Religion of Peace

Anybody care to take a guess at what religion the perpetrators of this crime identify with?



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"Resegregating the South"

Cynthia Tucker at the AJC reexamines the unintended consequences of the Voting Rights Act of 1984. She starts with a mea culpa and then blisters the effect gerrymandering redistricting has had on our nation as a whole, and particularly the South.

And if it is to change, we will need many voices ready to overcome the racially-based demoagougery we are sure to hear from the left. Especially the machine politicians who benefit the most directly from turning majority-minority districts into personal fiefdoms.

If black voters think they have made substantial gains simply by having more black representatives in Congress, they’re wrong. They’d have more influence if they were spread through several legislative districts, forcing more candidates to court them.

I'm glad to hear someone saying it. Y'all what has been going on is bad for everyone. We need more demographically balanced districts all over the country, and we will need them if we ever, ever hope to rationally address the problems this nation is facing.

Case and point: Louisiana just got some new Congressional districts. Take a moment and look at the map. See if you can guess which one is specifically drawn to concentrate as many minority voters as possible.

Then look at the demographics. For a state that is one-third African-American, African-Americans have a voice in only one-sixth of the state's Congressional delegation.

Unintended consequences don't begin to cover it.

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Refighting the Past

You're never really done with legislation. You're never really done with human freedom or civil rights. Once you think you have them, there will always be someone who wants to try and roll them back. The price for freedom is eternal vigilance in so many definitions of the word.

Sometimes that vigilance means keeping your eyes open when the guy next to you in the subway keeps trying to light a fuse in his jacket. Other times that vigilance requires you to keep people from re-writing history to move political goal posts today.

The ongoing battle over the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - and yes I said ongoing because we aren't really done with it - got another boost with Ron Paul recently. While liberals and progressives stand around shocked to find out that people will actually say in public that they don't support the CRA (and are more shocked to find out these individuals still command political support), the forces of revisionism are hard at work to justify such political beliefs.

And it works. Remember folks, "the free market didn't enforce segregation, the government enforced segregation." Or that's the narrative, at least.

While hardly all-in with this narrative (like the Pauls), Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway comes dangerously close to rationalizing it.

Racial segregation in the South wasn’t a product of the free market, it was the product of a state imposing racial prejudices under the threat of criminal prosecution.

"Big Government" strikes again? Hardly.

While this article's explorations of SCOTUS decisions kneecapping the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 (involving New Orleans) and the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 are quite valuable, I take issue with the idea that,

different outcome in The Slaughterhouse Cases and The Civil Rights Cases, the entire system of mandated racial segregation known as Jim Crow would have been under direct legal assault at the time of it’s birth.

There's a big concern I have with saying things like that. You see, Jim Crow was under legal assault from the time of its birth - The Civil Rights cases represented the first wave of such assaults, and Plessy vs. Ferguson represented the second wave. What we also know from our history is that these robust legal assaults, as well as others, failed.

An argument that:

So, as a philosophical matter, the Pauls are both correct that the state should not have the authority to tell businesses who they can choose as customers.

Is a almost an identical argument used by the Supreme Court to strike down the Civil Rights Act of 1875. And look what that philosophical matter got us - nearly 100 more years of Jim Crow and ongoing Jim Crow legacy today.

This issue is another place where I take exception with "libertarianism," even as I have my own robust blue libertarian streak of cynical distrust of the government.

Sorry folks, I. Live. In. The. South. Down here, you can't go six months without some popular politician reminding folks the importance of "state's rights" to ignore Federal laws (like the CRA) or complaining that all redistricting has to go through Justice Department approval in the same breath that carries discussions of diluting or off-loading minority voting strength.

Segregation and Jim Crow were state government mandates, free-market mandates, and cultural mandates all wrapped up in one. Businesses were getting subsidies and contributing to political campaigns back in the day just as much as they are today. As a matter of fact, that era is often described as the "good ole days" before all the "government regulations" came in and "ruined business." One wonders if more regular health inspections are the "government regulations" being discussed...

