't this also true (perhaps moreso) for New Orleans poor? Did middle and upper class blacks stay and "wait for the government to save [them]"? Probably not. OTOH, the writer is trying to shake the welfare mentality out of underclass blacks, so a little hyperbole is understandable.

Thomas Sowell has written extensively about how culture affects intergenerational prospects for better standards of living. Yes, government pauperization, aka welfare, tends to mire those who accept it into poverty - it has, as they say, perverse consequences. But this is an incentives thing, a cultural degradation thing, not a race thing.

[Doug]

Say a hurricane is about to destroy the city you live in. Two questions:
What would you do?
What would you do if you were black?
Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.

DOUG
Darrel has roasted Bill Yick's racist bull many times, and this includes the piece above.

What about this question:

Say you are a farmer and prices of your crops were low?

What would you do?

What would you do if you were rich?

Sadly, the two questions don't have the same answer.

If you were rich, you would wait for the government to save you. And unlike its resistance to save blacks from Katrina's flood, the government will save rich farmers by giving them tons of money. In fact, government welfare to the rich is almost double its welfare to the poor, as we've documented on this forum before.

[Hogeye]

It wasn't Yicks who wrote that article - it was a black preacher named Peterson. (Yicks was merely exploiting it out of context.)

I agree with your point, Doug - welfare for rich or poor is bad. Govt plunder and redistribution is obviously immoral, as it violates the NAP. I'll make a libertarian out of you yet!

[Doug]

It wasn't Yicks who wrote that article - it was a black preacher named Peterson. (Yicks was merely exploiting it out of context.)

DOUG
Yes, I heard that a black guy wrote that article, which is why it was on Snopes.com--people could hardly believe it.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I have needed "welfare" in my life (was on it the "average" - 9 months -that welfare recipients generally are) - try being a single mom on minimum wage - I double-dog dare you! It is not possible to pay for the childcare needed to be able to go to work on a minimum wage job - or even a couple of bucks over minimum for two kids. And don't give me that crap about "if you can't afford 'em, don't have 'em" - at the time I "had 'em" I was married and living the supposedly idealistic bluecollar middle-class lifestyle.

The reason for welfare is need. Is it better for our society that children (90% of the people on welfare are under 18 - 75% are under 12) have a roof over their heads and regular meals? If it is, then welfare is needed. If you think hoards of half-starved street kids are a good idea, then absolutely vote against welfare. "Corporate welfare" and other tax monies diverted to the already wealthy are next best to criminal and definitely obscene - taking from the "just getting by" to further bloat the bloated.

[Hogeye]

Barbara, if you want to discuss voluntary charity vs. government plunder and redistribution, you should start another thread. This one is about black welfare mentality ("pauperization").

[Dardedar]

DAR
Sometimes it is difficult for me to grasp just how simple some people are. For many years Yick has been sending me rightwing claptrap that I have roasted. Easily in excess of 100 of them. Most can be debunked with a quick check at snopes or by just examining some of the claims in the article and pointing out factual errors, contradictions and absurdities. Yick no doubt is impressed that this article can be found on snopes. That is, snopes confirms that the article was really written by the black man it is attributed to. No, really. That is all snopes confirms. I think Yick is impressed that his article got the authorship right. But who cares who wrote it? What matters is, is it true? I think he is also impressed that it agrees with his prejudices. When he emailed it to me weeks ago I said I wouldn't read it but if he would post it on the forum I would read it and respond to it if it was worthy of a response. It isn't. Piles of assertions opinion and what I would consider racist self-loathing by some preacher. Nothing backed up. Consider this astonishing claim:

"When 75 percent of New Orleans residents had left the city, it was primarily immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind and waited for the government to bail them out."

Oh really. If you are poor (and there is a lot of poverty in New Orleans) and you don't have a car what were your options? No one KNEW until quite late how bad it was going to be. Even the clueless president didn't even know well after the fact. This is why he is famously goofing around with a guitar on August 30:



As the KOS blurb noted for this pic:

"This is the greatest disaster to hit our nation in most of our lifetimes. Worse than 9-11. New Orleans is underwater. Biloxi is 90 percent destroyed. Who knows how many dead. Who knows how many homeless. Who knows how many jobless. We have a bona fide refugee crisis on our hands.
I just wish that the president gave a damn about what's happenend. Unfortunately, he's too busy playing 'country rock star"."

