AssemblyBoard

Will New Orleans make a comeback? Any thoughts?

Sure it'll make a comeback.  All the riff raff has been flushed out. They will settle in other places as soon as they update their mailing addresses to continue receiving the welfare checks...too lazy to return...leaving behind the submerged section-8 rental houses.  Eventually, the flood walls and levees will be upgraded so that they can withstand future hurricanes of equal or higher magnitudes of the recent one.  The flooded buildings will be refurbished without much expense and look nice with new siding, wallboard, electrical and mechanical work.  So, with the elimination of the riff raff, improvement of the flood control system, and the repair of the buildings and infrastructure, the town will make a comeback and provide a big return on the investment made by those who purchase real estate there at the present bargain prices.  It is too important of a town to go to waste, the gateway to the Mrs. Sippy.

Dan

WOW.  These are jaw-dropping responses. 

We are talking about poor, poor people.  Of course there are people who abuse the (flawed) system.  But this sweeping lack of compassion or even human feeling just floors me.  Maybe I'm just naive, but "riff-raff"?  Just where do you expect these people to live? 

Thank you, Eden.You're right. Of course, there are people who abuse the system just like there are rich people who abuse their systems and then get a slap on the wrist for it. The majority of these displaced people only have a legacy of poverty in their families. Something most of us cannot even begin to understand. Many of us have the luxury of opportunities and support systems that these people have never known. They don't have bootstraps to pull up. I know it is easy to sit back in our armchairs and condemn, but compassion and aid are more helpful.

Frank,

My house took a lot of damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake.  I didn't have any where near the money it took to repair it, so I had to apply to FEMA for a SBA loan in order to raise the money to fix it.

The FEMA process was rational, requiring three detailed estimates from licensed contractors, and fairly quick.  It would have been very difficult to cheat the system they used. It took me about six months to get everything done.

Real estate values went down about 40% and it took about 5 years for them to recover fully.

As to the government handouts, I had to pay the loan back in full, with interest.

The FEMA guidline in the 94 case was that if the damage exceeded 60% of the replacement cost of the building, the owner could obtain a loan to have it demolished and rebuilt.

It was a case of a "helping hand, not a handout."

Thomas Maddux

Check this out.(click on bush vaca).

Riff raff is a term I like to use because it's truthful and more interesting than the antiseptic vocabulary heard elsewhere. 

As to where they can live, there are plenty of options.  As experts in collecting welfare, they will figure something out.  One option if the California Maritime Academy, as proven in other posts.

Orleans will recover nicely.  The timing of this is good because soon after the water is pumped out, the rain will arrive for the rinse cycle.

Dan F

One more thing about this mess is the attempt by the media to blame the president for the problems there.  In my humble opinion, it's not anybody's fault but the people who chose not to leave the area in the first place.  They had complete information, courtesy of the televisions that they spend 40+ hours per week looking at, available to compell anybody with minimal intelligence to leave.  Perhaps some of them are so stupid that they couldn't pour piss from a boot if the directions were on the heal. Nevertheless, if they were smart enough and had the mobility to loot the stores and the strength to carry the stolen merchandise across the flooded streets to their section 8 housing, then they were smart enough and had the ability to leave on their own in the first place. 

The other concern is why the news accounts show most of the people that remained behind as black.  The pictures of them on tv remind me of the Million Man March photos--a bunch of black people (compare these:  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/photogalleries/New_Orleans_flood/photo3.html and http://photo2.si.edu/mmm/mmm.html).   Few white people were in the news photos.  There were a couple accounts of some whites here and there, but very few.  This makes me wonder why there weren't enough white people  shown as victims of this flood, and indicates the possiblity that the media is racist and hates white people.  So, if I ever expect to receive sympathy from the media in the event of a natural disaster, I will need to apply black shoe polish the way Gene Wilder did in the 1976 movie Silver Streak at Richard Pryor's suggestion.

Dan F.

Here are a few of my random thoughts:

1.  Some of the people left in NO were genuinely had no means to leave:  Forgotten people in rest homes, those too sick to leave their homes, those without transportation or family.  Many may have lived very responsible lives but never anticipated their home would suddenly be under water.

2.  There was clearly miscommunication in government agencies.  What I understand is that the hurricane downgraded so some folks didn't think it was going to be bad as thought.  It took a while to figure out that the levies failed.

3.  Local government had a parking lot full of municipal busses that could have been used but wasn't.  Often bad decisions are made in time of crisis.

4.  There are several articles pointing to corruption with funding as it relates to the levees.  One is http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200509\NAT20050907a.html  Sure glad they got that fountain built.

5.  I don't watch television news as a rule.  The little I did I couldn't stomach because I couldn't stand the sense of entitlement many of the victims had.  I couldn't bear the ugliness of people screaming into the cameras about how the government wasn't doing anything for their plight.  I understand that they weren't at their best having lost everything and put through much suffering, but of what I saw, there didn't seem to be much teaming up and helping one another in the small shots I saw. 

6.  Are we obligated to help people who have a history of poor choices that got them into their predicament?  I think as a society, we have to.  My adolescent sons have a great history of making poor, immature, self-serving, narcissistic choices.  I didn't throw them out of the house.  I loved him and tried to model good behavior. My oldest son is now at naval boot camp and for the past six months has demonstrated great responsibility.  He finally "got it".  What if I just wrote him off when was immature and had a sense of "the world owes me" entitlement?

Loretta and I are foster parents for the same reason.  We now have a foster adolescent because his mother has made some pathetic decisions with her life.  The whole goal of this process is to help her to learn to make better decisions (wanting her son back is a great motivator). 

