Obama's first visit to New Orleans was TODAY - on the way to a fundraiser

On Edit: I have removed "I am Disturbed to learn" since the PC Dilletantes on this thread, who don't remember reading my or other people's extensive posts on this subject for the three years before the election, or weren't around / old enough to remember the general indifference toward New Orleans, don't seem to believe me.

I LITERALLY HAD NO IDEA THAT OBAMA HASN'T BEEN TO GROUND ZERO IN NEW ORLEANS BEFORE TODAY. WHO COULD HAVE IMAGINED SUCH A THING?! What person said it wasn't enough of a national priority to warrant an itinerary?

How fucking depressing. As if I needed another reason to be depressed about
which direction the new Administration is headed.

OH WAIT! Bobby Jindal and Louisiana Republicans praised Obama's efforts to
ship the money their way and his commitment to ensure the demolition of
"inadequate" public schools and public housing, and defended him against
inner-city critics.

Obama Defends Himself against New Orleans Critics

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1151ap_us_obama_new_orleans.html?source=mypi

(Another poorly written "fake online Seattle P-I" article brought to you by outsourced online journalism thanks to supposedly "progressive" people who don't support print journalism anymore -- thanks Internet, for giving us recycled cable news as an alternative to the formerly liberal Washington Post!)

portion of the junket can be included, and the whole expense comes out of a different fund. Taxpayer fund rather than party (as in political) fund.

Seriously, you have to have a chip on shoulder.

Every goddamn body can claim somehow that he's not doing enough.

Makes me sick.

Get over it.

Trying to UN-DO the effects of the conservative Democrats in Washington and New Orleans.

What have you done?

And there is plenty else for the president to do beyond making a personal visit to N.O.

Have a donut, you deserve it.

:donut:

When was the first business trip the Admin made to NYC after the Election to deal with Wall Street, rebuilding Lower Manhattan, etc?

It's a big fucking country and if half of NYC got submerged you would have a similar "narrow perspective".

If the president had gone to "check things out" it would be called a gratuitous photo op.

He's taking care of business...That is what counts, not personal appearances.

Nobody's blaming Obama--we just recognize the fact that because of the damage Bush did be neglecting New Orleans, Obama now has to clean up the mess Bush left behind.

I kinda zoned out after seeing, 'I am disturbed...'

as Senator and candidate.

:eyes:

When was the new Administration's first visit to ground zero?

Do you want action or photo ops?

Bobby Jindal praised the Administration's current approach and defended him against inner-city critics.

My own facts are - I had no idea this was Obama's first trip until the AP mentioned that fact, today.

Photo ops? No, we need a fucking summit meeting. We need a fucking Thames Barrage down there.

We need to stop local Blue Dog Dems from demolishing and selling off the city's public infrastructure.

We need accountability for what happened to people attempting to leave the city on foot.

You don't build a Thames Barrage if you've visited the city once as President.

Put yourself in the shoes of a child having to live like that--the crime, poverty, despair. I'm for the mixed income community model.

There were mixed-income, scattered site public housing all over Capitol Hill (a wealthy community) in DC. Guess what the "progressive" local (white) Democrats have done? Gotten them demolished -- and the schools that served them -- one got converted into a Gold's Gym. Another into a "mixed-income" Ballpark development which is, in accordance with the model favored by Clinton and Obama, 100% owner occupied, good credit required to purchase, $600 K starting price (the largest public housing project on capitol hill got turned into the Barracks for the Eighth and Eye Marine Corps Band -- Ollie North's regiment -- complete with a private tennis court and razor fence around the property -- and the people on Capitol Hill cheered and said "think of the children" who will no longer have to live in such a horrible place as their community). And the leader of that movement got elected to City Council as a reward for getting rid of the horrible, horrible, sight of poor black people living "within sight of the Nation's Capital building" as the posters and government housing manuals used to proclaim and openly tsk-tsk.

The Wal-Mart in the Garden District (NOLA) was a mixed-income public housing project. They cleared land there -- in one of the oldest cities in America -- for a giant Wal-Mart -- government funded -- which promptly became just about the only store in the city. The land was available under HOPE VI -- former public housing in a wealthiest part of the city -- just happened to be the first public housing to be demolished -- not the most distressed.

The rest of the land was rebuilt as ticky tacky "fake" shotgun houses, only for a higher income group than the garden apartments there before (which were themselves historic enough that the NOLA historic society condemned their demolition and got some of them preserved.) There are no Tower Blocks in NOLA.

The public housing in NOLA was built by ROOSEVELT & the NEW DEAL -- JUST LIKE Stuyvesant Town in NYC (if it's good enough for the rich...)

With friends like these (no less than 20 such staffers, you say, who agree with Bobby Jindal) working to demolish public housing using Katrina as an excuse and remove homeless encampments and argue the area is better off with fewer people (were they too chickenshit to do it before the storm or is it just easier to avoid eviction proceedings if you can cite "acts of God") who needs enemies?

2 here who agree that fixing New Orleans is a national priority and that the Obama administration after the mess Bush left behind needs to see it as such.

That "this is the perfect time to clean New Orleans up" by bringing back only the people who deserve to come back, and demolishing the only structures that didn't flood, the government owned ones, that we don't "need" anymore. There's a palpable sense of "well, the city is better off with fewer people living there, THOSE people shouldn't be living in a place that's below sea level anyway".

Heck, they're doing it all over, the minute poor people can't afford to live somewhere because of disinvestment and resulting wholesale urban renewal, they tear down the schools with it, on the grounds that the people living in the new development will be able to afford to send their kids to private school, or better yet (according to cap rates theory) won't have kids at all.

the past few months!

Landrieu, Melancon and Nagin have all been worthless, especially Landrieu on the health care issue, and those are just the Democrats. And looking over last Fall's election returns from Louisiana, I can certainly understand why that state has not been at the top of the Obama Administration's priority list.

Right? I mean, that's the purpose of electing a strong progressive Democrat to national office, right?

Oh, I'm so deeply humbled by your arrogance.

Jeez. Talk about arrogance.

I'm curious how he extrapolated all that from the picture you posted.

:rofl:

The Administrations' decision to demolish all of New Orleans' public housing and close 99% of its public schools in "response" to Katrina. the new Administration has decided to continue those policies. PM me and I'll put you directly in touch with the relief workers I'm working with and they can explain to you how badly New Orleans has been betrayed.

Fucking dilettantes.

and Jindal planned it.

I'd heard that about 60% had been converted to charters. Of course, that's still enough that the charters are competing for students like military recruiters do, in places like the Wal-Mart parking lot on Tchoupitoulas.

Local government built that Wal-Mart, which put several of New Orleans' 150 year old markets out of business. Every single fucking relief org was forced to buy their supplies at a Wal-Mart built on a HOPE VI contract on land "reclaimed from horrible, horrible public housing" that happened to be located smack dab in the Garden District.

see before I left this country. Guess now there's nothing to see.;(

No one takes them seriously because they are not serious anymore.

Wharrgarbl.

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I can't take this shit seriously. Latest poutrage nontroversy.

from a policy standpoint. That's whether we're talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, or La.