Should we even talk about the social stigma that would be ascribed to businesses that served "mixed" clientele during that time? After all, once schools and businesses were legally forced to integrate, white people fled to the suburbs and exurbs. There, they spent time socially engineering their own communities far away from the cities and the colored folks. They didn't have to go to school, shop with, or hire the colored folks if there ain't no colored folks around. And yet, the government doesn't interfere with their right to do so. As a matter of fact, it subsidizes the ability to self-segregate, by subsidizing road construction and oil exploration.

I think about all those free market forces at work when I drive through New Orleans East, an area where 71,000 people live where there's only ONE grocery store. Guess what race most of the residents there are.

The author sums up my whole opinion on the CRA in his closing:

by the time the 1964 Civil Rights Act came into being the distinction between private and public behavior under Jim Crow was a hard line to draw, especially when social pressure by Southern whites made it virtually impossible for any business owner who didn’t want to discriminate against blacks from doing so. The only way to bring down the whole system, a system that arguably might not have existed if the 14th Amendment hadn’t been virtually gutted in the latter years of the 19th Century, was to use the authority of the Federal Government to do so.

So, yeah, you could say that I don't mind "Big Government" robustly enforcing the 14th Amendment through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While it may be philosophically OK to think that parts of the CRA are coercive in nature, and a little bit of overreach on the part of the government, I only wished we lived in a society so perfect that we didn't need a government to make sure doors of opportunity are open to all citizens. Until we get to that More Perfect Union, I don't mind "Big Government" telling people interested in starting a business that they will be unable to segregate based on race, creed, or color if they would like to do business in the United States. We ain't yet far enough removed from the bad ole days yet.

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The Credibility Gap Widens

From the same people that brought you the terrifying GROUND ZERO MOSQUE, the thrilling KENYAN ANTI-COLONIALISM, and 2009's storytelling masterpiece, DEATH PANELS FOR GRANDMA, comes this May's Blockbuster Culture War Hit:

ALL BLACK RAPPERS ARE SCARY THUGS!

Follow Sarah Palin, Warrior Princess, and Karl Rove, Boy Genius, as they take the fight to those who seek to destroy gentle, homogenous American culture.

This summer in the GOP, COMMON is just a little too close to COMMUNIZM!


This film has been rated BS by the Reality Based Association of America.

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Heritage

Reading some Ta-Nehisi Coates, I am reminded that if Civil War rememberance in the South was more honestly about "heritage," as it should be, then we'd see an awful lot more events like this.

After all, hundreds of thousands of Southerners fought for the Union, and hundreds of thousands of those Southerners were black.

Though in complete honesty, it isn't just the South who has ignored the history of the USCT. That's why the event was held in Harrisburg in the first place, instead of Washington.

How powerful would it be to one day host a Civil War rememberance event in the South that honored the sacrifices of all her people, regardless of color or color of uniform, just an unvarnished realization of our shared regional and national tragedies? We've got 4 more Aprils to figure it out, and we can say it only took us 150 years.

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The Low Hanging Fruit

Well, I reckon if the ignorant behaviors of state legislators are fair game* in the national political conversation, I'm definitely entering this dingleberry into the record.

Because while this legislation likely won't make it out of committee, I absolutely think it tells you where some Republicans would be on reproductive rights if there weren't folks around to disagree with them.

It also serves as a reminder to all of us back here in reality that natural biology remains the number one terminator of pregnancies in the world.


* (HT: DADvocate)

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More Police State Footage

Video is a shocking thing. While it may not give you the entire story, sometimes it can give you enough. I know that not every arrested individual who complains of police brutality is telling the truth, and there are plenty of videos (like the show, COPS) that demonstrate this.

However, complaints of police misconduct are harder to ignore if you live in a place like New Orleans and keep up with the news. Complaints of police brutality are harder to ignore when you see a group of armed officers basically curb-stomping a teenager.

