One of the main right-wing/Republican talking points these days is to claim that the people of New Orleans trapped were irresponsible welfare recipients, wards of the state that were too dependent upon federal assistance. I have two responses to that, one statement and one request for assistance in doing research.
1) My statement is this:
In 2003 there was this incredibly tiny threat posed by Iraq. People feard that Saddam might eventually have developed the capacity to possibly hurt some of us sometime in the future. I think I've got that about right. In the face of that trivial danger, rather than take on the personal responsibility of simply stiffening one's own spine and facing small threats with courage, a large portion of the country felt it imperative to call upon the federal government to take action to calm these fears and commit several thousand of our young men and women in uniform to death, thousands more to be maimed and wounded, and $200 Billion of our treasure spent.
How is it that these people can depend upon the federal government to take on the responsibility of calming them of their fears and yet feel that the federal government should be absolved of doing anything to help other citizens when they are in need. This attitude that the government must take care of my slightest fears is not a position of personal responsibility and the refusal to help anyone but oneself is not Christianity.
2) My question:
I'd really like some help doing research on the number of people in the affected areas actually on welfare. The right wing is, of course, notorious for insisting that everyone who is poor is just a welfare cheat, but I think sometimes that we on the left fall into that mindset too often as well. Given the extent to which the government has been pushing people off the welfare roles for the past decade and the number of people eligible for help but who don't know about it, I have to wonder how many people trapped in NO were not on the welfare rolls. There are a great many people struggling on a minimum income and who are desperately poor.
I did do a few Google searches and found number for the total number of recipients of AFDC in LA on the order of 80,000. Now that's for LA total, so a few of those were not in Orleans parish. And then there were 100,000 people without cars in NO. Do the math.
So does anyone know more about where I should look to get number of people on various welfare programs by parish in LA? Any help would be appreciated, thanks.