"Help us, government man!"

Reading the New Orleans news yesterday, I couldn't help but shake my head at the latest example of the dependency and learned helplessness that welfare create.

It seems that the powers-that-be are going to demolish a building to make way for some new development. Now this should be seen as a good thing, as it'll bring jobs, both in construction and in whatever services that the tenants of the building offer. But what do we see in the news? Residents of the nearby Iberville public housing project running around worrying about the dust from the demolition and voicing outrage that no one from the public housing authority has come around to manage this "crisis" for them.

Iberville residents said on Tuesday that the little they knew about the implosion came from news reports, not from the Housing Authority of New Orleans. "I keep saying, 'When are they going to come tell us something?'" said Lanetter Dorsey, 54, who is in poor health and doesn't feel comfortable staying inside her Iberville apartment during the implosion. "I guess they've decided we need to fend for ourselves," she said.

OMG! Those poor people! They might actually have to learn things from the news and make their own decisions, just like everyone else does! How mean! How cruel! Why isn't the government man coming in to tell them what to do and make everything ok? How long after the dust settles can they start filing claims for some sort of cash reimbursement to make up for all of the stress? And the worst that could ever happen to them, in their eyes, is that they have to "fend for themselves". The horror!

This is pathetic. These people are grown. Their votes count as much as mine and yours. (and every one who bothers to cast a ballot will likely do so for Obama...) But here they are, upset and befuddled, with no idea what to do or how to respond to even this simple interruption of their day.

But Iberville residents sitting inside apartments within dark-brick buildings could soon become overheated if the dust takes hours to settle.

So go the F--k outside then! Leave for a few hours! Geez...how hard is that to figure out?

This is a prime example of the culture of dependency that big government has created, and it's what the Obama administration is trying to spread over our country, with one person and seven now receiving food stamps and with the USDA now working with the freaking Mexican government to try to get as many illegal aliens from that country to take our welfare as they can. Because the Obamaites know that people who are dependent on the government will continue to vote for the Democrats that made them dependent and accept further impositions of control over their lives from those Democrats. There's a reason why the Democrat party sends buses by the score into public housing projects around the country on election day...they know that they have a loyal base there and they're working hard to expand it because they know that it may well give them enough votes to allow them to keep control of the country despite objections from those of us who don't want their taxpayer-funded largess.

Now on another tangent, the taxpayers need to be asking why the Iberville housing project is even still around. It was condemned after being devastated by Hurricane Katrina and everyone living there was relocated by the taxpayers and given new apartments, mainly in Texas and other locations where space and local jobs were available. Yet one of the first things that then-Mayor Ray Nagin did was to divert federal money intended to help rebuild the city's infrastructure into programs designed to bring the displaced public housing residents back in time for the next election. Remember Nagin's statement that New Orleans has to remain a "Chocolate city"? He was afraid that a smaller voting pool made up largely of business owners, investors and workers might result in fewer Democrats keeping their jobs, especially after the way that his administration bungled things so badly during and after Katrina's strike. so now we have all-new welfare apartments built up to house a core Democrat constituency on some of the city's most valuable real estate right outside of the French Quarter, and it's housing many of the people who are responsible for much of the crime in the French Quarter. But the criminals, their families and other welfare recipients in the projects can be counted on to vote Dem, and the business owners and tourists in the Quarter who suffer from their presence...well most of them come from outside the city, so the don't rate serious consideration by the one-party (Dem) administration of that city.

As it stands now, that valuable land remains in service as a high-crime hot-spot that serves only to retard and inhibit meaningful economic development of that whole area. I mean, it it were my call, people relying on the taxpayers for a roof over their heads would be housed on old military bases or moved out into the country into the cheapest housing possible and the cities would be encouraged to put prime real estate like that under the Iberville projects to the best economic use on behalf of the taxpayers. But then again, that's probably why I don't get to run things.

Obama's illegal alien aunt allowed to stay in America

All are equal under American laws, but some are apparently more equal than others.

First she came into our country pretending to be a short-term visitor. Once here, she applied for asylum, a request which was rejected by a judge exercising his lawful authority. She was ordered to leave our country but instead, she went to Boston. There, she applied for--and received--welfare that she, as a non-citizen illegally in our country, was not entitled to get. She also got a publicly-subsidized apartment at a time when actual Americans in need were on waiting lists for such apartments, moving in and making herself comfortable while an American family waited for the next one to come available.

