Katrina Exposes Poverty and Race relations

[Makalakumu]

http://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/pao/response/HURPROJ.asp?prj=lkpon1

This is the only official thing to be posted so far and this source specifically states that there wasn't enough money to fund the project that would have protected New Orleans. This article is the standard. It is professional and it is written by experts in the field.

Something that directly refers to a report that one could go and spend time searching out would also be nice...

There has been nothing posted so far that has shown that Louisiana had all of the money it needed for flood control.

There has been nothing posted so far that shows that Louisiana wasted money specifically allocated for flood control.

I would hope that if there is this long history of mismanagement and waste, someone would have published something professional about it.

Here are some peices of evidence that the federal government underfunded New Orleans' levees...

http://lmno4p.org/articles/9.5/levee_funding_cut_by_Bush.pdf

Here is another source...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_hurricane_risk_for_New_Orleans#Preparing_the_levees_for_a_category_4.2B_hurricane

 

[Makalakumu]

Wow, a complete dodge of my questions and statements. Thats pretty good, you should be in politics. You pose a good question, how do we know it was enough money? By your own reasoning however, how do you know it was not enough money? This is where your bouncing back and forth on speculation and opinions. Facts will set this straight once and for all.....but it seems your hard pressed to find any.

7sm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_hurricane_risk_for_New_Orleans#Preparing_the_levees_for_a_category_4.2B_hurricane

When interpreting levee funding issues, it is important to understand that the levees have been considered underfunded for decades [16] Most experts agree that a levee project capable of preventing the recent flooding in New Orleans would have had to have been started during the Clinton Administration in order to be completed by the time Katrina hit. This has not stopped political opponents of the Bush administration from claiming that the failure of the levee system may have been the result of federal funding cuts for hurricane and flood control projects due to the cost of the Iraq war. Others believe this view may not be accurate as there were no plans or proposals in the near term to redesign the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project’s levees to withstand a category 4 or greater hurricane like Katrina.

In Feb. of 2004 Al Naomi, the Army Corps of Engineers senior project manager in New Orleans stated that "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest [17]." A copy of the most recent comprehensive formal evaluation by the Army Corps of Engineers of the state of the levees has yet to be made public. [18]. However, no evidence has come forward that these previously identified, inadequate levee areas were the source of the breaches.

In October of 2004 Naomi was reported by the New Orleans Inquirer as saying, "It's possible to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane.... we've got to start. To do nothing is tantamount to negligence [19]." Exactly why Naomi’s plea for increased funding for levee augmentation was ignored by both congress and by the Bush administration has yet to be determined. Also, whether or not such increased funding would have been likely to have prevented the Katrina disaster, remains to be determined. Perhaps such things will be made more clear by a future Katrina Commission, as recently proposed by former President Clinton. However, the currently proposed category 5 levee system will take at least $2.5 billion and two decades to complete[20][21]. Therefore, it is not possible to pinpoint blame to any single presidential administration.

Starting in 2003, federal spending on the SELA was substantially reduced. At least nine pre-Katrina articles in the New Orleans Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. [22] Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers at the Corps of Engineers, said that “at the time that these levees were designed and constructed, it was felt that that was an adequate level given the probability of an event like this occurring". Strock also said that he did not believed that funding levels contributed to the disaster, commenting that "[t]he intensity of this storm simply exceeded the design capacity of this levee." Strock also told reporters that the Corps of Engineers "had a 200- or 300-year level of protection. That means that an event that we were protecting from might be exceeded every 200 or 300 years" [23].

Strock's 200 - 300 year estimate appears to be inconsistent with two other facts. First, the Army Corps of Engineers stated design capacity of the levees was only for a level three hurricane. Second, during the 41 years prior to Katrina, no less than three category 4+ hurricanes had passed within ten miles of New Orleans: Hilda, Betsy and Camille.

