Obama Travels to New Orleans to Mark Progress After Katrina

[ProgressiveEconomist]

Source: Bloomberg

Obama Travels to New Orleans to Mark Progress After Katrina
Angela Greiling Keane August 27, 2015 — 6:00 AM EDT Updated on August 27, 2015 — 11:06 AM EDT

A decade after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, President Barack Obama on Thursday is headed to one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods to mark the city’s rebound. The 2005 storm flooded most of New Orleans, killed more than 1,500 people and caused as much as $150 billion in damage. It is the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

“We acknowledge this loss, this pain, not to harp on what happened but to memorialize it,” Obama will say in remarks at a new community center in the Lower Ninth Ward, according to excerpts the White House released in advance. “We do this not in order to dwell in the past, but in order to keep moving forward.” The trip is Obama’s ninth visit to Louisiana. Recovery from Katrina has been a focus of his administration, White House officials say, as the government has poured billions of dollars into the city to rebuild housing, schools, health services and infrastructure destroyed by the storm.

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Obama will describe the city as a work in progress, beset by economic inequality as it was before the storm, according to the White House. Opening Opportunities. “The project of rebuilding here wasn’t simply to restore the city as it had been,” Obama will say, according to the prepared remarks. “It was to build a city as it should be, a city where everyone, no matter who they are or what they look like or how much money they’ve got has an opportunity to make it.” One sore spot for the city, where blacks, Hispanics and Asians make up more than 60 percent of the population, is that minority-owned businesses have lagged white-owned firms in the recovery, according to Richard McCline, a University of Georgia researcher who released a study of the New Orleans economy in July. The city’s challenges with racial and economic inequality are a “microcosm” of the U.S., Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama, said in an interview.


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-27/obama-travels-to-new-orleans-to-mark-progress-after-2005-storm

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See also http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027115114 :
"'Heckuva Job Brownie' blames everyone but himself for Katrina fiasco"

[hibbing]

1. sad

I was so ashamed of our country during the aftermath of the hurricane. I felt like I was in some third world country watching the lack of response by our government. Led (or passed more like it) of course by the worse president in the history of our country.

Peace

[Roy Rolling]

2. Been there

Maybe the government was slow, but the American people and people across the world were very generous. People from New Orleans---I are one----will never forget the kindness and generosity of ordinary people. And you are one of them. Thanks.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. The city will never be the same...

they displaced a large portion of the native NOLA'ers and let the vultures (developers) move in.

[Historic NY]

4. Guitars and birthday cake are a tradition.