Now as much as I oppose the idea of publicly-subsidized apartments for anyone other than actual disabled individuals or the elderly, I really have a problem with someone who is not only a non-citizen but has been ordered to leave our country just getting one handed to her. However, for every one of us opposed to public housing, there is a liberal bureaucrat on the other side of the equation who gets paid to fill and manage public housing, and the more units they can acquire and fill at taxpayer expense, the larger their budget and staff becomes and the more power they have. Those people support other liberals in office and in today's culture, that means that we, the People, come in a distant second to the will of the machine.

But I digress. Returning to the illegal alien, she lived there for years, living a pretty good life. (Remember, she's from Kenya...even our public housing is the equivalent of upper-class wealth in mush of the third world.) She got food stamps--intended for poor Americans--to buy her groceries, and she got great medical care courtesy of our Medicaid program, which is also intended solely for Americans and other who are lawfully here. And she lived happily, at least until her rich nephew Barack ran for President and her presence and status here came to light.

At first there wasn't much trouble. The Democrat Party was aware of her situation but hushed it up because they wanted to win, and that's apparently worth turning a blind eye to countless wrongs. The American media sat on the story for months too, even after the London Times broadcast it to the world, refusing to talk about it because they had a dog in the fight--a dog named Barack--and they didn't want to see him lose. Obama clearly knew, but again, winning is worth more than honesty, integrity or the law, at least if you're a Democrat.

Of course once her presence was discovered, she was summarily driven to the airport and deported back to Kenya. Oh wait--no she wasn't. In fact, just before the election, then-President Bush issued a directive to ICE mandating that no fugitive aliens could be arrested and deported without approval from high-level officials, essentially ensuring that Obama's illegal-alien aunt was safe from deportation. So safe, in fact that she showed up at and was admitted to the White House for her nephew's swearing-in.

Once her nephew was in charge, she was granted another bite at the apple and allowed to apply--again--for asylum, this despite already being ordered to leave and her history of breaking our laws regularly since the last court-ordered deportation date. And this time, it seems to have worked out in her favor. She now gets to stay here and continue living off of our largess indefinitely.

CLEVELAND -- A U.S. immigration court granted asylum to President Barack Obama's African aunt, allowing her to stay in the country, her attorneys said Monday.

The decision was mailed Friday and comes three months after Kenya native Zeituni Onyango, the half-sister of Obama's late father, testified at a closed hearing in Boston, where she arrived in a wheelchair and two doctors testified in support of her case.

The basis for her asylum request hadn't been made public.

And, like almost every other piece of information about Barack Obama and his family, it's been sealed from public review.

Now my next question is this: Now that she's here, savoring her victory over the taxpayers and our legal system, when is her millionaire nephew--the one who keeps telling us that we have to be compassionate and care for countless others--going to start paying her bills and getting her out of public housing and off of the backs of Mr. and Mrs. America?

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.

The second-handers are angry again

Another meeting of the New Orleans City Council turned ugly as a couple dozen of the helpless welfare recipients who could not even get out of the way of Hurricane Katrina after being given several days' notice have now managed to get to yet another government meeting to demand more free stuff from that taxpayers who actually work for a living.

Full story



Dozens of public housing residents Thursday protested the federal government's plan to demolish four complexes in New Orleans, saying they are left without homes in a city where rentals are nearly impossible to find.

One day after U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced that New Orleans would lose housing complexes but gain a "renaissance" of better low-income housing, some of the families who called St. Bernard, Lafitte, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper home cried foul at a City Council hearing.

"By tearing down developments you're not giving me the choice to come back home to New Orleans, where I was forced to leave," said Cherlynn Gaynor, 42, who grew up in the Lafitte complex and was raising her 11 year-old daughter there before the levee failures during Katrina drowned the city. "I pay taxes and I work. Why would you shut us out from where our culture is?"

Well apparently Gaynor doesn't work hard enough to afford her own apartment. Perhaps if she actually took on a full-time 40-hour-per-week job, she could afford to move back to New Orleans. Until then, she needs to be grateful for any public housing that the rest of us provide for her, whether in's in Houston, Anchorage Alaska, or the middle of the Arizona desert. Like my momma always used to say: "Beggars can't be choosers".

Gaynor was joined by about two dozen residents who said they are hurt and frustrated by the plan to tear down complexes with the promise to redevelop them in three years.

"I just need somewhere to stay," said Patricia Thomas, who lost her apartment at Lafitte to the flooding but has lived at Iberville, C.J. Peete and B.W. Cooper over the years.

