Business as usual...for thugs and Mayor Nagin

This figures...

NewsMax.com WiresMonday, June 19, 2006

NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin asked the governor Monday to send National Guard troops to patrol his city after a violent weekend in which five teenagers were shot to death and a man was fatally stabbed in argument over beer.

Nagin asked the governor to send up to 300 National Guard troops and 60 state police officers to patrol the city.

"We're looking forward to the day when ... this city returns to being one of the safest cities in America," Nagin said.

It's business as usual in more ways than one in New Orleans. First, of course, who couldn't have predicted that when thugs, criminals, gangs, and delinquents move back home after extended vacations, care of the American taxpayers, they would continue the lifestyles they enjoyed before their sabbaticals to Houston? And second, who also couldn't have predicted that at the first sign of trouble, Ray Nagin would ask for help because he clearly can't handle things as Mayor?

Five punks shoot and stab each other over beer, and for this martial law is required? You see five punks get stabbed or shot over beer at your average World Cup soccer match. Where is the N.O.P.D.? Or did they all get fired for dereliction-of-duty during Katrina?

The American military is such a blunt instrument for violent-conflict resolution, much too Neanderthal and unsophisticated for liberals to appreciate when it's used by a conservative President to police other parts of the world, but who do they call when the violence is close to home and the gun is pointed at them?

And where is Kanye West whining about the National Guard coming down to "shoot us" [black people]?

And who is Ray Nagin kidding, with that safest city in America crack, besides himself and the federal bureaucrats who are about to write him a huge rebuilding check? New Orleans was never one of the safest cities in America. It's always been plagued with murders and other drug related crime. That's the kind of city you end up with when you encourage a critical mass of entitlement-minded, but otherwise potentially productive, citizens to become dependent on government for their survival. You get a permanent underclass of non-producing, consumers-of-resources who have no desire or reason to become productive taxpayers. That entitlement mentality and the cultural idolization of the thug lifestyle provide for them the means by which they can have the things they want...identity, self-respect, relevance, and a blinged out Escalade with spinning rims...but without the usual hard work required by the rest of us to get them.

Sure the National Guard can patrol the city streets and temporarily keep the thugs at bay, but what happens when the Army goes home? It's economics that will build a new-and-improved New Orleans. Take away the taxpayer-funded safety net from under the able-bodied youth and let them sink or swim.

I'm sure the entrepreneurial Mexicans who are purchasing and refurbishing all the housing property will be glad to hire them on as day laborers.