At a local meeting this week, Four Oaks mayor Linwood Parker made the following observation, as nearly as I can quote it:
“The problem of people in low-lying areas in New Orleans wasn’t because they didn’t have cars to evacuate, or didn’t know where to go or what to do. The problem was they were dependent on government assistance, so many of them, and they knew that if they left their homes with their checks coming in two or three days, when they came back they wouldn’t have any money the next thirty days.
… [T]wenty percent of the people can’t participate in ‘the American dream’? That’s something which the government can’t give you.
What we’ve seen is that if you wait on the government, you drown.“