It doesn't take one minute of attendance at police academy to know that this type of behavior is wrong. I know plenty of responsible police officers who are stand-up men and women who would never engage in this sort of behavior. If the job is so tough and your mental state is so fragile that you feel the need to kick a prone suspect in the face while they are lying on the ground in submission, you ought to find a different line of work. And some therapy. Because you have problems, and that ain't a politically correct judgement on my part.

I want to the police to apprehend and stop the criminals, not become criminals.

And this adds an even more sinister twist to the national push to prosecute individuals who take video of official misconduct on the part of government officials, especially video of the police. Listen to the Today's Show comment: the judge ordered the video not to be released. Those who protect and serve should not be able to intimidate witnesses against them with prosecutions backed up by a judge. The freedom of press, the right to redress grievances, and the right to challenge your accusers are pillars of a stable and functioning free society. Video evidence is so valuable because video is a witness that cannot be intimidated.

This is why I think there should be video cameras in every police car. Every one. Their files should be a matter of public record, searchable by any citizen. In that way, both our police and our citizens will be better served. The police against false accusation and the citizens against brutality.

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Integration As Social Engineering

At least, according to the Tea Party of North Carolina. (HT: Maitri)

So, what is it, folks? School choice works until at-risk students are able to choose or are placed in the affluent suburban schools? When that happens, we go back to districts and neighborhood schools, which could concentrate at risk student populations? And this is justified because the previous system, with real flaws to be sure, is some sort of "social engineering" forced upon you by "radical leftists."

And critics expressed alarm that the plan would create a handful of high-poverty, racially isolated schools, a scenario that the new majority has begun embracing.

Pope, who is a former state legislator, said he would back extra funding for such schools.

"If we end up with a concentration of students underperforming academically, it may be easier to reach out to them," he said. "Hypothetically, we should consider that as well."

(Emphasis HR.)

So, to address the problem of "diluting" the at-risk populations into adequately resourced schools, the idea is to "concentrate" the at-risk populations in racially isolated schools, to make them easier to identify and recieve additional resources.

Because in all my time in the South, the at-risk, economically depressed, racially isolated schools always recieved the resources they needed to adequately educate their students. < / dripping, biting sarcasm > It it weren't for those radical leftist social engineers, everything would be fine.

Maybe if those schools had actually recieved adequate resources in the first damn place, there wouldn't be a need for all this legally-mandated integration "social engineering" to address the very real inequalities that resulted from the previous system that concentrated at-risk populations in racially isolated schools as a matter of policy.

It was called Jim Crow.

Maybe you've heard of it.

Our nation just celebrated a holiday in rememberance of the most beloved leader of the movement that consigned that national moral failure to the shameful dust bin of history.

That's the reason there was a Civil Rights Movement. That's the reason we have legally mandated integration. That's the reason cultural and economic integration has not happened on a larger scale, nor as organically as we Americans like to tell ourselves it would: because of educational disparities resulting from specific policies of the past that continue replicating the legacy of that shameful past with each successive generation.

That's the reason the libertarian wet-dream utopia of American history sets dangerous precedent - the market was left alone and changed nothing for nearly a this nation's entire scope of history. Despite every economic incentive to integrate. Despite every economic incentive to liberalize and rapidly expand education to include all Americans.

And the folks responsible or advocating this retroactive change can wash their hands of the inherent racism of these policies all they want - I'll take them at their word that the policies they want to enact aren't done so with a hint of racism in their own conscious thoughts.

Bless their hearts, they aren't racists, they're just jaw droppingly ignorant of their own national history. We've been down this road before, and it didn't work.

Hell, we're still traveling down this road in many parts of the country, and especially in the South. Imagine how dynamic our regional economy would be with a highly moderately reasonably educated population? We're still dealing with the concentrated poverty, racial targeting and inadequate educational opportunities every day on the streets. Especially in the South.

