Myth of Black depopulation
“Massive depopulation”
By I.R. Scott
After 500 years of human blood, sweat and tears investments in the city of New Orleans, its culture and spirit, the descendants of the slaves who built the city, are being given walking money and a ride to the next state and told, “You don’t live here anymore”. This is the next phase in the post-Katrina Vision 2020 plan for the recovery of New Orleans.
The fascist myth of the Vision 2020 economic development master plan is that if the New Orleans industrial region is depopulated of its useless mouths (structurally unemployable Black and poor white segments), that the New Orleans region and state of Louisiana will be free to easily make the economic transition to a robust post-industrial economy.
The physical flooding of New Orleans provided the political pretext and economic opportunity to depopulate the New Orleans region.
New Orleans has been reduced in one hour of flooding at 17th Street levees, to a Third World industrial ghost region with no internal financial means to develop. International studies project a 250-300 billion dollar cost of redevelopment as a modern industrial economy.
According to the very out spoken mayor of New Orleans the city will only be allowed by the Oval Office to grow to 200,000 people from the currently level of only has a population of around 75,000 people.
That is a depopulation of 300,000 people in the city of New Orleans. Another 300,000 people already depopulated from the New Orleans metropolitan area will not return. The regional population will be reduced to 700,000 from 1.3 million people.
Less than 14 perecent of the 350,000 African Americans who once lived in New Orleans remain in the city today.
Most of the region’s depopulated segments or useless months are children’s, geriatric, unskilled, structurally unemployable, working poor people, homeless and African American families. Over one million people were made homeless and/or jobless by the flooding of New Orleans and the hurricanes Katrina and Rita. These mostly Black segments will not be allowed to return to the city of New Orleans or the region.
This economic scenario is clearly the direct consequence of the nature and design of federal funding for small business and housing. The political economy guiding the Black depopulation policy has been carefully blackout out of mainstream media reporting of the New Orleans nightmare.
Keeping Blacks from returning home is a key part of the post-Katrina Louisiana economic development plan commonly referred to as the Vision 2020 master plan.
The oil and chemical industries are already all most back to pre-Katrina production levels. While pre-Katrina regional manufacturing employed more people than the oil/chemical industry, its infrastructure is now flooded out and contributes far less to the southern Louisiana GDP. Non-oil related manufacturing is in a state of near total collsaped.
The New Orleans regional economy is driven by the immedicated political and economic needs (i.e. political economy) of the so-called “American Ruhr”. That is, the political economy of Southern Louisiana is B.F Goodrich, E.I. du Pont, Union Carbide, Reynolds Meals, Shell, Mobil, Texaco, Exxon, Mosanto, Uniroyal, Georgia-Pacific, Hydrocarbon Industries, Vulcan Materials, Nalco Chemicals, Dow Chemical, Allied Chemical, Stauffer Chemical, Hooker Chemicals, Freeport Chemicals, American Petrofina, and Total SA.
The post-Katrina economy, the American Ruhr control is even greater.
The market capitalization of just ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron and ConocoPhillips is over 850 billion dollars. There is no group of manufactures to counter the oil lobby in Louisiana. New Orleans needs to balance its economy mixture with a major CIM element. This capitalization is ten times the pre-Katrina New Orleans Gross Domestic Product.
The regional infrastructure is defined by the production needs of the American Ruhr.
The oil companies have been slowly downsizing and consolidating their massive oil and chemical infrastructure the past 20 years.
Vision 2020 roadmap to next phase of final solution
According to the pre-Katrina Vision 2020: Chemical and allied products and petroleum refining account for 24 percent of the pre-Katrina manufacturing employment and 35.3 percent of payroll (compared to 6.1 and 8.1 percent, respectively, for the nation as a whole). When transportation equipment (primarily shipbuilding) is includes the numbers jump to 37.7 percent and 49 percent, respectively. Pre-Katrina Service jobs account for 30 percent statewide employment and only 15 percent in New Orleans region. Healthcare service jobs accounted for almost half of all pre-Katrina service jobs.
With little in the way trade protection, local consumer Pre-Katrina manufacturers in New Orleans was increasing being bankrupted by the full force of US multinationals exporting from Asia and Mexican slave labor platforms back into North American. In many cases, the US multinationals operating in Asia and Asian local manufacturing companies has more advanced computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) platforms than most local New Orleans manufacturers. This infrastructure reality posies a very production matrix problem for restarting the regional economy.
