The second-handers are at it again.

They can't get jobs and support themselves, but they sure can find lawyers.

I'm talking of course about the chronic welfare recipients who were flushed out of the housing projects in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina last year. Every single one of them was transported away from the city by the taxpayers and given new housing somewhere, again at taxpayer expense. I'm sure that some of them used this new start to find jobs and earn enough money to support themselves, but a large number of them have now drifted back to New Orleans. (We had to carry them out because they "couldn't afford to leave" but they sure found the money to get back, didn't they?)
Now they are protesting and demanding that the city and the feds rebuild and repoen the projects because they want to live there again. It does not matter that we already provided a roof over their heads elsewhere. I reported earlier that some were upset about public housing in places like Dallas and Houston because the police "harrassed" them for silly things like sitting on the complex porches drinking beer. So now they insist that we--the working people of America who actually pay taxes--owe them new apartments in New Orleans again according to this story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

During the two-hour meeting, residents and advocates rose to uniformly condemn the demolition and ask how the thousands of families who once lived in the complexes will find new homes in New Orleans.

Well they could always get jobs and EARN the money like most of the rest of us do. Bwahahahaha! That's a good one, isn't it?

And typically, race-baiting politicians and ambulance-chasing lawyers are all over it on their behalf, warning the city not to try to replace the ruined projects with mixed-development housing or anything but other projects:

"I'm against any demolition of any development," said state Rep. Charmaine Marchand, D-New Orleans, who gave [Donald Babers, the federal housing official appointed after the storm as HANO's one-man board of commissioners] a message for [HUD Secretary Alphonso] Jackson. "Tell him he needs to remember what color he is. The people he is putting out are the same color he is. They and he all answer to the same god."

And of course a socialist lawyer joins in the discussion:

Laura Tuggle, an attorney at the New Orleans Legal Assistance Corp., said the public housing complexes belong to those who lived there.

Wrong, bitch. It belongs to the people who PAY for it, and that's the taxpaying citizens who have been paying for so long to house all of these parasites who won't go out and work for their rent like everyone else has to. If the local government wants to knock it down and put in market-rate units to alleviate the housing shortage for working people who are actually trying to rebuild the city, that's their perogative and their fiduciary duty. The city has to make a choice. They can offer housing to workers who pay taxes and contribute to the local economy,or they can give new houses to layabouts and criminals. I hope that they make the right choice, but since they re-elected Ray Nagin after his bungling of the Hurricane last year, I'm not holding my breath.