black commentator------

[madrchsod]

in my opinion their writers are the best social commentators on the net. today`s articles are exceptional.

http://www.blackcommentator.com

[KamaAina]

1. Yes indeed. Their coverage of NOLA has some real bite to it.

Bay Buchanan may be "bored" with it, but those of us who are not can lap up stuff like this:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/182/182_cover_liberals_katrina.html

What is perhaps saddest and most reprehensible about the petition of the Gang of 200 is the solipsistic arrogance on which it rests. This initiative comes at a time when ACORN and other advocacy groups and grassroots activists in New Orleans have championed "the right of return" for even its poorest citizens displaced by Katrina. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, over 140,000 units of housing were destroyed, the majority of them affordable for low-income families. But the Housing Authority of New Orleans has shut down its public-housing operations, and informed landlords of people assisted by federal rent vouchers that government rent subsidies for impacted units have been suspended indefinitely. According to Mike Howells, an organizer with a local human rights group, "sensing an opportunity to enhance the fortunes of real estate interests and to dump a form of public assistance that mainly benefits poor working class locals, Washington and local authorities are using Hurricane Katrina as a pretext for effectively gutting government subsidized housing in New Orleans."

Sure enough, the key player on Mayor Nagin's "Bring New Orleans Back Commission" is Joe Canizaro, a billionaire local developer and one of President Bush's "pioneers," i.e., individuals who raised at least $100,000 for the Bush presidential campaign. The commission initially retained the Urban Land Institute – a real estate development industry organization on whose board Canizaro sits – to propose a framework for pursuing reconstruction. Unsurprisingly, that proposal called for a form of market-based triage. It recommended that reconstruction efforts should be focused in proportion to areas' market value and further suggested that rebuilding of New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward be deferred indefinitely. What else could we have expected? Asking such an outfit how to rebuild a devastated city is like asking a fox how to organize a chicken coop.

As we write, the fate of displaced poor New Orleanians is more precarious than ever. FEMA has terminated rent payments for thousands. Only 20 of the 117 public schools that existed before the hurricane are operating, and 17 of those 20 have opened as charter schools. The school board laid off all the teachers and staff months ago – so much for concerns about poverty. Most of the city remains empty, eerily quiet and covered with a gray, filmy residue that shows how high floodwaters were in each neighborhood. And the eerie quiet underscores the colossal failure of government at all levels to propose a plan for the hundreds of thousands of people who have been dislocated for six months and counting.

Tellingly, the outrage that Canizaro and the Urban Land Institute's proposal sparked among working-class homeowners only reinforced poor people’s marginalization. The relevant unit of protest against the ULI plan, its moral center, became homeownership. But what of the tens of thousands who weren’t homeowners before Katrina? Who is factoring their interests into the equation? Did Barbara Bush speak for history, ratified by the policy circle at Harvard, when she said, "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them."

You're not gonna see this in your corporate-owned daily, not even in the Times-Picayune!

[FrenchieCat]

2. Sometimes great....but not always!

which is, I guess, the way that most things are.

Sometimes they are a bit more opinionated than is required for my taste.