In early 2004, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to a Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness. On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us." Later in June, 2004, Naomi requested $2 million for urgent work repairing levees from a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority. Naomi needed to request the funds locally because the federal government had cut back on funding for needed projects. According to the Times-Picayune on June 18, 2004, Naomi said, "The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement...The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them." Construction work was underway on the Hammond Highway bridge near the 17th Street Canal breach. [[24]] However, it should be noted that aerial photographs place this breach in a part of the canal levee that is wholly separate from the construction area.[25]

 

[Makalakumu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_hurricane_risk_for_New_Orleans#Preparing_the_levees_for_a_category_4.2B_hurricane

Most experts agree that a levee project capable of preventing the recent flooding in New Orleans would have had to have been started during the Clinton Administration in order to be completed by the time Katrina hit.

I found this very interesting.

 

[Tgace]

Hats off to you for that...although even I wouldnt "blame" Clinton.

This is just an unfortunate example of bureaucracy, politics and human (wont happen to me) nature IMO.

 

[Makalakumu]

In other words "soft racism" is something you cant "prove"...

Depends on what you mean by prove. What do you need to see for proof?

 

[Tgace]

Your the scientist, you tell me...more than just "look all the people left are black. Theres your proof." Not very scientific...

 

[7starmantis]

I agree 100%. "soft Racism" is easily claimed but hard pressed to be proven. I don’t think the mindset of someone deadset on proving racism is that of an open mind. Racism in America today is a funny thing, in some instances it only exists because we can't let it die. There were human errors made, no one is denying that, but to try and say they were made in order to exclude or damage a race of people is asinine and just argumentative. You admit there is no proof of any kind to support racism in this disaster....

This kind of evidence may exist, but I haven't seen anything.

So why spend precious time and energy searching for racism in this disaster? Now is the time for helping. If you haven’t seen any evidence of racism, just implied, loosely strung together conjectures, why keep pounding away at your keyboard screaming foul?

If you build a levee to withstand a category three hurricane, you know they will fail in a category four. Therefore, they were built, knowing they would fail...in essence, built to fail during a category four.

Let’s talk a little bit about context here. Your working so hard at spinning here your not opening your mind to see whats before your eyes. We cannot build something that is 100% secure against the biggest imagination out there. You’re putting intention behind things that you had or have no control over. In your reasoning the racism was counting on a cat 4 or 5 storm to do its dirty work then?



I’m with tgace here, you’re trying to stretch and spread your blanket “soft racism” over a pretty wide area and it’s starting to get quite thin.

7sm

 

[RickRed]

So, the poorest folks in a southern region are primarily black. Is that really any surprise?

Those folks also don't have the means to escape, or the resources to keep getting packed and moving to multiple false alarms and get caught in a major catastrophe because they choose to ignore a real alarm due to the 'crying wolf' mentallity.....

From watching the news, there were more than a few that were told on camera that they needed to move and refused. Even when the water was up to the second floor of their homes.

Some of those were white too.

I don't recall anyone, white rescuer or black, telling anyone that they wouldn't help them or to get to the back of the rescue helicopter.

 

[7starmantis]

Take a look at this photo documentary of N.O. before, during and after the storm. No one (white or black) thought that it was a big deal. After the storm they were out buying beer and having a great time thinking it hadn't been too bad of a storm, then came the water. Here is the link, I posted it in the other thread as well. Link

When interpreting levee funding issues, it is important to understand that the levees have been considered underfunded for decades.

Its going to be pretty hard to show a connection to racism throughout these decades of various officials, leaders and presidents.

7sm

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

I've read the reports about the Hurricane Pam simulation. What your blatantly biased source does NOT mention is what you have linked to in another source: Shelters are provided for those who don't have transportation and that it is the city's primary job to take care of it in the first place. The article focuses SO MUCH on the fact that the exercise assumed that only 1/3 of the city would be evacuated (in reality, 70% of the city was) and neglects to tell you that the entire plan was focused on ways to help those that were left. But why were these numbers the way they were?

Though the Pam scenario plans did not address pre-emptive evacuation assistance, New Orleans officials told the Times-Picayune in July of this year that they would dedicate 64 city buses and 10 lift vans, as well as potentially school buses and Amtrak trains, to help people flee the city in the event of a serious hurricane threat. But they also acknowledged that would not meet the potential need.

According to the Louisiana Transit Resource Guide, a state-government website, New Orleans has 364 city buses in its fleet. Why officials did not plan to dedicate more buses to an evacuation effort was not explained to the Times-Picayune.