Does your current system have flaws? I'm sure it does. Nothing is perfect, and we Americans have the ability to constantly make changes for the better. There's nothing wrong with that.

My problem comes from the idea that the current way of doing things doesn't have a starting point. Espeically when the popular remedy to what ails you is to resurrect the policies that the current system was constructed to correct. Not only that, but resurrect the policies whose legacy directly caused the problems your current system is experiencing.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, try not to fix it by doing whatever it was broke it in the first damn place.

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The Blood of Patriots

One favorite quote professed by Tea Partiers and the like was made famous by Thomas Jefferson - "The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." It has been used with hyperbole and frequency, in the past several years, to protest the actions of a legally and freely elected government. A legally and freely elected government that, I might add, peaceably transferred power to the opposition after our nation's next scheduled legal and free elections.

One problem I have with such hyperbole and emotional rhetorical devices is the expectation that this now mainstream political participant in American government is somehow working to fight the tyranny of non-representation and oppressive rule that Jefferson was discussing. As if the other mainstream political choice in this nation represents tyranny. A tyranny ironically usurped by the iron grip of voter turnout and bound by law.

My problem exists because, in the not so recent past, patriots have had their actual blood spilled and lives lost while opposing to a system of government that entrenched very real tyranny and refused enfranchisement to American citizens on the basis of skin color. This tyranny and oppression was defended with the hanging rope, torches in the night, arson, bombs, billy clubs, tear gas, fire hoses, and bullets; not to mention the tacit public approval of those methods by a majority of the enfranchised public. Thus had such oppression made its way into the legislation these patriots dared oppose.

The Memphis assassination cannot be considered as an isolated incident in this country or abroad. It will stand with the assassination of President Kennedy, the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi, the murder of Malcolm X in New York and the slaying of civil rights workers in the South as a stain on our whole society, a scar which cannot be forgotten. Is this to be the mark of the United States in this second half of the Twentieth Century?

Forgetting the very real trials of this time in American History, or at least subconsciously marginalizing them, has become pervasive in our current political culture. Words matter. Culture matters. History, accurately appraised, matters.

These historical sacrifices are trivialized by a movement of wholly enfranchised and empowered citizens claiming to be oppressed at the hands of a tyrannical government elected by the majority. The Tea Party faces no billy clubs, fire hoses or police dogs. Hooded bands of liberals do not arrive in the night to burn things on their lawns. They have openly carried guns to their rallies, and faced only chiding from the media. Their most popular leaders have used rhetoric far more fiery than the non-violence associated with the most popular and numerous leaders of the Civil Rights era. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to look very far to see the esteem in which fiery Civil Rights era voices are held - you only have to compare the pop culture legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. to that of Malcolm X. Thus is the difference between the "table of brotherhood" and "by any means necessary."

More telling is the historical fact that neither were allowed to make it out of that era alive.

More insidious, in my opinion, is the attempt to rewrite, revise or erase the history of our recent past. This can be found in the way we politically discuss matters of race in our national discourse. Our Congress just read a sanitized and fake Constitution, removing the controversial parts that speak to the darker and lasting historical legacies of this nation, even as they claim to be "originalists" and Constitutional "constructionists" that politically advance a "return" to the Constitutional values of our nation's Founders - many of whom owned slaves.

Further still is the way certain issues are discussed. Political correctness, an academic attempt to modify the dehumanizing language of Jim Crow and segregation, is now used as a political slur; vernacular for lying or misrepresentation. School choice and states' rights are still used as arguments for policy change, and any attempt to point out the race-based history of such policy is met with outright dismissal. The charges of "racism" and the counter-charge of "crying-racism" have diluted the necessity of our national conversation on race; degenerating that conversation to the farcical exercise of rewriting Huckleberry Finn or intentionally misconstruing the definition of the term "tar baby." Affirmative Action is discussed only in terms of reverse racism, without the acceptance - or even acknowledgement - of the very, very real race-based obstacles to some populations and the very real race-based advantages still in play for other populations. Our schools, finally legally integrated, remain culturally and realistically segregated.

