Sumo Merriment

Excellent post, and a very good question just where is America for these people.

Thanks for bringing this back. We weren't friends then ans I would have missed this very excellent post. It cuts to the chase that is for sure and reminds us all of how much we have lost with this President.

This is so sad, so monumentally tragic. Thank you for a beautiful article.

I can't believe what is happening to our country.

We must pray and uplift these souls, all of us need this.

God Bless you,
Lydia

A beautiful post Sumo.

I didn't post anything on the anniversary yesterday. Nothing I wrote seemed right. Nothing seemed worthy. We have allowed our government to turn it's back on it's people. We just sit here and wait for something to be done. Katrina victims paid the price for a careless administration that forgot about them as quickly as it forgot about OBL.

I am completely ashamed.

sumo
This is most sickening because katrina was allowed to do what politicians failed to do for years and that was to clean out public housing and the poor.
Now that it is cleaned out only enough to keep services running for industry will find a place for themselves. The lower 9th is still down and the levees are not scheduled to be repaired till 2015.
But mardi gras is on and the affluent are doing better than ever.Bush had the Balls to pont out that NO is better than ever. Tell that to the thousands of still homeless or whatever you want to call them.

And still they wait for the help that was promised.

What a tragedy and how sad it is.

What Der Fuhrer did was nothing more than premeditate murder and nothing else.

God Bless.

From the People Who Brought You Iraq Reconstruction…

The shit doesn't stop with these guys.

Greg Palast tells the story of some residents of New Orleans who were forced out of their homes — their nice, undamaged-by-flooding homes — and are being kept out at gunpoint.

Why? Apparently because these residents are black and impoverished, and the plan is to turn New Orleans into an upscale majority-white city:

“They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers, you know? And that’s just the bottom line.”

It wasn’t a pretty statement. But I wasn’t looking for pretty. I’d taken my investigative team to New Orleans to meet with Malik Rahim. Pretty isn’t Malik’s concern.

We needed an answer to a weird, puzzling and horrific discovery. Among the miles and miles of devastated houses, rubble still there today in New Orleans, we found dry, beautiful homes. But their residents were told by guys dressed like Ninjas wearing “Blackwater” badges: “Try to go into your home and we’ll arrest you.”

These aren’t just any homes. They are the public housing projects of the city; the Lafitte Houses and others. But unlike the cinder block monsters in the Bronx, these public units are beautiful townhouses, with wrought-iron porches and gardens right next to the tony French Quarter.

Raised up on high ground, with floors and walls of concrete, they were some of the only houses left salvageable after the Katrina flood.

Yet, two years later, there’s still bars on the windows, the doors are welded shut and the residents banned from returning. On the first anniversary of the flood, we were filming this odd scene when I saw a woman on the sidewalk, sobbing. Night was falling. What was wrong?

“They just messing all over us. Putting me out our own house. We come to go back to our own home and when we get there they got the police there putting us out. Oh, no, this is not right. I’m coming here from Texas seeing if I can get my house back. But they said they ain’t letting nobody in. But where we gonna go at?”

Idiot me, I asked, “Where are you going to go tonight?”

“That’s what I want to know, Mister. Where I’m going to go - me and my kids?”

With the help of Patricia Thomas, a Lafitte resident, we broke into an apartment. The place was gorgeous. The cereal boxes still dry. This was Patricia’s home. But we decided to get out before we got busted.

I wasn’t naïve. I had a good idea what this scam was all about: 89,000 poor and working class families stuck in Homeland Security’s trailer park gulag while their good homes were guarded against their return by mercenaries. Two decades ago, I worked for the Housing Authority of New Orleans. Even then, the plan was to evict poor folk out of this very valuable real estate. But it took the cover of a hurricane to do it.

You know, I was thinking that that $50 billion that George wants sooo much for the war should go to rebuilding housing so that all of these folks who are in exile in Texas or in trailers can come home. But if we did that, it would be Halliburton or some other Bush or Cheney related company that would crap it up. Better for some not for profit, like Common Ground be given the management of that money - put the money in a bank someplace(I’m not thinking this out; I’m sure there is someone else here who knows better how to manage this) - and have the people come back, arrange for them to be put together with architects and builders who can help them come up with a plan, and let the people rebuild their own damn city. Shoot, find Brad Pitt and grab his ear and drag him down there - he owns property in NO now and he’s a big architecture maven. I am fairly sure that given the right people and information resources and management (get the churches involved), that money would go six times as far as it would in the hands of someone like Halliburton AND the job would get done.

That is so so sad. But also makes me mad because it's preventable.

The Blog World Report Awards have been announced and you are a winner!

"where is America for these people." Where is America for us? Excellent post. The one scene that most touched me was taken in the Dome of an elderly woman, who died in her wheelchair, was shunted over to a side wall, covered in a blanket and left there for days abandoned and unmourned. She is what's left of this disgusting, corrupt culture.

Great post Sumo!

Keep it front & center!

CONGRATULATIONS!!! to you for the Blog Report Awards! :)

Great post Sumo. If I could talk to her I think I'd recommend that she go wot Washington, bundle that asshat up in it and fling him off the nearest bridge.

Congrats on the award too BTW. You deserve it.

Congrats Sumo on your Blog World Awards. They are well deserved.

Congrats on your awards.

God Bless.

Thank you guys for all your comments. Thank you for the award Robert...you are doing a nice thing showing appreciation for bloggers. I've barely been able to post stuff much less go red your blogs. I hope to catch up over the weekend on all of you. I do appreciate you visiting my humble abode.

This is a truly great essay. I'm better for reading it. It's unfortunate that so many Americans have to suffer - expecting help that never comes is heartbreaking - and that help is never going to come for most of the Katrina victims. This will be a story for a generation, or more.

CV Rick...welcome to Sumoland...thank you for the compliment. Yes...I'm afraid that Katrina will not leave our consciousness for many years to come.