I don't know why either. Ask Nagin. I'm sure you've seen the photos of all the buses sitting in water by now. Who could have ordered those into use? The City.




This is what you had to say about Professor Colten.

Craig E. Colten, professor of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University, says race played a role in the New Orleans' level of preparedness for Hurricane Katrina.

I've listend to him and this is what he said:

1. Racism is not a factor. He cited the fact that the majority of the city administration is African-American and that there is no racial bias.

2. He cites "White Flight" of the 50s and 60s. This was the leaving of many white people from New Orleans to other areas. He ties this to a drop in the tax base of the city, leaving less money for flood control projects.

First of all, that is an economic argument. What responsibility does someone owe to the community they've left behind in terms of the economy? Nothing. However, I have already addressed how they received massive amounts of money for water-management projects yet there was a lack of local political will. City officials always knew the capabilities of their levees.

Secondly, the question is why are these people still poor? If the White Flight of 4 and 5 decades ago (!!) is to blame for the shrinking of the tax base back then, what was the system in place by the city's primarily black administration (not to mention liberal) doing to lift up the people's economic levels over the past fifty years? The answer is not much. A welfare state doesn't do much to help the people it claims to. If it did, the tax base would have been more than sufficient to cover it on its own. Instead, it created dependency and economically damaging policies which contributed to the high poverty rate in New Orleans.

3. He talks about the lack of transportation available for those who don't have transportation of their own. Public transportation is a city matter and the reason why many of them don't have their own transportation. Therefore it is the city's job to ensure evacuation for these people takes place. Yet, just like the first article you mentioned, "Despite this self-mandate, the city failed to actually provide a way out for those trapped with few resources and limited options." If you want to play the transportation blame-game, go ahead and blame Nagin.

4. It mentions richer people lived in areas of higher elevation (15 feet) while those that did not were poorer. So who are the poor? The people living in government project housing. Who determined that? The city government.

5. Nothing is actually ever mentioned about the difference in poverty as it relates to disaster relief. All it mentions is how poverty shaped the disaster environment. But isn't that obvious? A city laden with poor welfare addicts of course will do worse than one that isn't.

Edit: Hahaa! You're citing wikipedia now!?

I forgot this point:

http://newstandardnews.net/content/...tem&itemid=2322

Think about this article and correllate it with the historical, regional and local context of racism in the Deep South.

Correlation and context are the only way you could possibly make the case. But correlation isn't causation (you failed statistics, I see...or at least you fail to apply it to your political arguments here) nor is there anything to connect that context to this case, as the city administration is primarily African American. All you are saying is that the study admitted it would be impossible to evacuate everyone and there is a history of racism in the past. Unfortunately, you can't connect those two and call it "fact" or even anything resembling evidence.

 

[Makalakumu]

Your the scientist, you tell me...more than just "look all the people left are black. Theres your proof." Not very scientific...

Well, I agree with you there, but in many cases, "proof" is relative, even in science. Sometimes we set our bars rather arbitrarily. I'm asking where your "bar" is.

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

I've already addressed how you've been misinterpreting that official statement. Furthermore, why is it that newspaper articles and journalists that support your side of the story are always legit (although I find it rather easy to pick them apart...usually because they don't actually say what you claim they say) and whenever I simply post facts about who got what and where, you start to clam up and claim it isn't an official report? You ask how come there isn't an official report for a corrupt local government? Maybe there is...but I've already given you at least one instance where 3 officials have been tried for mismanagement of water control projects. The sources I have stated also talk about how audits and review board personnel have made public statements. The sources I have stated talk about public statements made by those levee boards themselves.

 

[Makalakumu]

I agree 100%. "soft Racism" is easily claimed but hard pressed to be proven.

You can show that it exists. It just takes more time.

Racism in America today is a funny thing, in some instances it only exists because we can't let it die.

Is this how you feel in this instance?

There were human errors made, no one is denying that, but to try and say they were made in order to exclude or damage a race of people is asinine and just argumentative.

It all depends on the historical, regional, and local context.