But progress has been made. The blood of these patriots, though seldom celebrated with meaning, was not in vain. I have written this post in a city where the most privileged youth of the nation are unashamedly striving to increase the educational aspirations of the nation's most at-risk youth, despite the politics of those who wrecked the last system or who will wreck the next system. I am seated at a coffee shop where the restrooms are labeled only "Men" and "Women," on a street faced with grand antebellum homes. I have just watched a white woman and a black man introduce themselves to one another in public, and share a table and a conversation without any hint of fear or impropriety. They had replaced a duo of women, also black and white, who had giggled over a shared laptop computer for an hour while studying for the same class at the same local college.

An idyllic scene, without a doubt. A new Norman Rockwell paradigm, where all the issues I have discussed don't necessarily occupy the conscious thoughts. On a holiday all paid for with the blood of patriots, in the course of our grand American experiment.

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Cold Blooded Sausage Making

If you don't think this kind of gerrymandering is going on in every state with a GOTP legislature right now, you are out of your mind. (HT: Peach Pundit, though be sure to check out the comments.)

Do I even have to bring up the underlying racial motivations of drawing districts this way? In the past, districts were drawn to dilute minority voting; these days districts are drawn to concentrate minority voting while diluting their representation.

To my more liberal or progressive friends who have yet to accept that liberals and progressives have to begin speaking with folks besides those who already agree with them, this is the end result of letting the Republicans control the national debate. That debate is focused only on Washington, as are so many liberal or progressive pundits, and this results in liberal, progressive, centrist and conservative Democrats fleeing the state parties in droves. Young ambitious candidates interested in politics only have one place to turn in some states.

The Democrats have lost the US House of Representatives for at least 10 years. It doesn't matter what y'all think, it matters what the rules are. The districts across this nation will be gerrymandered to support a Republican majority, and since the Democratic Party has consistently refused to invest in party infrastructure at the state level, they're playing from at least two touchdowns behind at the start of the game. It doesn't matter what demographics change, the folks who draw the districts will just go around them. As they always have.

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House Rich & Cash Poor

Another story of the modern South, and how the things that keep dividing us are killing us. This is also an example of real journalism, unbound by the need to cater to short attention spans.

(HT: Leigh)

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Fake Ass Versions

Cliff responds to the Huckleberry Finn revisions.

If your child asks you why they keep using the n-word then explain it to them. Stop trying to change how history happened or how real life works.

It is bad enough that every period movie set these days glosses over what really happened in this nation's past, not to mention the straight up rewriting of textbooks that we use to "teach" schoolchildren about the past (African American brigades fighting for Stonewall Jackson - really, Virginia?).

Maybe they didn't think to include the n-word on any standardized tests, and that's why it isn't considered important.

Let's be clear on one thing. This revision is not taking place for some "politically correct" reason, or because some African-American or Native-American was offended. This revision is happening so white people can continue to believe the illusion that nothing wrong ever happened in America's past, ever, especially not at the hands of white people.

Do not be fooled.

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The Race Card vs. the Crying Racism Card

Oh, Haley Barbour stepped in the briar patch this week. And because our politics are what they are, who knows if it was planned or if it was a candid assessment of one man's perspective on history? All we can do is examine the resulting sound and fury, and figure out what that says about our culture today.

Just to define the terms, since they are close in definition and closely linked,

Race Card - a false accusation of racism to further political goals, usually used to describe an individual or an organization as racist.

Crying Racism Card - a false accusation that an individual or an organization is the victim of someone else playing the Race Card.

Here is why the distinction is important, politically speaking. That's something we've seen for a while now in our national discourse.

Though Barbour has issued the mandatory and obligatory retraction, and it sounds as genuine as it can, he still got his name in the news cycle and will be talked about on right-wing blogs and talk radio as a victim of hypersensitive left-wingery.

