Showing posts with label housing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housing. Show all posts

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Barbarians at the gate



With friends like this, as this Times-Picayune video demonstrates, poor folks in New Orleans are SOL.

These aren't "activists," and they aren't "progressives." What they are . . . are barbarians.
At the gate.

The fear of being associated in any way with uncivilized, anarchistic trash such as this is why I'll never call myself "progressive." I prefer last New Deal Democrat standing, myself.

In the case of New Orleans' homegrown idiots and professional
mau-mauers -- not to mention Slacker Nation that showed up in "solidarity" with them -- "progressive" couldn't be more ironic a moniker.

I'd say these fools are positively
regressive. Regressive all the way back to Attila the Hun at the gates of Rome.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The fire next time

God gave Noah the rainbow sign don't you see
God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
no more water but fire next time
Hide me, O Rock of Ages, cleft for me
God gave Noah the rainbow sign don't you see

And this is how New Orleans passes into the cold and restless night. Not by the flood, but self-immolated in the fires of social disorder, poverty, ignorance and the politics of race and resentment.

Now, as the federal government gets ready -- amid a housing crisis -- to tear down public-housing projects that long have been problematic, all hell is about to break loose. Already, as WDSU television reports, anonymous propagandists are threatening acts of terrorism -- an arson spree to begin when the bulldozers roll:

As the demolition of three housing developments looms on the heels of many heated City Hall protests, a new poster promises one condominium will be destroyed for every public housing unit that’s torn down.

The posters are being circulated on the streets of New Orleans. NewsChannel 6 staff members found one of the posters just outside the studio.

The posters depict a flaming condominium and declare “For every public housing unit destroyed, a condo will be destroyed. If there will be no homes for us and relief from high rents, there will be no homes for the rich either.”

It’s signed “Sincerely, the angry and the powerless.”

The FBI is investigating the posters as the special agent in charge calls their distribution “an act of domestic terror.” Meanwhile, U.S. Senator David Vitter is urging the U.S. attorney to get involved.

“We take this very seriously any time we have an issue where individuals allegedly will use force of violence to impact a political or social decision,” FBI Special Agent In Charge James Bernazzani said. “We consider that a terrorist threat and we’ll move very, very aggressively.”

If those involved are caught and convicted, they could face 10 years in prison.

IN A FUNCTIONING civil society, threats of terrorism -- which represent terrorism in and of itself -- are no way to get your way. Likewise, a functioning civil society would have found a way around the housing crisis -- which would include some means of housing the working poor, the elderly and the disabled while allowing for the long-overdue removal of these petri dishes for entrenched poverty and crime.

New Orleans, and Louisiana as a whole, do not exemplify functioning civil societies, alas. So there you go.

Everyday mayhem and dysfunction has degenerated into terrorism -- or at least widespread threats thereof. Way down yonder in America's Chechnya.