7.  The key, in my opinion, is to recognize those who are true victims and not lump them in with so-called "rif-raft".  Second, for those with an undo sense of entitlement, to not see them as victims but those with a spiritual problem.  This doesn't mean we take on a social Darwinism attitude of "those who avail themselves of opportunities survive; those who don't die".  But, there is an attempt at compassionate conservatism that seeks to save in the immediate crisis and then attempts to teach the connection between provision and responsible decisions.  I know there are folks that will never learn, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try because there are some that will.

8.  After all, Christ loved us when we were enemies of God.  Sin, if you will, is bad, self-centered, and narcissistic choices.  Yet, Christ came not merely to rescue us from a bad situation, but to teach us to make choices in keeping with God's will.  Shouldn't we Christians model this for the hurricane victims?

I knew I forgot a point, so here it is:

9.  I think much of the focus on blame and the negative behavior in the disaster has obscured the great outpouring of care and compassion:  This article says it better than I could.  http://www.townhall.com/columnists/marvinolasky/mo20050908.shtml
After all, even my Carolina Panthers contributed to the relief effort by blowing a home game with the New Orlean Saints. ;)

Dave,

And all, or at least some, of God's people said "AMEN!"

BTW...isn't a "rif raft" something folks who lose their jobs due to downsizing  take boat rides in?   ;)

Thomas Maddux

well-said, my friend!

one way of removing ourselves from actually having to do something to help is to dehumanize the victims: they made bad choices, they shouldn't have been there in the first place, they are stupid. Might as well say they don't have the right to exist. That makes it very convenient for us "good citizens" to sit back and feel comfortable about not helping at all.

yes, there were real social problems in NO. and while government can't be the long-term solution, to suggest that we just leave these people to flounder helplessly is simply cruel and inhumane.

we are seeing, as dave pointed out, a huge outpouring of help from the private sector. if it's true help, these displaced people will be able to take the helping hand and add to it their own hard work, which many of them are already doing.

Recently(in Early August I think)  I was watching TV and came accross a documentary on New Orleans that was on how the city was below sea level and if a strong enough Hurricane came thru then the levees would fail. Scientists have predicted for years such a tragedy. I think New Orleans will be rebuilt and the levees will be made to withstand a much stronger surge.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9337631/

these 34 elderly patients of a nursing home are some of the "riff-raff that were flushed out", as dan put it. i don't see how anyone could view this as anything but a heartbreaking human tragedy. the media played the race and class cards early on, but no matter how you may feel about the welfare class, compassion is the only reasonable response to something like this. its just awful.

despite the great tragedy of what happened at this nursing home, and in other places, i think it is a bit of an over-reaction to arrest the owners. they did not evacuate for the same reason the local, state and federal govt didn't see fit to build up the levees to a safer level - everyone was complacently confident in the fact that hurricaines hadn't overwhelmed them in the past. as mario and others pointed out - it was a very well-known problem, and had been for years, just not enough people took it seriously. so i think its overly judgemental to come back with 20-20 hindsight and accuse these people of homicide. negligence of some sort, perhaps, but it seems to me people are just taking their anger and pain out on this couple, when the blame is not theirs alone to carry.

Brian:

Definition of riff raff is: people with bad reputation.  It is not people in the rest homes.  Also, the people in the rest homes were not flushed out.  They remained in the building, thanks to the riff raff that abandoned them.

To further clarify so you understand my simple point: New Orleans will recover, and will be a better city with much of the riff raff flushed out (moved to another location) and the flood control system upgraded. 

Others: if you have sympathy for the riff raff, then invite them to live with you.  Just remember to pay your theft insurance and put a locked chastity belt on your wife and daughters before doing so.

Dan



 

I have been receiving copies of Rolling Stone magazine (I must have agreed to some kind of trial subsccription deal or another) and have been tossing them in the trash can as soon as they arrived.
Tonight my wife thumbed through the latest edition and I am still reeling from the shock.
There was one article about a man who died in the performance of one of the most unspeakably perverted acts imaginable, and which apparently is now quite common-place in this country, and another about the frightful corruption, decadence and general depravity of the city of New Orleans.
It is not possible to speak in polite company of the first article.
As I indicated I am still in a state of shock that we live in a world where people do such things.
Here are a few lines of the reportage regarding NO from the article called "City of Lies".

A murder rate ten times the national average.
A plice force notorious for corruption, rape, and murder for hire.
A forty percent illiteracy rate.
Fifty thousand truants daily
A drop-out rate of 350 children weekly.

What are the thoughts of  political representatives of this situation?
Representative Richard Baker, Louisiana Republican opined:

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it. God did."

We are in deep trouble...very deep trouble...
Verne

"The sins of Sauruman are washing away", wasn't that how it went in LOTR?  I think it was filth. Same thing.

And I'm not referring to the low-income scapegoats.

It is so easy to sanctimoniously wag our fingers at those folk...a pity!
Verne

I was in a devotions at work where the leader read an editorial just after Katrina hit.  The mayer of New Orleans had an open letter welcoming people to come to the annual GLAT Labor Day weekend event called "Southern Depravity".   The event got cancelled due to the weather.

When it comes to speaking with intelligence to a lost and dying world about the sovereign majesty of God in the control of space-time, and that He is a God who will judge iniquity, and by no means clear the guilty, the church has become virtually useless. Thanks to Tony Evans for clearing up some fuzzy thinking on my part about this...

Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.
  God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.
  For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven;
 To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.
 When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder:
 Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out.
 And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.
Job 28:22-28