"It was being poor that doomed them, not the color of their skin."

From the Binghamton Press, via Common Dreams, the incomparable Dave Rossie:

File Today's Feelings for Future Use

However guilty Cheney and Bush may be of negligence and indifference to human suffering, branding them as racist because most of the New Orleanians trapped in the Super Dome and Convention Center were African-American is a bum rap. Seventy percent of the residents of New Orleans are black. And poor. It was being poor that doomed them, not the color of their skin.

To an administration dedicated to making America's wealthiest even wealthier, the nation's poor have grown in number as they've become increasingly invisible. But they're hard to ignore when they're floating in the streets of New Orleans.

New Orleans is under military control today, and not a moment too soon. And not for the first time or the worst time. That would have been in the spring of 1862, when Union troops under Ben Butler, a Democratic politician from Massachusetts turned Union general, occupied the city. Then as now looting became a problem, but then it was Butler's troops who were doing the looting. Butler himself earned the nickname "Spoons" for his deftness in acquiring silverware from houses in the city, and his brother, not to be outdone, made a small fortune selling confiscated cotton.

After the war, Butler became a radical Republican.

The more things change...