Shift back to New Orleans, and the latest debate now centers around new houses for the welfare crowd. The former residents of the crime-ridden public housing projects are agitating and demanding that the government pause it's efforts directed towards re-opening schools and hospitals or cleaning up the neighborhoods of decent people and rebuild the projects so that they can return to their welfare lives on the public dole.
The New Orleans Times Picayune has run a couple of articles on this recently and foremost in every article is a woman names Pamela Mahogany. She claims that she "isn't on welfare" because she works as a nurse but then she demands another two-bedroom apartment where she only has to pay $299.00 a month, with the taxpayers picking up the rest. Currently FEMA is paying a thousand dollars a month to rent her another place and she's apparently making no effort to even help out with the bills, and she's protesting and demanding that we give her another apartment and charge her just enough money to allow her to pretend that she's not a welfare leech.
If she's a nurse like she claims, you'd think that she could afford to pay her own rent. I assume that she had to go to college to become a nurse. I wonder who paid for that? Here's betting that the rest of us did.
And Pamela's not alone. The stories also feature a man named Edwin Grant. He's 49 years old and now lives in a shelter since Hurricane Katrina put him out of the St. Bernard projects. He admits that he hasn't worked since the storm and my first question is "Why the hell not?" There are more clean-up and construction jobs in that city than can be filled and this slap's not working? He says that he wants $10 to $12 per hour with benefits and I guess that he's going to just sit around not working at all until someone offers him that. And in the meantime he wants another public housing apartment.
And this is the problem. It's not just demanding, ungrateful Pamela Mahogany or lazy Edwin Grant that's messing up New Orleans and to some extend the rest of America. It's really the tens of thousands of Pamela Mahogany and Edwin Grant clones out there, all sitting around with their hand out demanding that we give them everything they need to live and then complaining when it's not good enough or when a storm deprives them of it for a while. And to them, it's more important that they get an apartment with a sofa to lie on while they eat Cheetos and watch Oprah all day than it is for the government to get the region back on it's feet again.
New Orleans needs to forget about public housing. They're already trying to reopen the Iberville projects just outside the French Quarter and they're moving bums in there as fast as they can. What they need to do is knock that place down and sell the land to a developer who will do something with it that can generate tax money and other income for the city. It's right outside the French Quarter and some of the most valuable real estate in the city! But rather than exploit it as the resource that it is, they're giving it to the likes of Pamela and Edwin. And all that the city will get in return is more bottle-cap-tap-dancing panhandling kids on Bourbon Street and more drugs, robberies, and car break-ins on the fringes of the Quarter.
Come on, New Orleans... Wise up. With most of the second-hander welfare crowd gone, you can relocate the rest to the farthest reaches of the city or banish them altogether and make the Big Easy shine like never before. This is your chance to divest the Crescent City of it's long-time reputation as a third-world city and remake it as a desirable place for businesses, tourists and honest working people alike.
Tell Pamela Mahogany to shut the hell up and if she bitches any more, put her on a bus with a one-way ticket and tell her not to get off again until it crosses a state line.
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