Hear, Hear!!

This was on Blah 3 - hat to say, but I can see it happening.

I'm watching the press conference regarding the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and to their credit it sounds as though they are mounting a pretty massive mobilization of resources to get New Orleans up and running. But there are a couple of things to consider that are not very pleasant.

The thing I've been thinking about for the last couple of days might be pretty obvious, but it bears mentioning. The net result of Katrina is that in a day, somewhere on the order of a million people have been rendered homeless, jobless and stripped of most of their material posessions. DHS head Chertoff announced that there are measures being taken to house them - the people at the Superdome will be moved to Houston, trailers will be set up for others, state campground cabins will be furnished to others. While those with some means may be able to provide for their own housing (assuming they can find a job to replace the one they left behind in the evacuation), but most likely a large majority of them will be moved to government-owned and run camps.

Hoovervilles.

New Orleans and the surrounding area was home to a lot of poverty - one of the worst-hit areas in the city was the Ninth Ward, where a lot of low-income families lived. These people (the ones who survived) have basically at this point become wards of the state, and what property they may have had has been, for the time being, relinquished to the state.

Now, let's play 'what-if' for a moment.

What if the Ninth Ward and other areas in the city are deemed uninhabitable and condemned? Would the people who own property in those areas receive any fair compensation for their property - or would that new Supreme Court ruling on Eminent Domain come into play? If that were to happen, a lot of people would be essentially stripped of their worldly assets. Which brings us to the issue of bankruptcy.

The longer the people of New Orleans are kept away from their homes and employment, there would be a constant drain on their bank accounts. What happens when these people eventually go completely broke, considering the new bankruptcy laws that are soon due to take effect. The effect in this case could be that even those who are presently in the middle class could quickly become members of the underclass - with no recourse under bankruptcy law.

Maybe it's too early to even ask these questions. But eventually, they will need to be asked. The people of New Orleans have been through Hell to this point, but there is a perfect storm of legal changes made in the past year that could conceivably turn middle-class citizens into a whole new class of poor.

They could possibly be the first residents of Bushville.