Fine. Stay in Houston or wherever else HUD put you. If you want choice housing, get off your butt and get a job.

New Orleans' public housing was among the worst in the nation. In fact it was so bad that the federal government stepped in and took control away from the city due to drugs, gang problems, and chronic neglect and corruption. It never really improved though, and Katrina was seen as a blessing by many New Orleans residents because it brought about the removal of many of these people who tended to be responsible for a disproportionate share of the city's crime. However HUD has announced plans to rebuilt many of these projects and repopulate them with the same deadbeats and trouble-makers that blighted the city originally. (If this alone isn't a good reason to disband HUD< I don't know what is.)

"It's important to see everyone be able to come back," said Scott Keller, deputy chief of staff for HUD, who spoke in place of Jackson, who had to return to Washington, D.C., for a meeting. "We don't want gangs. We don't want unsafe conditions. We want single moms to be safe, and their children."

The problem is that it won't just be single moms with their kids and elderly people living there. Anyone who has ever driven through these projects couldn't have helped but notice all of the young males loitering around all day and all night, shooting basketballs at hoops and drinking beer on the stoops. Most of those single moms have taken up with some other guy and most of those guys have either moved into the apartments with them (in violation of federal public housing regulations) or just hang out there all day. Most of them don't work either and to guys like that, a welfare mom with a cheap or free apartment and food stamps is a gold mine. And many of the elderly also wind up with their kids or grandkids living in their units as well. Sadly, to a large segment of our society, working is something that saps and suckers do, and sponging off of someone who is already on charity is seen as acceptable and even admirable.

If the projects are re-opened and given back to the same no-job-having baby-factory mommas that used to live there, you can bet that their boyfriends will all be back in there too, rolling their drugs and shooting each other when not scarfing down WIC food and lounging in the comfort of the air conditioners that we taxpayers put in every unit.

HUD and the city need to back off and just let the market handle housing in the city. Jobs will bring people in to work and working people can afford market-rate housing. The city doesn't need welfare lay-abouts and it's stupid to import thousands of them just because they used to live there once and are now clamoring for new apartments and help moving back. Keep the freeloaders wherever they're at now and turn that land over to private developers who can build housing for working people to buy or retail shops that will benefit everyone.

Deadbeats and freeloaders threaten to take over apartment complexes

These helpless crybabies couldn't find a way to get out of New Orleans when Katrina was coming, but now that they want something, they can sure get back AND tear down fences.

Story

A bunch of welfare recipients who used to infest the New Orleans housing projects are tired of waiting nicely for another handout. They have mostly been living in free housing in other cities that was paid for by us taxpayers but now that FEMA has said "enough" and threatened to turn off their free rent payments, they're surging back into New Orleans and demanding new public housing in the old complexes and threatening to tear down the fences and just take the units of the government doesn't hand them the keys.

Welfare recipient Karen Downs and other addressed the New Orleans City Council on Wednesday, according to the New Orleans Times Picayune. She says that her and other welfare recipients plan to take back their former homes at the 7th Ward complex this weekend, even if it means breaking through the razor-topped chain-link fence that the Housing Authority of New Orleans installed after Katrina.

"Guess what?" Downs said at the podium inside council chambers. "Saturday and Sunday, we're going to tear it (the fence) down."

"My two daughters and I are homeless," said Renell Carter, another welfare queen who spent part of her 30th birthday Wednesday pleading with city and HANO officials to reopen the Florida housing complex, where she lived until Katrina. "My rent was $212 and my house was beautiful. You got landlords who want to know if you're working. My job won't be back. I can't go back without a house. I'm living with someone else."

So despite being 30 years old, she's apparently still not working and dislikes the fact that outside of public housing, landlords expect you to have a job. What a shock! But she feels entitled to a "beautiful house" for only $212 a month. How many of us working people can have a nice house for that?

Not that I don't feel bad for some of these women. They bear some of the responsibility for being useless whiners but much of the blame has to go to the government--particularly the Democrats--who have for decades told women like this that it's ok to have a bunch of kids and lay around not working. It was understood that the government would give them all comfortable lifestyles at the expense of all the working people in America so long as they kept voting Dem every election. But now those chickens are coming home to roost and far from being grateful, the second-handers are now growing angry because the free stuff isn't coming as fast as they want it to.