In 2001, Louisiana, ranked 45th among the states with per captia personal income of $24,535. Compared with $ 30,472 for the national (U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economics Analysis). According to the US Census Bureau per captia personal income in 1999 (dollar) for New Orleans City was $17,258, the US was $21, 587. Families below poverty $26, 988 0r 29 per cent. Individual below poverty $30, 896 or 27.9 per cent.
The non-oil-based manufacturing was contributed 75 percent of the New Orleans region manufacturing employment based.
To serious talk about African American political economy and employment in the New Orleans metropolitan area, one must fit any meaningful discussion into the context; framework of the American Ruhr and the emerging informational based manufacturing.
Most of the American Ruhr oil refining and chemical manufacturing is under new pressure form Asia. The American Ruhr master business plan has been consolidating New Orleans operations, while moving deeper out in the Gulf. US Chemical companies are partnering with Asian firms and investing in Asia infrastructure upgrades and development in Asia and South America.
The pre-Katrina Vision 2020 Louisiana economic development plan outlines a movement away from labor-intensive low skill manufacture toward advanced manufacturing. The pre-Katrina African American labor force was reportedly under serious pressure from both the Chinese and Latio slave labor. The post-Katrina Black labor force is under new pressures from lack of housing and physical infrastructure. The hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans has destroyed over 100,000 businesses and homes in New Orleans. Reportedly over 70,000 or almost half the housing stock of the city of New Orleans was destroyed.
More importantly many of the existing Computer Integrated Manufacturing companies and IT designed firm were destroyed.
The post-Katrina New Orleans labor market requires higher skilled, which most American America workers lack the educational levels or transferable skills to immediately participate in the new labor market. This was a major issue before Katrina, now it is a crisis, with no federal funding to even seed a massive manpower-training program.
The post-Katrina Vision 2020 plan offers a ruthless American Ruhr final solution to New Orleans Black problem, importation of new labor requirements.
Under the Ruhr plan the city of New Orleans will remain depopulated, only regaining 40 percent of its pre-Katrina population or 200,000 people. More importantly, 600,000 internally displaced people from New Orleans region will ever be allowed to return because of lack of employable skills and limited housing units.
The city of New Orleans and Louisiana are being positioned for a Republican Party takes over in the next elections.
The Oval Office and Homeland Security are willfully pushing these targeted population segments on to the welfare rolls and school systems of near by states and northern regions of Louisiana, rather allow them to return to New Orleans.
Homeland Security recovery policies are force march of 600,000 people away from New Orleans into the colder Northern states during the height of one of the coldest winter on record. This forced human migration is currently the largest depopulation by percentage of population in the industrial history Northern American, since the depopulation of the ‘bottom” Black ghettos of Trenton New Jersey.
In February of 2006, when the federal court orders come off the US Department of Homeland Security, most of the 600,000 internally displaced Americans will lost most of their federal funding and will be forced on the welfare rolls of the guest state there are living in, during the dead of winter.
African Americans leadership in New Orleans and Louisiana knew about the horrific Vision 2020 plan before Katrina and said nothing. Few Black official has political expressed outrage about the “depopulation policies” of the Oval Office. Leading African Americans in New Orleans and North American understand the economics of genocide behind the Vision 2020 final solution and must speak out or the tens of thousands of Black children who lost their lives in the flooding of New Orleans will have been for nothing! Black America must understand that the flooding of New Orleans has trigger as long-planned opportunity for genocide that can only be stopped by the industrialization of the region using CIM platforms. The economic agreement has to be made, and the current African American leadership appears not to be up to the task of even trying.
No return en la mass of Black people
The return en la mass of Black citizens to New Orleans is being held hostage to the repair of the 17th Street levee, floodwalls, lack of public housing units and new job creation. The Northern Black ghettos of New Orleans are de facto quarantine by armed federal troopers. Ten of thousands of Blacks face eviction by landlords. HUD officials have imposed health quarantine on most public housing projects. As we will see below, the recovery and development of advanced computer integrated manufacturing platforms in the New Orleans region is also being held hostage by the Homeland Security quarantine of Northern New Orleans and refusal to make the city ready for investments in advanced manufacturing and private housing development.
