Cleaning Up Bush's Mess...Sort Of: Katrina Victims Get Trailers for $5

OK, Obama did something, which is more than Bush would have done. But are we supposed to settle for this?

The Obama administration will announce plans today to virtually give away roughly 1,800 mobile homes to 3,400 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who are living in government-provided housing along the Gulf Coast, officials said.

The administration also will make available $50 million in rental vouchers to income-eligible trailer occupants who move to targeted housing projects, and take over from Louisiana the job of helping residents find permanent homes, said a senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity before the formal announcement.

"We knew we needed to bring this program to a close," the official said. "We also want to ensure a humane and secure transition for all of them."

They're going to sell mobile homes to the victims for a token payment of either $1 or $5 but after all these years I'm still asking what happened to the $70M allocated by Congress that Alphonso Jackson at HUD sat on for years. As far as I know, it was never - that's NEVER - disbursed and Katrina was 4 years ago. What about all that public housing that HUD refused to open even though storm damage was minimal? Why should these evacuees be settled in trailers when their old homes are just sitting there, empty and useless?

Some of the people forced out of those housing projects have been petitioning Ray Nagin to make HUD open them back up and allow them back into their homes. Nagin has so far refused, apparently because his "vision" for New Orleans involves downtown as a playground of the rich, sort of like an upscale Disneyland with booze and broads, not a, you know, living, breathing community. With black people in it, some of whom aren't even servants.

Yes, I know Nagin is black too but, as field would say, he specializes in "house negro behaviour". He has been kissing $$$'s ass since the hurricane, clearing the decks for a corporate takeover of downtown and fighting - or at least not lifting a finger on behalf of - residents and refugees trying to return to their homes.

Obama isn't fighting for them, either. He just wants them out of his way.

IOW, White Power Wins. Bush/Rove's intention was to use Katrina as a way to hand over a major Democratic city to the Republicans by shipping out the largely black working class, preventing them from returning while funding a corporate rebuild of NO that would attract rich, white, Republicans on a tear.

And that's just what happened. Golly, White $$$ wins again. Go figure.