Obama hails “entrepreneurial” transformation of New Orleans

[Mika]

Obama hails “entrepreneurial” transformation of New Orleans

{snips}

Obama’s remarks paid little heed to the solemnity of the occasion, the worst natural disaster in American history, with more than 1,800 killed in five states, and one of the country’s iconic cities, a historical center of both culture and commerce, virtually destroyed.

Instead, Obama used the occasion to celebrate, in an unseemly, even grotesque fashion, the supposed successes of the capitalist system, both in America as a whole, and in New Orleans in particular.
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Obama cherry-picked a few statistics in an effort to present conditions in New Orleans as improving, or even as “better and stronger” than before the storm. Here are some figures that he neglected to mention:

● In the Lower Ninth Ward, where he gave his speech, only 36 percent of the pre-Katrina population has returned.
● An estimated 100,000 of the city’s poorest African-American working class residents have not returned, unable to find jobs or replacement housing.
● Half of all working-age black men in New Orleans are unemployed, and a quarter of all working-age white men.
● Half of all black children in New Orleans live in poverty.
● Rents in New Orleans have doubled from an average of $488 a month before Katrina to $926 today, making the city increasingly unaffordable for working class families of all races.

Entire article --> here.

[arcane1]

1. Gotta maintain the myth that only Business can save us n/t

[Phlem]

2. Sell the Snake Oil Mr. O