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The Invisible City

(Note: I was inspired to write this post after reading Cliff's neighborhood wish list over the weekend. Of course, I forgot to mention that on the first edition of this post. Luckily, Leigh reminded me.)

New Orleans East has 71,000 residents, according to current figures, and only has one* grocery store. The next closest I know about is the Winn-Dixie just west of the Danziger Bridge in Gentilly. (For my Georgia readers, that would be like having to drive from St. Simons Island to Brunswick; or from East Athens to Epps Bridge - every time you wanted to pick up food.)

On the occasions in which I drive through the East, the business corridors on the major thoroughfares look like they're stuck somewhere between 8 Mile and 28 Days Later. Back when I worked for the RSD, we did a lot of training sessions at Sarah T. Reed High School, and the view of the area on the commute was less than flattering. Hearing the news this weekend that 71,000 people live there comes as a jaw-dropping, knock-down shock.

That's nearly the non-student population of Athens, Georgia.

Despite the fact that the area would be the sixth largest city in the state of Louisiana, with a median income higher than the rest of Orleans Parish, commercial investment has been very, very slow. No one seems able, or willing to tell residents why. The "big" investors are all public/private initiatives that have yet to get off the ground, and not many "small" businesses have flocked to the area to get a foothold.

There are a host of reasons why:

From a geographic standpoint, the area is prone to catastrophic flooding during tropical storm events, and anywhere near the coast this close to a disaster the scale of Katrina or a scare the scale of Gustav is going to take that into consideration when looking to invest. This is especially true the smaller the business (and the more at stake). While it isn't OK for a Rouses' or a national retailer to lose a location to catastrophic flooding, they can still usually take the hit; they'll continue making revenue from other, unaffected locations while they wait for the insurance company to settle. They know the insurance company isn't going to dick them around as much, because of the scale of business. This is why McDonald's, IHOP, Waffle House and car dealerships all have locations in New Orleans East - those are low risk locations for those businesses, based on scale alone.

But to a local outfit that may only have 3 or 4 locations, with almost all of their investment prone to flood threat in one way or another, that represents a killing risk. That location represents a huge percentage of their business that cannot be lost. Their small size means insurance companies are more likely to stall payments, and they likely don't have enough other locations to offset the loss. Especially local units in the New Orleans area, where - if New Orleans East floods - likely represents a major situation to all area units. Simply put, the amount of money (reward) they could make by catering to the significant NO East population does not offset the substantial risk they take by opening up a location there.

Next up, businesses have to factor in clientle demographics, and I'm not even talking about skin color. This is all about green. NO East is a drive-first, in-boundary suburb of New Orleans. The majority money-earners are expected to drive into New Orleans for work, while there will be a high number of contractors doing repair work in the area during the day. No tourist or entertainment options exist in the East, so - as with most suburban communities - people are predicted to stay home or to drive somewhere else.

Now, the entertainment/tourist option is a Catch-22 for the East while the same is a multiplier for the rest of the parish and region. Attractions like Magazine Street, Frenchman, the French Quarter, and Lakeview Mall all bleed commerce from the East, while giving little back in the way of return visitors. Also, the sheer number of out-of-town visitors bolster many of these locales while ignoring the East. Of course, this commerce ignores the East because there is not current commerce in the East. There's really very little the East can do to combat that economic reality.

The fact that it is a drive-first option also puts economic constraints on the area. Drive-first commerce begets strips and malls, snarling traffic and constantly changing. Usually, the appeal to put a business in a strip or a mall is the low cost/overhead for doing so, and the high traffic the area is expected to experience. That's why suburban economic development is in constant motion - there aren't a lot of long-term investments in a constantly changing economic structure. Drive-first also requires more monied developers to build the infrastructure with guarantees of government subsidization. This situation also works against the East right now, because what infrastructure improvement projects the city is working on are all going at once, and it is no secret (no matter what politics say) that there are higher priorities than New Orleans East.

