[Mb-civic] Krugman

[Mike Blaxill]

NY Times makes you pay for OPED columnists now -
you can still get your Krugman here though

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091905K.shtml

Tragedy in Black and White 
    By Paul Krugman 
    The New York Times

    Monday 19 September 2005

    By three to one, African-Americans believe
that federal aid took so long to arrive in New
Orleans in part because the city was poor and
black. By an equally large margin, whites
disagree.

    The truth is that there's no way to know.
Maybe President Bush would have been mugging with
a guitar the day after the levees broke even if
New Orleans had been a mostly white city. Maybe
Palm Beach would also have had to wait five days
after a hurricane hit before key military units
received orders to join rescue operations.

    But in a larger sense, the administration's
lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina had
a lot to do with race. For race is the biggest
reason the United States, uniquely among advanced
countries, is ruled by a political movement that
is hostile to the idea of helping citizens in
need.

    Race, after all, was central to the emergence
of a Republican majority: essentially, the South
switched sides after the passage of the Civil
Rights Act. Today, states that had slavery in
1860 are much more likely to vote Republican than
states that didn't....

rest is here
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091905K.shtml