But did you ever stop to consider the following facts:

1) The damage done to New-Orleans proper was far more than done to the surrounding areas- Levee failures left most of the housing in the city uninhabitable.
1.5) Try calculating the economic damage (measured simply by the number of lost jobs and property) per square mile for the Lousianna coast. You will find that that ratio exceeds the surrounding areas by several hundred to one. Thus, comapring the recovery of the surrounding areas to NOLA is an apples-to-oranges comaprison.
2) Most businesses simply took their insurance money, packed up and left New orleans proper- thus wrecking the job market. While Shrimpers and Oil industry simply can't pick up and leave, obviously, because their industries are tied to geographic location.
3) Most of the housing rendered uninhabitable was low-income rental housing in predominantly black neighborhoods. Landlords simply realized their financial objectives from the houses they were running via the insurance process, packed up, and left. Those that were over-leveraged declared personal bankruptcy and are also essentially gone. Leaving a gigantic hole in the real-estate market.
4) Infrastructure, in terms of Sewage, Water, Gas and Electricity was simply completely wiped out in NOLA.

Having grown up in rural Oklahoma, I know all about the desperation of people trying to make it in disadvantaed communities with failing public schools, no opportunities, and rigid social stratification. I grew up watching plenty of hard working kids getting ground down and spit out by the environment. I watched many people work hard, take risks, sieze opportunities, educate themselves and still end up desperately poor and unable to even feed their own families.

While you and REB lean back and pronounce about them folks looking for a hand-out... In your nice white middle class neighborhoods, typing into computers that most of these people couldn't even hope to own, why don't you maybe use those computers to actually look up the realities of the situation. The lower class NOLA residents got shafted by the City, State and Federal government. They got shafted by the business community. They simply got shafted.

If you are poor and black in the Mississippi delta, thats nothing new. These folks have had to struggle hard to leap barriers that, for your privilidged delicate white middle class fannys, are mere speed bumps in the road- check points along the road of American socioeconomics. Why don't you afford them some basic respect and stop looking at folks needing a hand up as folks needing a hand out.

Sure there are parasites- the Halliburtons and Enrons who slop at the government trough... The corporate super-farms that suck down huge government subsidies and leverage that to displace the now-almost-gone small farmer. And yes, there are also parasites down at the bottom of the economic food chain. But look at the subsidies that go to business, look at the aid given via the lobying process in washington, then compare that to our welfare budget. Do the frikin math. I'm more worried about the effete white parasite sitting accross the desk from a congressman slurping down $500 scotch while negotiating his own little addendum to federal law than I am about some poor bastard who gets by doing custodial work at the local law firm.

Yeti