Wednesday, January 11, 2006

New plan for New Orleans: Give it to the developers

A bunch of "city fathers" -- prominent real estate and business executives in New Orleans, led by one of their own, Mayor Ray Nagin -- today unveiled parts of their plan. Amongst the proposals: Build a 50-mile light rail network, and have developers build new homes and businesses along the light rail routes. Neighborhoods that could not get sufficient developers to come in and take their property for those homes and businesses would be turned into swamps or parkland.

Needless to say, the majority of New Orleans citizens in the "townhall meeting" did not approve of the plan, which basically would require them to sell their property at bargain basement prices to developers and which would turn them into unlanded servants rather than homeowners. New Orleans was a city where even a majority of the poor owned their own homes. The "blueprint" calls for a New Orleans where only those making above the median U.S. family income could own homes, with no place for the poor other than in projects or on the streets homeless. In short, the majority of New Orleans city would be relegated to the status of zoo exhibits.

In the end, however, the Golden Rule shall apply. I.e., "he who has the gold, rules." And he who has the gold is not some homeowner who lost his life's possessions as well as his job and life's savings to the floods of Katrina. He who has the gold are the same elite thugocrats who've always had the gold -- in Louisiana and elsewhere. Remember, we don't have government of the people, by the people, for the people in the United States. We have government of the people, by the elite, for the elite. And that is how it will be in New Orleans, too.

-- Badtux the Cynical Penguin

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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12/1/06 6:33 AM

    Unfortuantly, that's probably what's going to happen. It happened after the floods of '93 all along the Mississippi, Missiouri, and Ohio River vallies.

    I'm willing to lay bets that they'll use Eminent Domain as handed down by the US Supreme Court as justification to seize land for 'redevelopment'. Another Eminent Domain issue has made it to the Ohio State Supreme Court. Unfortunately, it may be too late for the residents of NO and the Mississippi Coast to do a whole lot about this. But, just maybe, it'll open the eyes of other people to make sure that the Emiment Domain laws of their areas aren't so favorable to the elite.

    Yep....the rich are getting richer and the middle class is falling behind.

    One of the things that I've heard about the NO plan is that the residents have to show up by x date, in person, in order to 'fight' the plan. And, it's a really, really short time frame. Short enough that only those that have enough extra money will be able to fight it.

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