Now I onject to the fact that the city wasted precious resources rebuilding any of these units at all, but at least HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson took a partial step in the right direction by announcing that the new units would only be made available to people who did not have criminal records and who had jobs. But those people tend to have a bit more pride and they can find their own housing at market rates. So what we have now is some empty units and some very angry lifestyle pan-handlers demanding that they be given those units just because... well I don't know why they think that they're entitled to free completely refurbished apartments. They don't even bother telling us why themselves. They're just demanding the keys or else.

As a case-in-point, Kim Paul, a residents leader at the Iberville complex, said tenants are being locked out of "their" pre-Katrina apartments that are in move-in condition.

"When will the rest of Iberville reopen?" Paul asked. "At the end of the month, I'm going to Texas and get my people. "We're coming home."

This from a woman who couldn't lift a finger to get "her people" out when the storm came in almost a year ago.

Sheesh!

Maybe we can work out a deal with Vicente Fox: We'll keep a million or so of his illegal citizens that are here working and staying out of trouble, but he has to take all these whiny baby factories and professional lay-a-bouts to Mexico in return.

Will someone shut Pamela Mahogany up?

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.

New Orleans and public housing--some of the officials have it right.

"We don't need soap opera watchers right now ... We're going to target the people who are going to work."

With that comment, New Orleans City Council President Oliver Thomas just earned my vote for Mayor and the enmity of many of the second-handers and professional dead-beats who proudly spent their entire lives on welfare prior to Katrina.

Now that the storm has come and gone, housing in New Orleans is scarce. The storm did not discriminate and it damaged or destroyed the homes of rich, poor, working and non-working alike. Most people had some sort of insurance that is or will eventually put their home back in order. But the TV-watching, baby-making, liquor-swilling people who lived basically free of charge in the city's drug and crime-infested massive public housing projects want new houses too, only they expect the rest of us to pay for it.

I'm calling out to New Orleans right now. DON'T DO IT!!!

New Orleans as a city will be back. And it should be. It's still the fifth largest seaport in the world and the biggest one in North America. It has history and culture and it welcomes visitors from all over the world with it's unique creole flavor and southern hospitality.

But the people who just hang out in the projects don't contribute to any of that. Sure, some of them make their way down to the French Quarter, but usually only to panhandle or rob tourists. Most of them however just sit around all day, either watching soap operas, as Thomas said, or shooting each other over drugs. New Orleans' housing projects have been among the worst in America for decades in terms of crime and it's so bad that food delivery drivers won't go in, utility drivers won't go in, and ambulances won't go in without a police escort. Even Orleans Parish Sheriff's deputies have long since stopped going to the projects to deliver subpeonas because they were so frequently attacked by residents, often in full view of other residents who refused to help or identify the attackers afterwards.

I used to live in New Orleans, not far from the old St. Thomas projects off Magazine Street on the edge of the Garden District. My neighborhood was nice. Most of the residents were working people or investors rehabilitating the old buildings. But because of the proximity of St. Thomas projects, it wasn't safe to be out after dark, and that long section of Magazine Street was blighted. St. Thomas projects were a literal cancer on the community. Eighteen murders occurred there between 1992 and 1995, and the majority of residents were single mothers with annual salaries of less than $5,000 and drug-dealing boyfriends. The storefronts were all boarded up or filled with junk because no one wanted to own a store or shop there due to the crime. All of that changed a few years back however when the city condemed St. Thomas projects, evicted the criminals and layabouts, and gave the property over for mixed-income housing and a Wal-Mart. (The very Wal-Mart that we all recently saw so thoroughly looted on CNN after the storm) The welfare recipients and the politicians who pander to them for votes all cried and wailed that is was racist and "war on the poor" but the city went ahead and did it anyway. The result should be an object lesson for cities across America:

With the projects gone and the bad apples displaced, suddenly the area became attractive for new residents and families. Businesses flocked to the long-shuttered storefronts now that it was safe to be there, and many small shops, galleries, and other enterprises opened and transformed that section of Magazine street into a safe, clean, fun area that served residents and visitors alike. And the new businesses and residents brought a ton of tax revenue into the city coffers.

It was a winning situation for the city, the tax-paying, working residents and the business community. The only ones who were upset were the free-riders who got the boot after years of being able to just sit around all day watching TV and drinking beer while waiting on the next check to come. And even some of them were forced to actually find jobs and join the working economy after getting evicted. A lot of those people now live better lives after being forced to get off their asses because they earn enough money to afford better housing and nicer things. And we all know that when you work for something, you appreciate it a lot more than when someone just hands it to you and treats you like a punk for accepting it.