You admit there is no proof of any kind to support racism in this disaster....

That is not what I said. I have found nothing to support any hard racism. Soft Racism on the other hand...

So why spend precious time and energy searching for racism in this disaster? Now is the time for helping. If you haven’t seen any evidence of racism, just implied, loosely strung together conjectures, why keep pounding away at your keyboard screaming foul?

Evidence of racism exists in this case. There is a lack of evidence for hard racism.

In your reasoning the racism was counting on a cat 4 or 5 storm to do its dirty work then?

No, its just a matter of priorities.

I’m with tgace here, you’re trying to stretch and spread your blanket “soft racism” over a pretty wide area and it’s starting to get quite thin.

If that is your opinion, that's fine, but I disagree.

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

Another point about the Hurricane Pam study...It's assumption about the number of people unable to leave didn't mean they abandoned or gave up on them. In fact, all that means is that they were over-preparing. They asked themselves "What if only 1/3 of the city evacuated, how would we prepare?" That is a difference between saying "only 1/3 is going to evacuate...who cares?"

Furthermore, all studies are meant to identify weaknesses. Why didn't the city act on them? Lastly, of course any program director is going to say "The simulation went well" or "we learned a lot". A simulation "going well" means they learned a lot and has nothing to do with what happened. I've taken part in some DHS simulations myself...they evaluate half of it on what areas they saw they can work on. So that raises the question again...why didn't the city do more?

 

[Makalakumu]

I've read the reports about the Hurricane Pam simulation. What your blatantly biased source does NOT mention is what you have linked to in another source: Shelters are provided for those who don't have transportation and that it is the city's primary job to take care of it in the first place. The article focuses SO MUCH on the fact that the exercise assumed that only 1/3 of the city would be evacuated (in reality, 70% of the city was) and neglects to tell you that the entire plan was focused on ways to help those that were left. But why were these numbers the way they were?

300 busses to remove 20,000 people? Those must have been big busses.

I don't know why either. Ask Nagin. I'm sure you've seen the photos of all the buses sitting in water by now. Who could have ordered those into use? The City.

When the levees broke, the water rose quickly. Besides, it wasn't enough to get everyone out.

1. Racism is not a factor. He cited the fact that the majority of the city administration is African-American and that there is no racial bias.

Actually, no he didn't. I don't know where you got this and I JUST listened to it again to make sure.

2. He cites "White Flight" of the 50s and 60s. This was the leaving of many white people from New Orleans to other areas. He ties this to a drop in the tax base of the city, leaving less money for flood control projects.

White Flight is a form of segregation. This is how class and race melded together.

First of all, that is an economic argument. What responsibility does someone owe to the community they've left behind in terms of the economy? Nothing. However, I have already addressed how they received massive amounts of money for water-management projects yet there was a lack of local political will. City officials always knew the capabilities of their levees.

Yeah, but you were wrong about the political will. "Will" is the wrong word. Power is the key. People want to be safe, but lacked the power to make it happen. Also, it has been consistantly shown that they have never had enough money in the city for flood control, from local, state, and federal levels.

Secondly, the question is why are these people still poor? If the White Flight of 4 and 5 decades ago (!!) is to blame for the shrinking of the tax base back then, what was the system in place by the city's primarily black administration (not to mention liberal) doing to lift up the people's economic levels over the past fifty years? The answer is not much. A welfare state doesn't do much to help the people it claims to. If it did, the tax base would have been more than sufficient to cover it on its own. Instead, it created dependency and economically damaging policies which contributed to the high poverty rate in New Orleans.

You can't create something from nothing. If the city is filled with poor people, there is no money to invest to make stuff better. No policy, conservative or liberal can fix that.

3. He talks about the lack of transportation available for those who don't have transportation of their own. Public transportation is a city matter and the reason why many of them don't have their own transportation. Therefore it is the city's job to ensure evacuation for these people takes place. Yet, just like the first article you mentioned, "Despite this self-mandate, the city failed to actually provide a way out for those trapped with few resources and limited options." If you want to play the transportation blame-game, go ahead and blame Nagin.