When your area's development is effectively at the mercy of developers, city and state governments, and your area is neither a political nor economic prioritiy for the developers or the government, you're going to be waiting on them. Major developers are going to wait until the government subsidizes their major developments, and since they own the title - no one else can develop the areas zoned for major developments. Since the government refuses to declare the property "blight" or assess property values with a penalty for the plot not being in-commerce, the owners can sit and wait on their derelict land until the government money starts to flow into their pockets. Need proof? Look at the negotiation over the hospital - the other major NO East development - how has that been working out for the city and the population?

Add to that the fact that the government's main hospital priority is in Lower Mid-City, coupled with a budget crisis, and you have yourselves a problem. Really, you have yourself a literal raft of problems, all holding back your local economic development.

And this raft of problems rolls in long before the criminal, educational, racial or conspiratorial reasons for lack of economic development - though all of those play a major role in keeping things the way they are, as they keep perceptions and realities that need to change from changing.

* - Earlier, I wrote that NO East didn't have any grocery stores, but Alli says there is one, so I'll trust her on that. That's still ONE grocery store for 71,000 people. The place where I grew up had no less than three grocery stores, for only 12,000 people.

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Blight, Rich Property Owners & Race

Blight usually has more to do with rich, well-connected property owners than it does with lower class folks - even as blight is traditionally associated with depressed neighborhoods and at-risk populations. It also has a lot to do with code enforcement, zoning laws, and property tax assessment methods. This can happen anywhere, cities like New Orleans have to look for solutions the same way they have to figure it out in Athens and Lexington, Georgia.

Let's put it this way, if a lot of people I know refused to keep up their properties or let them fall into disrepair (or even just repaired them in the wrong way), they'd get a visit from county code enforcement. Neighbors would complain. Fines could be assessed. Something would be done. I know this, because it has already happened to friends of mine who have attempted to make modest renovations to their homes without the proper permits. Try it sometime, if you own property in a relatively well-off, middle class area and want nothing more than a visit from the county authorities.

Meanwhile, in other parts of town, derelict buildings owned by absentee landlords remain out of commerce and nothing gets done. Boarded up windows and doors get town down by the elements or people who want access to an abandoned building. Rodents move in. Crime usually follows. Many of these properties are in depressed neighborhoods with at-risk populations. Neighbors may complain (if they know where to direct their call), but nothing ever seems to get done. Building conditions get blamed on the local population - but at-risk populations don't usually own those buildings!

As a matter of fact, keeping those buildings in derelict or blighted states of disrepair actively contribute to neighborhoods remaining depressed, at-risk populations remaining at-risk, and depreciation of surrounding property values. After all, why spend money to increase the property value and therefore increase your property tax liability when you can just let the building deteriorate and decrease both? Our system as currently maintained incentivizes blight.

Also, property values affect the property tax structure that is used to pay for the derelict schools in depressed neighborhoods with at-risk populations. That's a nice, tidy way to continue the cycle of poverty, especially in the South, and placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the at-risk populations themselves.

For example, New Orleans has a ridiculous blight problem. It also has a ridiculously high property tax, and a byzantine property tax structure. The folks who own maintained properties must subsidize the entire local system because there are a lot of folks who own derelict properties that drain the system.

There are two excuses for such draning behavior, one based on liberty and one based on racism. Both must be addressed calmly and logically if we are to build the political will necessary to rebuid our cities, especially in the South.

One: "you can't tell me what to do with my property." This is usually employed by the rich or well-connected property owner who owns blighted or derelict property. Spending money to keep the building up will increase property values and probably property taxes. There is no incentive to keep up the property, and there is no incentive to sell the property (if it may be worth something someday). So it just keeps mouldering where it is, dragging the neighborhood and community around it down with it.

I can empathize with a property owner's rights to their own property, but not at the expense of surrounding neighborhoods and communities, and not while being subsidized by my tax dollars. Yes, there is a fine line that exists here between individual rights and government intrusion, but let us not pretend it can't be walked, especially with dynamic and responsive local involvement. Right now, some wealthy property owners are hiding behind this slippery slope and the rest of us are paying for it.

