Gracious! All of this sounds so familiar!
Almost 69 percent of the 1,081 people queried in the National Science Foundation-funded study conducted in July by political science professors Rick Wilson and Robert Stein said they likely will remain in Houston. That figure is up from about 57 percent in October and 51 percent in September 2005.
[snip]
Almost half have no health insurance. Nearly a third lack a high school diploma. Three-fifths reported they held jobs in New Orleans, but almost half earned less than $15,000 a year. At present, less than 20 percent are employed and about 74 percent earn less than $15,000.
“This means a couple of things,” Wilson said. “One: They have little to go back to. Most of the group were renters, and the rental situation in New Orleans is pretty bleak. Second: Many of them had been working in the service industry, and that is still a little rocky there. … Houston is looking at continuing to shelter a population that didn’t want to be here in the first place. The chances of finding something to go back to are pretty slim. That raises questions of how they are going to be integrated into the city.”
[snip]
“Texas is going to have to urge the rest of the country to recognize the systemic problem with poverty and racism in the country,” he said. “We in Texas will have to show the rest of the country how it’s done. How to help a person. Instead of giving them a fish, teaching them to fish.”
“Teaching them to fish” is a compassionate conservatism catch-phrase and was, at one time, what Republicans said they supported.
Do they still?
It’s an interesting question, because while there’s an unfortunate number of Houstonians who want to teach our new residents to fish by pushing them into the river, Houston is actually a golden opportunity for the beleaguered GOP.
Compassionate conservatism, along with other Republican party planks like smaller government, seems to have been forgotten, but if the Republicans in Texas want to move their party back to the goals of yesteryear, they’ll never have a better chance than this.
The real question is whether compassionate conservatism was ever anything more than a slick, empty phrase to suck voters into the maw.