So, we have a city that is primarily filled with poor people. Is it any wonder that they don't have the resources to get everyone out? FEMA knew this and reported it widely, but the people of New Orleans had no power to get the help they needed.

4. It mentions richer people lived in areas of higher elevation (15 feet) while those that did not were poorer. So who are the poor? The people living in government project housing. Who determined that? The city government.

Government housing projects? Dr. Colten didn't say this, this is your insertion. Do you have any evidence for this claim?

5. Nothing is actually ever mentioned about the difference in poverty as it relates to disaster relief. All it mentions is how poverty shaped the disaster environment. But isn't that obvious? A city laden with poor welfare addicts of course will do worse than one that isn't.

Boy, that is painting with a broad brush...

You need to understand the modern way in which race and class are linked.

Correlation and context are the only way you could possibly make the case. But correlation isn't causation (you failed statistics, I see...or at least you fail to apply it to your political arguments here) nor is there anything to connect that context to this case, as the city administration is primarily African American.

I'm talking about the greater society. I'm talking about context. Correlation isn't causation...until it becomes significant. We've reached that point.

All you are saying is that the study admitted it would be impossible to evacuate everyone and there is a history of racism in the past. Unfortunately, you can't connect those two and call it "fact" or even anything resembling evidence.

Well, if that is your opinion, fine, but I disagree. The historical, regional, and local context, combined with the actual facts of what happened are pretty clear. When you take it all together, you get a story with equal parts class, race, and incompetance.

 

[Makalakumu]

I've already addressed how you've been misinterpreting that official statement.

Who is to say that you are "interpretting" it right? How about we just look at what it says...

FY 2006 BUDGET/EFFORT. The President’s budget for fiscal year 2005 is $3.0 million. This will be insufficient to fund new construction contracts. We could spend $20 million if the funds were provided. These funds are necessary to maintain the project schedule and to meet our contractual and local sponsor commitments.

IMPACTS OF BUDGET SHORTFALL. In Orleans Parish, two major pump stations are threatened by hurricane storm surges. Major contracts need to be awarded to provide fronting protection for them. Also, several levees have settled and need to be raised to provide the design protection. The current funding shortfalls in fiscal year 2005 and fiscal year 2006 will prevent the Corps from addressing these pressing needs.

Furthermore, why is it that newspaper articles and journalists that support your side of the story are always legit

Because one can clearly see where the information came from and one can go to the agency to retrieve the report. I spent a bunch of time tonight, doing just that, trying to check some facts...

(although I find it rather easy to pick them apart...usually because they don't actually say what you claim they say)

Well, actually, you just make stuff up and claim the article or the speaker said that. Case in point is the above where you blatently put words in Dr. Colten's mouth and where you take the Corps report and try to pin that on local governments. The report clearly states that PRESIDENT BUSH'S budget was the problem.

and whenever I simply post facts about who got what and where, you start to clam up and claim it isn't an official report?

Because there are no citations. There is nothing to actually check facts. With the articles in question, there were a bunch of estimations and "he said she saids" that were really questionable.

You ask how come there isn't an official report for a corrupt local government? Maybe there is...but I've already given you at least one instance where 3 officials have been tried for mismanagement of water control projects. The sources I have stated also talk about how audits and review board personnel have made public statements. The sources I have stated talk about public statements made by those levee boards themselves.

So, are you trying to correllate these three officials with the entire levee board, the state of Louisiana and the Corps of Engineers? You've shown that there is some corruption, but you haven't shown that it was so pervasive that it wasted all of the flood control money.

 

[Makalakumu]

Another point about the Hurricane Pam study...It's assumption about the number of people unable to leave didn't mean they abandoned or gave up on them. In fact, all that means is that they were over-preparing. They asked themselves "What if only 1/3 of the city evacuated, how would we prepare?" That is a difference between saying "only 1/3 is going to evacuate...who cares?"

Furthermore, all studies are meant to identify weaknesses. Why didn't the city act on them? Lastly, of course any program director is going to say "The simulation went well" or "we learned a lot". A simulation "going well" means they learned a lot and has nothing to do with what happened. I've taken part in some DHS simulations myself...they evaluate half of it on what areas they saw they can work on. So that raises the question again...why didn't the city do more?

