Interesting Lesson in History

I was channel-flipping earlier this evening and caught Wynton Marsalis on Lou Dobbs. Marsalis was talking about just how much the New Orleans jazz musicians loved the city and wanted to see it return. He was quite positive. The discussion then moved to poverty. Marsalis indicated the long history of black poverty, whose roots started with the end of reconstruction, went through the "Republican Reclamation with assimilation of Dixiecrats" to the present time. Dobbs agreed with him. Mr. Marsalis, who seems to be quite knowledgeable in history, seems to have forgotten the New Deal, Great Society and War on Poverty. Does the fact that simply throwing money at the problem, increasing the funding to failed programs and cloning failed programs not mean something? Perhaps it is time to do something different.

I hate to sound like Limbaugh, but we have had these wonderful programs for at least 40 years that were going to solve the problem, yet, according to the Census Bureau, poverty increases in the US. We have millions of Mexicans illegally entering the country for jobs and we have hard-core unemployed who can't seem to find work. We through money at education and we have declining schools and education rates in poverty blighted areas. Is the answer to throw more money at these problems or to increase the dependency of folks with these terrible problems on the government dole? Seems so. It would seem that the rebuilding effort on the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas will require an enormous labor force. It looks like there will be a huge labor demand and, possibly, a shortage of labor, unless we use the New Orleans Busses to round up more illegals.

Somewhere along the line, the folks who are "mired in poverty" have to be responsible for getting out of it, not waiting for the next government program that will keep them there. With the damand for labor that should appear, it seems that they will not have problems finding work and coming out if poverty.

One wonders what Marsalis has done in all these years to push for improvements in the New Orleans he so loves.