New Orleans now has the rare opportunity to replicate this sucess city-wide. Almost all of the public housing projects are uninhabitable, and most of the former residents are in places like Houston. There's no need to bring them all back just because they'd rather live for free and sit on a couch in New Orleans instead of in Texas. The city doesn't benefit at all right now from bringing in people who will just tax the police, courts, EMS and hospital systems, especially when those services are already strained to the mex just trying to provide basic service to the workers and productive residents that are now back.

Oliver Thomas, the City Council President (who is also black) also admitted that Katrina evacuees are pampered and spolied by storm relief programs. "At some point," he said, "you have to say, no, no, no." He and other New Orleans Housing Authority officials said future residents of rebuilt public housing will have to show a willingness to work in order to qualify for any new homes.

I agree with him and I disagree. The city needs working people back right now but people who work don't need public housing.I'm urging the council to forget about once again becoming a landlord to the lazy and criminally inclined and just let the private housing market deal with returning workers. It's capable. Leave the deadbeats , drug dealers and baby-factories wherever they are now. The overwhelming majority of them won't be able to move back unless someone else pays their moving costs and gives them free housing. Here's the change to rebuild a safe, clean city around decent working people and families of all ages, races and socioeconomic levels. Public Housing is just a magnet for the good-for-nothing, and if you don't build it, they generally won't come. Instead the city should just focus on enticing workers and business back to the city and reopening the universities and hospitals along with other businesses that provide needed services to decent people. You may get a smaller city in the end but it may well be a smaller city with a low rate of crime and unemployment and that'll make it a better city for everyone who lives there, visits or conducts business.

New Orleans... Mardi Gras is over and the bitching resumes

OK, Mardi Gras is over. Everyone had fun, there were no mass shootings this year to mar the event, and everyone's gone home now. The slogan for this year was "Drink until Ray Nagin makes sense!" and Old Willie Wonka the Chocolate Mayor didn't help his own image one bit by dressing in army garb and riding in the parades on a horse making like he had something to do with the rescue of all the people that the federal government actually saved.

But now that the fun's over, most of the former residents of that city are back to sitting around demanding that the rest of us hurry up and buy them new houses. And the worst part is that the Democrats just keep proposing plans that will actually do that.

Sorry, but I object as loudly as I can. It's not my job to buy a new house for some sap who chose to live below sea level without buying flood insurance. The people who bought insurance are going to be fine. Those who didn't need to deal with it on their own, just like the tens of thousands of other Americans who are rendered homeless each year by storms, fires, earthquakes and other natural disasters. Did the rest of us pay to rebuild coastal North Carolina after Hurricane Hugo? How about Florida after FIVE back-to-back hurricanes? Of course we didn't. So why should we rebuild the 9th Ward of New Orleans and replace all those crummy trashed shotgun houses with brand spanking new nice ones? The 9th Ward was crap BEFORE the storm and it was that way because the people living there made it that way and refused to do a thing to clean it up or make it safe. Now they want all new stuff for free? Screw that. And screw any politician who tries to ride that issue into office by trading support for these stupid plans for re-election votes.

We already got everyone out of harm's way. That's expected. We also gave everyone thousands of dollars in cash whether they were actually put out or not. FEMA audits have shown that over 900,000 of applications for the 2.5 million cash awards given out contained false information, indicating that the recipients generally screwed us taxpayers over. We also saw that money spent on tattoos, strip clubs, jewelry, guns, and of course drugs and booze. And this was done by people living high on the hog in hotel rooms much nicer than the houses and apartments that most of them had in New Orleans. Of course we paid for those rooms for months too. And did they say "thanks"? No! They filed a bunch of lawsuits when we finally stopped paying their rent 8 months later!

Most of these people have gotten more in cash, clothing, food and rent than they could ever have provided for themselves this past year, and anyone who was really trying to find a job and their own housing could have done so months ago. Many did, leaving behind a hard-core remainder of career panhandlers and second-handers who expect the rest of us to just carry them indefinitely then set them down in nice new free homes with central air and color TV sets. Well I'm tired of paying out only to be defrauded, ripped off, sneered at and sued. I had no problem helping those in need until they could get back on their feet but the gravy train needs to end for the ones who just want to keep sitting and it needs to end right now.

And for those of you who have high-speed internet and want to see a funny but sadly true video spoof about New Orleans, check this one out:

Click here unless you're easily offended.

You'll have to register to see the video, but it's simple, free and worth it.