The Road Home: Punishing the Self-Reliant

New Orleanians get no shortage of hortatory messages about self-reliance from other parts of the nation they thought they belonged to. So Sunday's Times-Picayune sends the message right back. Here's a story full of as many touchstones of self-reliance as one can bear -- a Charity Hospital nurse, a widow who raised nine children, children who came to her aid when the floods struck, children who rebuilt their own home and rental properties with no government assistance. Read the journey, if that's what you can call it, this 69-year-old woman took through the torturously Kafkaesque world that the state's "Road Home" program has become, and recall it the next time a lecture on self-reliance begins forming itself in your mind. This is what happens to people who, in the old Clintonian formula, go to work every day and play by the rules.

Comments

[doctorj2u]

Americans keep putting their heads in the sand. "Couldn't happen to me." The cruelty shown by this government to LA citizens has been incomprehensable. Cruelty to good people that deserved better. I love the significance of Mrs. Clark posing like Vanna White while feeling the deepest of pain. That is SO New Orleans! We will go on, with a smile and a dance, but never forgetting that this government is not for us. It is evil and cruel and out for itself. I was a true Republican before the storm. Now I am neither Republican or Democrat. I lost my coutry 8-29-07 and I want it back!

[kellygrrrl]

you're right, how horrible it is that the old addage:
"Cheaters Never Prosper" is the biggest lie we've ever been told.
imagine those who have no adult children or family to help

[TheOtherMaven]

Right the first time. "These are government people. They aren't going to be nice to you. They don't understand."

And they never WILL - because they think they'll never be in that kind of desperate position.

[GoCards1978]

Thank you for this post, Harry. I read the Times-Picayune daily on the NOLA.com site but I'm certain I'm one of very few who has never lived in SE LA. Hopefully this article will give pause to some of the many self-righteous, delusional critics who act like living heart donors.