A city filled with poor people, doesn't have the resources to do more. A city filled with poor people doesn't have the power needed to get help. A city filled with poor people usually looks pretty colored because of the way class and race meld together in Modern America.

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

300 busses to remove 20,000 people? Those must have been big busses.

Actually, 346 buses multiplied by 50 people capacity (very conservative estimate) is 17,300. That is only on a single run and almost everybody. But let's say you can only evacuate 10,000 people per run (I'm really letting you off easy...a carrying capacity of only 28 people??? That's far too low...). That's still only two trips to fit 20,000 people.

When the levees broke, the water rose quickly. Besides, it wasn't enough to get everyone out.

So...unless every single person with no exceptions was evacuated, you wouldn't be satsified? With the ability to evacuate 15,000 people or so per trip, why weren't they employed before the hurricane hit? Are you suggesting it was poor planning on the city's part?

Also, now you're talking about after the levees broke. So the city gets "a pass" and doesn't have to worry about anything before, but you have no problem bashing Bush in this specific regard?

Further, why weren't precautions taken to move the buses to higher ground, according to their disaster plan? That's the city's sterling job, I assume. The disaster plan depends on those city resources that the city squandered.

Regarding Colten:
At about 3:16, the reporter asked what was at the heart of the present case. She asked specifically (in breathless tones), is it racist?

He replied that "one could not say there was a racial bias" as most of the city administration was black.





This is what is meant by the media bias. I'll use your term. A "soft" media bias.

The description of the file said this: "Craig E. Colten, professor of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University, says race played a role in the New Orleans' level of preparedness for Hurricane Katrina."

But you have to listen to figure out the racial factor was fifty or sixty years ago, not in the present situation as is largely implied by the timing and placement of this piece...(Of course, there are also hard instances of media bias...but we're not going to go there) Not that I really expected much from NPR.



He said there was a bias built into the human mobility...the mobility 50 years ago...His point was that the wealthier people who no longer lived in New Orleans could provide much better for themselves. Well, of course.

You can't create something from nothing. If the city is filled with poor people, there is no money to invest to make stuff better. No policy, conservative or liberal can fix that.

Well, I guess that's the difference in thinking between the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps conservatism and you-can't-do-anything-on-your-own-welfare-state-dependency.

Yeah, but you were wrong about the political will. "Will" is the wrong word. Power is the key. People want to be safe, but lacked the power to make it happen. Also, it has been consistantly shown that they have never had enough money in the city for flood control, from local, state, and federal levels

When I say political will, I mean in the hands of the politicians AND the people. Addressing the politicians: I've already shown you how easy it was for them to attain massive amounts of pork-barrel spending. You keep refusing to admit it though. That's okay, time is on the side of those with facts.

Addressing the people: they kept electing these people into office...that is democracy...furthermore:

The Orleans Levee Board was also forced to defer $3.7 million in capital improvement projects in its 2001 budget after residents of the area rejected a proposed tax increase to fund its expanding operations. Long term deferments to nearly 60 projects, based on the revenue shortfall, totaled $47 million worth of work, including projects to shore up the floodwalls.

The people didn't deem it important enough. Instead, they thought they should just depend on some other government source (federal), once again proving the danger of a welfare system. If there was political will, they would have petitioned their officials and legislators. That is how democracy works. If there was political will, the politicians would have spent less time worrying about a Corps project that cost $748 million to allow for increased barge traffic despite there being evidence that traffic was decreasing. They could have then used the barest fraction of this to easily fulfill the money the Corps requested for levees (again...the levees which broke were upgraded to concrete and weren't planned on being upgraded further...).

 

[Tgace]

Well, I agree with you there, but in many cases, "proof" is relative, even in science. Sometimes we set our bars rather arbitrarily. I'm asking where your "bar" is.

Unless it has to do with global warming eh...

If the conjucture and assumption shown so far in this thread is a form of your "proof" I would say my bar is much higher.

 

[Tgace]

White Flight is a form of segregation. This is how class and race melded together.

So...what? We shouldnt allow people to move because its racist and classist? Your "soft science" seems to have some scary undercurrents in its ultimate solution it seems.