Two: "Racism." A more complicated excuse, this is broken into two sections. The first is akin to enemies using human sheilds during times of war, the second is based on reasonable historical mistrust taken to extremes.

2A: A rich, well-connected property owner (of any race, and this includes government agencies) rents to low-income or Section 8 tenants and allows the properties to deteriorate. The Housing authorities do not enforce code on these properties because of a lack of resources or interest. The result allows low-income or Section 8 tenants to live in squalor, while the owner collects a government check. Populist critics blame the property's state of disrepair on the residents, even though the owner of the property and the local government AND the state or federal housing authority should be ensuring compliance and basic standards of living.

Because many urban, low-income or Section 8 tenants, especially in New Orleans and across the South, are inhabited by at-risk minorities, addressing these living conditions can be demagouged as racist policy by those who don't want the situation to change. Requiring property owners to maintain their property may cause those property owners to sell those properties or stop renting to low-income or Section 8 tenants, usually resulting in such tenants having to leave thier places of residnece. History being what it is, this can be construed as racist policy even if enforcing code and basic building standards will benefit the at-risk residents of low-income housing or Section 8, AND the neighborhoods and communities in which they live which may be neither at-risk, nor low-income, nor Section 8.

2B: Unclear title to property. References to racism in these instances reflect the historical race-based rules regarding property ownership, and the distrust reasonably formed during that time. For those of you who do not think the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow lives with us even today, here is one of the prime examples.

This is where the next generation of a family has inherited a property owned by a progenitor, but there is no clarity regarding who can make decisions for this property. With no clear title, local code enforcement agencies are unable (or unwilling) to contact the proper individuals to remedy deterioration to a property.

Again, race relations historically have weakened minority property ownership rights, and this kind of situation is ripe for racially motivated advantage-taking. History is filled with examples of a family losing land because "the county" contacted some distant cousin and they sold the property to some wealthy developer for a song. (Who then treats the property as described above...)

However, the local governments can do a lot in locating owners and assisting them through the process of property remediation, especially in this day and age. Fair and just codes can be written and enforced that will allow for due process and remediation, but local politics all across the South have been demagouged to a standstill on issues such as these. Either the county interests refuse to recognize the legacy of Jim Crow as it relates to such proceedings, and get shut down; or property interests refuse to recognize the need for such proceedings, and imply that reasonable codes are a return to Jim Crow.

That has to stop - just as it is racist policy to seize property without due process-based legal contact or compensation, it is racist policy to allow the situation to go unaddressed for so long it begins to affect the surrounding neighborhoods and communities in adverse ways, and this is exactly what has happened all over the South.

Finally, the first item is more easily remedied than the second, from simply a due process standpoint. When ownership of blight or derelict property is well established, and the owner simply ignores the problem (as appears to be the case in Athens and Lexington) the solution presents itself - go after the wealthy property owners who let their property deteriorate. Incentivize selling this property or keeping it in commerce. Remove the systematic incenctives to let the property's value depress. Enforce reasonble code with due process, and appraise property value realistically.

In the second instance, the system will take longer, be more difficult and more emotional (as we're starting to do this in New Orleans), but it must be done sooner rather than later. Cities must have a hand in reviving their more vital neighborhoods.

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This

Because sometimes you just have to write down a list of things you think. Cliff sits on his porch on Veterans Day.

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The Katrina Defense

Figuring out who is culpable for what happened to Henry Glover will be a case that rips the New Orleans community apart for the next several weeks.

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Got Make Believe?

Now that we've witnessed Constitutional constructionists who don't know what's in the Constitution and Christians who don't know what the Bible says, we are exposed to history textbooks that make up history.

Shocking, I know.

We're back in the land of if-you-don't-like-the-facts-make-up-your-own.


Alternate title for this post: "They're climbing through your textbooks, they're snatchin' your people up."

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