"You can believe that he's suddenly worried about poor people if you want"

In an eerily lit, nationally televised appearance outside the historic St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, President Bush promised the world to the Gulf Coast residents whose lives were upended by Hurricane Katrina.

He seemed to be saying that no effort, no amount of money, would be spared. Two hundred billion dollars? No problem. This will be bigger than the Marshall Plan. The end of the rainbow is here.

"Throughout the area hit by the hurricane," said Mr. Bush, "we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives."

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You can believe that he's suddenly worried about poor people if you want to. What is more likely is that his reference to racism and poverty was just another opportunistic Karl Rove moment, never to be acted upon.

From Good Grief by BOB HERBERT on September 19, 2005

Link:

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/opinion/19herbert.html?hp=&oref=login&pagewanted=print

Maybe President Bush would have been mugging with a guitar the day after the levees broke even if New Orleans had been a mostly white city. Maybe Palm Beach would also have had to wait five days after a hurricane hit before key military units received orders to join rescue operations.

But in a larger sense, the administration's lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina had a lot to do with race. For race is the biggest reason the United States, uniquely among advanced countries, is ruled by a political movement that is hostile to the idea of helping citizens in need.

Race, after all, was central to the emergence of a Republican majority: essentially, the South switched sides after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Today, states that had slavery in 1860 are much more likely to vote Republican than states that didn't.

And who can honestly deny that race is a major reason America treats its poor more harshly than any other advanced country? To put it crudely: a middle-class European, thinking about the poor, says to himself, "There but for the grace of God go I." A middle-class American is all too likely to think, perhaps without admitting it to himself, "Why should I be taxed to support those people?"

From Tragedy in Black and White by Paul Krugman on September 19, 2005

Link:

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/09/19/opinion/19krugman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

"That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action.

"So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality."

--G.W. Bush, New Orleans, LA, September 16, 2005

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4794195

''The people that we saw in front of the Superdome and in front of the convention center, they had been abandoned before the hurricane," Obama, an Illinois Democrat, said.

Mayhem and violence were not phenomena created by the disaster, Obama said. They have existed in inner cities across the country while the nation's political leaders have stood by, largely indifferent, he said.

''The violence has always been there. It just wasn't on your television screen because it wasn't spilling out onto the lives of the rest of us," said Obama, who lives in Chicago's South Side.

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''We want to ensure that people who've been displaced have opportunities to participate in the rebuilding of their own communities," Obama said.

From Obama urges alumni to help fight poverty: Gives speech at Harvard meeting of black grads

By Tracy Jan on September 18, 2005

Link:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/09/18/obama_urges_alumni_to_help_fight_poverty?mode=PF