Hi. Remember when there was a hurricane and then a flood and then the Gulf Coast drowned and then a bunch of people in New Orleans got stuck in the Superdome and the Convention Center and some guy called Chertoff lied and said he didn't know that anyone was at the Convention Center and now people are still homeless and waiting for FEMA trailers and some guy called Brownie was hired as a Department of Homeland Security contractor for two whole months afterward despite his arguable personal responsibility for the deaths of thousands of people?

Yeah. I thought you might remember that. Recently I got my little hands on some hot poop you're probably not aware of. See, some folks from Jefferson Parish-- the parish just west of Orleans Parish-- came to a, shall we say, colleague of mine for some, shall we say, consultation on matters of local importance.

The leadership of Jefferson Parish is almost 100% Republican, and the majority of residents are white and middle and upper-middle income. Just FYI.

Now, those of us with liberal values, a progressive streak, care for the wellbeing of our fellow man, etc., look at the whole New Orleans situation with the hope that something good could come of this-- like maybe now that we've seen, on the teevee, thousands of people to whom the system said "fuck you," we could get a little action on the "not abandoning our fellow citizens" front.

Well. If the folks in Jeff Parish have their way, all that compassion crap isn't going to go very far. Thing is, Jeff is the only parish-- among Orleans, St. Bernard, and Jefferson-- that has its shit together. They didn't even get hit that hard but they've got their people flying all around the country looking for advice on how to rebuild. They all have Blackberries and they're not afraid to use them.

And how do they want to rebuild? By bulldozing every lower-income housing development within reach. The electeds of Jefferson Parish are doing everything in their power to make sure the "Section 8 People"-- that's their term for low income African-Americans that they throw around in polite company as if it wasn't a sickening load of racist, classist bullshit-- can't get back into the parish... or into New Orleans, if they can help it. 'Cause, you know, it might rub off.

And don't you get to thinking that pushing all the poor people, or all the black people, or all the whomever out of an area is such a hard thing to do. Half the work is done for you already because poverty tends to be concentrated in this country and so do people of the same race. All Jefferson Parish has to do is draw a big red line around where all the poor people used to live, and where all the black people used to live, declare those areas unsafe for human habitation and tear everything down. Build an assload of McMansions, ship in some new white folk and you've got economic revitalization, Katrina style.

If anyone's got a moral for this story, I'd like to hear it.