Tens of billions of dollar of American taxpayer money are being exchanged and much of New Orleans stills a growing industrial ghost town.
The Republican controlled House and Senate has now moved from a relief effort to recovery mode of funding. Initial federal recovery request for Louisiana and other Gulf states have been scales back from 250 billion, to political manageable increments of 10, 25, 50 billion dollars funding blocks. Most of the funding is attached to US military appropriations bills. The same US military that sat for a week and did nothing while thousands of New Orleans died and hundred of thousands were stranded
The Republican controlled Congress has agreed to appropriate small chunks of money so as to political appear to be rebuilding the New Orleans industrial region. The $29 billion agreement is in fact, a reappropiation of part the initial $62 billion already approved by the Republican controlled House. The funding is reportedly to aid the rebuilding of tens of thousands of mainly white homeowners and small businesses devastated by Katrina and Rita. The funding is an another attempt by the Republicans to build a political base of influence in southern Louisiana at the expense of helping the New Orleans industrial economy come back online and transition to a CIM-based manufacturing platform.
Rather than use the event of Katrina to fund a massive regional public works project to rebuild and upgrade the city’s industrial infrastructure, i.e. schools, roads, bridges, ports, communication and power grids to meet the higher demands of a CIM economy, the Republicans are putting a political Band-Aide on New Orleans infrastructure and reducing the region to a third world ghost wasteland.
Economics of Racism
110,000, mostly white homeowners in Louisiana and Mississippi without flood insurance get to fight for a share of $11.5 billion federal grants and political give away money. Over 70,000 homeowners are from southern Louisiana. According to the US Census Bureau 54 pen event of New Orleans housing units are renter-occupied housing. Only 88,000 are owner-occupied many are covered by flood insurance. $1.6 billion for education and $2.8 billion for highway repairs will be shared between Mississippi and Louisiana. Only $7.1 billion will go to infrastructure repairs or improvements. Most of the appropriation is political give away grants to republican bases in both states.
For many white homeowners, the federal grants will allow them the financial means to orderly move their families to other regions of the country. Many, like many 9/11 grantee, many others Gulf homeowners and businesses will take the redevelopment money and run. Most Blacks will not get the opportunity to participate in the grants and cheap loans because they do not own homes or small businesses. Most of these political give away are not moving the regional industrial economy toward CIM platforms. Most of these political loans are limiting and driving up the start-up costs of real manufacturing investments in the region.
International projection of the cost to rebuild and transition the New Orleans region to a modern CIM economy alone was over $300 billion of reconstruction. The current total funding is less than 62 billion. A major element of a real informal-based economy is a major up grade of the local communication grid to support powerful and voice and data over the Internet applications.
Nothing yet for public housing or business incubators
Few federal recovery dollars are going to repair the 20,000 public housing units in the ghettos of New Orleans. Public Housing projects are also quarantine by Homeland Security for health reasons. The transformation of the existing housing stock into livable skill working classes is critical precondition for regional industrial transition to CIM. The white homeowner centric Republican controlled grants do not address the need economic and industrial/universities incubators or massive job training programs and small business CIM support platforms to help the region make the critical transition to computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) human and physical infrastructure.
American Ruhr final solution
This new reality is controlling mainly a function of control (lack of) housing and other social and educational infrastructure in New Orleans. Only a few public schools are operational at this point. Most skilled labor will be imported into the region.
This post- Katrina Vision 2020 economic development strategy will vastly reduce both the level of poverty and the number of poor on welfare. This is a one time economic opportunity for urban planners to change the matrix and development path of the regional economy away from labor-intensive manufacturing and toward a post-industrial informational economy. One of the critical keys is the final solution is improving and reorientation the public school systems away from an Afro-centric mission, to a white-centric post industrial curriculum and is changing the population input and composition of the student body.
Critical missing from the pre/post Katrina Ruhr-designed 2020 plan is the new pressure of 200 billion dollar of US multinational firms exporting from Chinese advanced manufacturing added-valued imports into America. This slave trade impact on the shape of sub-industrial regions like New Orleans. Chinese import has a direct impact on the nature and type of manufacturing to be located in New Orleans. There are only limited amounts of manufacturing products New Orleans can produce that cannot be manufactured in US multinational plants in Asia. New Orleans lacks the infrastructure to product even this limited group of products.
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