strib: Abandoned, yet again

[question everything]

Abandoned, yet again

David Peterson, Star Tribune

September 4, 2005

The first thing to grasp about this past week in New Orleans, Elliott Stonecipher says, is that the poor blacks whose suffering and looting filled our television screens felt abandoned long before the hurricane arrived. The basic systems that sustain society, he says, didn't suddenly fall apart during these past few days.

The abandonment, according to one of Louisiana's leading political commentators, has stretched out over decades. And so has the social breakdown.

"The public schools virtually had failed. Not only whites but affluent blacks were leaving. We were looking, quite frankly, at the impending demise of New Orleans as a major city. Many, many systems were failing, including public safety. Long before now, the tourists who were kept safe in tourist areas would have been dumbfounded to see what went on the rest of town. That is the backdrop, in essence, to what people are seeing today."

(snip)

All discussion of what caused water to pour through downtown New Orleans took place amid uneasy questions about what might have been different had the city been a place like San Francisco, full of affluent, educated whites.

(snip)

"One of the most dramatic things I've seen is a study in the American Journal of Public Health last year asking, if blacks and whites were given the same kind of medical care, what would happen? It turns out, if you equalized treatment from 1990 to 2000, about 900,000 African-American lives would have been saved. Blacks are not treated the same as whites, and they are exposed to more adverse environmental stresses," Johnson says. The raw demographics suggest that New Orleans was extraordinarily vulnerable not only because it sat below sea level, awaiting a big storm, but also because it housed so many poor people, old people, disabled people, people without cars to get them anywhere in an emergency.

(snip)

The abandonment of New Orleans by the wealthy has been going on for a long time, says Stonecipher, a demographer and pollster based in Shreveport, in the northern part of the state... In ways that transcend race and reach deep into the political culture, he says, there simply hasn't been "the brainpower, the willpower, to do what takes to fix it."

(snip)

http://www.startribune.com/stories/125/5595728.html

David Peterson is at [e-mail].

[ohio_liberal]

1. "the tourists who were kept safe in tourist areas"

Too true. I've heard it said that hotel concierges weren't doing their jobs properly if they didn't worn ya to stay away from 'the bricks' (low income housing development)

[Occulus]

2. I don't much care for the idea, but

I'm thinking we either need a national income cap or a mandatory donation fund that only the very rich are subject to. they are not like us. Laws, consistently, do not apply to them. They get away with paying much less taxes on their obscenely high incomes by hoarding their money offshore, they make more and more and more money through investements that most of us do not have access to because- surprise!- we don't have enough money in the first place, they assume an unconsionable and unpatriotic air of superiority because of their wealth...

It is time for it to end. Uncontrolled capitalism is just as bad as fascism n the end, and we're seeing it right now.

As an aside, if the SCOTUS has ruled that money is property, and we can commandeer property such as boats, planes, etc. in a time of war (or, one would presume, national emergency).............

you get the idea.

[question everything]

3. During times of war, governments used to impose special tax

but not here, even though it is clear that the war in Iraq has been draining our budget.

We need to levy a special 5% emergency tax on income above $200,000 or $250,000. And it should be all income - wages, salaries, investment, dividends, etc. - before any exemptions or deductions or adjustments.

Next, corporations should not be able to expense executives' salaries and other forms of compensations exceeding $1.5 or $2.0 million.

It is not only helping the evacuees. It is also rebuilding the coast of LA and of MS. It is rebuilding the ports. These would require a huge infuse of money from the federal governement and the only way it can get it is to tax the ones that can be taxed.

And, of course, forget about eliminating the estate tax.