New Orleans: Was the Livin' Too Easy?

Loose Canon had the experience of being poor and happy as a youth in New Orleans--the cheap red beans and rice at Buster Holmes, a now-defunct restaurant on Burgundy Street in the French Quarter, a studio apartment on Pirate's Alley, right by St. Louis Cathedral, and Dixie Beer at the shabby genteel Napoleon House.

Living like that in the Big Easy was a southern version of "Rent," the Jonathan Larson musical about bohemians who stiff their landlord. So much of New Orleans embraced this carefree manner of living. But there's just one problem with this easy, boho existence. Somebody has to be responsible.

An article in the American Spectator explains why:

"You need one thing above all to maintain the at-ease poor lifestyle. The grown-ups, the straight people, have to be in charge. When you turn on the water or the light switch, you want them to work. If you get hit by a bus, you would hope the emergency services wouldn't simply leave you lying there.

"If you elect drifters and grifters to positions of leadership, sooner or later you'll get in big trouble. Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin might have made perfectly good waiters or saxophone players...."

The moral rot in New Orleans extended to the police department, many of whose officers decided not to show up for work on the days they were most needed by the citizenry. Jack Dunphy, an L.A. police officer, was particularly appalled by New Orleans's Lieutenant Henry Waller:

"'I left [my fellow officers] in a bad situation," Lieutenant Henry Waller told Anderson Cooper, 'but I would have been leaving my wife in a worse situation.'

"It's galling enough that this man dishonored himself and his badge by shirking his duty, but it's almost beyond belief that he would try to justify his decision on national television. 'We listened to the radio,' Waller said, 'we're hearing the things, the water's still rising, the water's still rising, the water's still rising. The looting is this, the looting is that. I started thinking, I said, well, you know, we've been hearing this story about the levees breaching all day. What if they're right and I get stuck in this car? I'm no good dead.'

"Well, maybe not. But as far as his fellow officers and the citizens of New Orleans were concerned, he was no good alive, either....

"It's unfortunate that Katrina overshadowed the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, but perhaps now is a good time to remember that day's heroes, the cops and firemen at the Twin Towers, the servicemen at the Pentagon, and all the countless others whose valor is today known only to God. When the unthinkable came to pass they put thoughts of their own safety aside and did what needed to be done, for many at the cost of their lives. If Henry Waller had been in Lower Manhattan that day, he would have been the first guy across the Brooklyn Bridge. Shame on him."

I've said it, and I'll say it again: It can't be noted too many times that many of New Orleans's problems are a legacy from welfare programs. President Bush's proposals to get people out of poverty rely on entrepreneurship rather than welfare or welfare-like programs. As National Review's Rich Lowry notes, liberals don't like this:

"The objection to these Bush proposals isn't fiscal, but philosophical. They serve to undermine the principle of government dependency that underpins the contemporary welfare state, and to which liberals are utterly devoted. In a reversal of the old parable, liberals don't want to teach people how to fish if they can just give them federally funded seafood dishes instead.

"The unemployed now get 26 weeks of federal unemployment benefits, which are often extended and also supplemented by various state programs. This is a social safety net that can become a trap. The longer and more generous benefits are, the less incentive someone has to find work (see Germany in particular and Western Europe generally for examples of the phenomenon at work). The Bush program would establish accounts that unemployed people could use as they see fit for education, training programs and child care to support their job search. If they find a job within 13 weeks they can keep up to $1,000 of the $5,000 account."

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