DAR
As I have told Yick many times, mayor Nagin made mistakes and has admitted them. But I don't expect a mayor to be a disaster expert. I do expect the leader of the nation's vast multi-billion dollar disaster relief agency (FEMA) to be an expert. Bush appointed a man who wasn't. That FEMA botched their job so profoundly is no mystery. Bush destroyed the agency beforehand. Two quotes:

***
"I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded,… I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders, and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me, 'It is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management.'"
--Clinton era FEMA director James Lee Witt, at a hearing on Capitol Hill March 24, 2004, a year and a half BEFORE Katrina)

The FEMA botch was so bad, even Bush's appointee Chertoff did not buy the "blame state and local officials" line. Consider:

“WASHINGTON — FEMA's lack of planning, not the failures of state and local officials, was to blame for much of what went wrong with the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a congressional committee Wednesday.
The assessment by the most senior administration official to face lawmakers since the hurricane struck in late August contrasted sharply with testimony earlier by Michael D. Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Brown had blamed what he termed the "dysfunction" of Louisiana state and local officials for hobbling the relief effort.
"From my own experience, I don't endorse those views," Chertoff said. He told lawmakers that he found the region's governors and mayors to be responsive as the crisis unfolded.” LA TIMES

Here is a picture of some of those "immoral, welfare-pampered blacks that stayed behind..."

[Hogeye]

Right - the statement would have been quite accurate had it said "welfare-dependent poor" rather than "immoral, welfare-pampered blacks." But even "welfare-dependent blacks" would be reasonable in the context of the article, since the intention was apparently to "goose" blacks out of the victimhood mentality. I see the piece as similar to Bill Cosby's infamous and controversial speech to the NAACP a few years ago, scolding blacks for dissing education, using niggatalk, and blaming problems on whitey rather than taking responsibility.

[LaWood]

>Two of the most dishonest elite blacks in America, "overseeing" billions of dollars. I wonder where that money will end up. <
Posted by Yick

No need to wonder. Haliburton is overseeing rebuilding efforts in NO.
The first thing they did was destroy federal laws that require wage levels and go about importing illegal immigrant workers, many who were never paid.
Haliburton accomplished this with clean hands by sub-contracting , a technique or business arrangement to push responsibility downward, away from the culprit.

Next, "dishonet elite blacks" cannot hold a candle to dishonest rich, white, Republicans.
Haliburton gets its contracts at cost-plus. No bidding, not even estimates are required. It's a no brainer to see that NO rebuilding will take longer and longer until the $60 billion is used up.

Jesse Lee Peterson is a useful fool.
_

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Is "black" the issue or "welfare" the issue? Linking them together is a bit of Reaganite propaganda. Most of the people on welfare are not black, but it makes a great 15-sec political ad. As you might remember, it worked - even in the early 90s Newty the Cutey's Contract on America was advertized to get rid of those "welfare queens" - Heck, Newty wanted to go back to Victorian-style orphanages for kids whose parents were for whatever reason unable to work/get a job paying enough to afford to work until somebody pointed out orphanages are much more expensive in tax dollars than those piddly welfare payments to the parents of said children.

The insistance of those "born on third" that people without boots should pull themselves up by their bootstraps is always irritating.

[Dardedar]

HOG
Barbara, if you want to discuss... you should...

DAR
When he's not hijacking threads he's pretending to be moderator. I am sure you know Barbara to ignore such nonsense.

[Hogeye]

I could have

A. continued Barbara's hijack
B. ignored her ridiculous assertions, or
C. challenged her, and offered to discuss it elsewhere.

I chose C, per Sav's request.

Now, Darrel, if you'd like to discuss alternatives to hijacking, please start another thread.

[Tamara]

I could have

A. continued Barbara's hijack
B. ignored her ridiculous assertions, or
C. challenged her, and offered to discuss it elsewhere.

I chose C, per Sav's request.

Now, Darrel, if you'd like to discuss alternatives to hijacking, please start another thread.

A...there was no hijack
B...your assertions are the most ridiculous of anyone here
C...you could have challenged it where it lay since the discussion was about welfare after all.

Now, Hogeye, if you'd like to be in charge of something instead of merely pretending to have power here, why not start your own forum.

[Savonarola]

I can see that this thread is pretty much useless at this point. If we're going to be talking about something other than the topic, we're going to be doing it somewhere other than here.

Thread closed.

--Savonarola, Politics moderator