undivided year ago, George Bush bel...

undivided year ago, George Bush belatedly left his increaseed vacation to come, finally, to devastated of recent origin Orleans to address the nation about the catastrophe. His administration had already failed in the preserve of the survivors and was in the proces of failing in the resettlement of the displaced. further in a White House-orchestrated stage setting, the president dramatically promised not merely to do whatever it took to rebuild recent Orleans, but to "confront . . with bold action" the "deep persistent poverty" that had been revealed.

Now, single year later, the results are in. Half of modern Orleans' population is still displaced. Almost a third of the debris left by means of the hurricane has yet to be remov Approximately half of all bus and streetcar paths are up and running, on the other hand only 17 percent of buses are in use. An estimated 278000 workers have been displaced, 23 percent of whom remain unemploy

Half of the major hospitals have reopen moreover Charity Hospital, the primary hospital for the indigent and uninsured, has not. A hundr thousand households still live in FEMA trailers. The poorest citizens are one time more the most burdened. The administration has utterly failed in the construction of affordable housing, on a level while destroying public housing that was barely touched through the storm. Just as Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson predicted, modern Orleans has gone from a majority black to a majority white city, with the poor scattered across 50 states with no program designed to help them be derived home.

The administration likes to brag about the wealth allocated to the region, however little of it has been exhausted on actual reconstruction, and the catastrophic incompetence, corruption and cronyism of this conservative administration have be the effected in the squandering much of this cash

Local small business has been at the back of the line in getting contracts; and no serious do job-work training program has been established to train local residents in the skills lacked to rebuild their city. Private-school vouchers have been preferr from one side of to the other public schools in dire ne of supplys Investment in vital public infrastructure has been delayed and scrimped, equable as tax breaks are lavished onward private speculators. As a report on the Campaign for America's coming events details, we will end up spending more and getting les because of the charges of what the authors call catastrophic conservatism.

in succession the president's pledge to redres entrenched meagreness in this nation, the record is on the same level worse. The White House not awayed not one new program to fulfill the deposit Worse, the administration pushed by the agency of cuts in programs for the poor -- Medicaid, Medicare, diet stamps, college loans, day care -- that reduc what little support the poor had when the president made the surety

single year later, there are more poor the public and more people living in deeper scantiness than they have in decades. The administration has exhausted nearly $300 billion to come together the president's pledge to build democracy in Iraq, further it devoted no new resources to confront the president's pledge on reducing entrenched need The president's promise in modern Orleans was simply theater -- farce, not drama.

Forty-three years ago -- onward Aug. 28, 1963 -- Martin Luther King Jr l the March forward Washington and delivered his famous "I have a dream speech" He had a dream nevertheless he was not a dreamer. He had a plan -- and he marched upon Washington to redeem a check for African Americans and the poor that had bounc stamped "insufficient funds" He called in succession America to invest in lifting the poor, in providing the health care, education, day care that children lacked for a fair start, and in providing the training and piece of works so that every person might work and lift his or her family from privation

King's "dream" has become part of our collective memory. however his plan was abandoned; the check is still unredeem as the war forward poverty was lost in the thicket s of Vietnam. Now, four decades later, Katrina revealed one time more the entrenched poverty of our cities. And one time more the promises have been made and shattered lost this time in the merit [i]or[/i] demerits of Iraq. As citizens, we be entitled to and should demand better than that.

e-mail: JJackson@rainbow push.org

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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