Louisiana's state budget?! (New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Shreveport: mineral rights, bankrupt, school)

[hdwell]

I choose Louisiana to live because my life here with my family is not so bad. My friends are here and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else except maybe Colorado. But I doubt I will ever move up there as it has changed from the state I used to know. So I'll just stay here-life is good.

[Newsboy]

Originally Posted by WestbankNOLA

That third world existence that you speak of never represented even half of the city. Everything else you said just sounds idiotic as it's obvious you have no idea what you're talking about in terms of New Orleans in general.

No, I've seen New Orleans -- the good AND the bad, and the BEST parts of NOLA are a ghetto to most other cities.

As far as the budget, LA has to invest more heavily in infrastructure due to the geography of the state, things such as evacuation expenses are put into the budget outside of what the individual cities can cover. Combine that with the fact that LA is a pseudo nanny-state and nowhere near as conservative as other states even though the majority may still vote red. There's also the large amount of money that the Feds rape from LA in oil revenue. Finally every politician has or has had their hand in the trough.

This does nothing to explain WHERE the money to fund such an outrageous budget comes from, or where the money goes? To this day, nobody can answer what happened to the billions of dollars in federal funds that were supposed to go into maintaining the flood control mechanisms in the first place, and you (as a typical Louisiana) just dismiss it as the way things have always been ... Why should the rest of the U.S. continue to pump BILLIONS of dollars into the hands of the MOST CORRUPT STATE in the country?!

At least we know what we have.

What DO you have?! What are you getting for $26 billion a year?! Nobody has answered that question yet ... your roads are the worst in the country, your schools are the worst in the country ... ?!

[WestbankNOLA]

Originally Posted by Newsboy

No, I've seen New Orleans -- the good AND the bad, and the BEST parts of NOLA are a ghetto to most other cities.

Been to plenty of cities, that's a lie If you've seen the "good AND the bad" of New Orleans you would have none better than to even make such a comment.

This does nothing to explain WHERE the money to fund such an outrageous budget comes from, or where the money goes? To this day, nobody can answer what happened to the billions of dollars in federal funds that were supposed to go into maintaining the flood control mechanisms in the first place, and you (as a typical Louisiana) just dismiss it as the way things have always been ... Why should the rest of the U.S. continue to pump BILLIONS of dollars into the hands of the MOST CORRUPT STATE in the country?!

Ask the Federal Govt. where it went since it was their job to fund the flood control mechanisms. If you'd do some research instead of TROLLING as usual, you would see were Louisiana has been trying to get funding from the Feds for years for flood control. In return we get stuck with a half-ass job that resulted in one of the biggest man-made disasters known to man.

What DO you have?! What are you getting for $26 billion a year?! Nobody has answered that question yet ... your roads are the worst in the country, your schools are the worst in the country ... ?!

Actually our roads have improved greatly over the last 10 years and aren't the worse in the country unless you're counting back roads. As far as schools we may be close to the bottom, but Georgia isn't too much ahead.

---------------------------------------------------

What is it with the posters from Georgia? Does Georgia suck that bad that you all have to constantly down every other city/state? This is a consistent trend from Georgia posters on C-D? What is it with you all?

[Newsboy]

Originally Posted by WestbankNOLA

What is it with the posters from Georgia? Does Georgia suck that bad that you all have to constantly down every other city/state? This is a consistent trend from Georgia posters on C-D? What is it with you all?

Maybe if you got out of the swamps of Louisiana and came to Georgia and saw how much better life could be (like so many thousands of people misplaced by Katrina did) you'd understand ... Louisiana is a cesspool. New Orleans is a dump. Period.

[WestbankNOLA]

Want to see where it goes here you go.
FY 2009-2010 State Budget Document

Trust me when I say if Georgia was so much better, most of those evacuees wouldn't have returned back to Louisiana or made the move from Georgia to Texas. If it was so great you'd be too busy enjoying it instead of taking the time to talk trash on a Louisiana forum. You know what? I'd rather be a typical Louisianan stuck in a cypress swamp for my entire existence than be stuck in the heart of Georgia. Talk about a state that bites the hand that feeds it.

Bon temps rouler.
Iko Iko un neh. Chockmo fi no neh.
Mo bezon Lwiziyen.

Have a nice night and a good morning.

[Newsboy]

Originally Posted by WestbankNOLA

Talk about a state that bites the hand that feeds it.

LOL! If that's not the POT calling the proverbial kettle BLACK ... what does that even MEAN anyway?! Georgia bites the hand that feeds it?!

Nice try.

LOUISIANA = Permanent welfare state ... with a national media that just LOVES making the rest of us feel OH SO GUILTY for how awful a hand of cards y'all have been dealt in life.

I'll say it again -- Why should the rest of the country have to pay to rebuild parts of a city that NEVER should have been built there in the first place?!

[WestbankNOLA]

Originally Posted by Newsboy

LOUISIANA = Permanent welfare state ... with a national media that just LOVES making the rest of us feel OH SO GUILTY for how awful a hand of cards y'all have been dealt in life.

I'll say it again -- Why should the rest of the country have to pay to rebuild parts of a city that NEVER should have been built there in the first place?!

Honestly, it is somewhat of a welfare state (under the true definition of a welfare state) just as the country has been slowly becoming for decades, but much quicker in the last 8 to 10 years. Common sense should also tell you that Louisiana's local govt. has little pull in what the national media broadcasts. Especially considering a large chunk of the media comes right out Atlanta, Georgia.

Now to keep people from confusing "welfare state" with "welfare society", let's point out that .42% of Georgia was on cash welfare in 2008 while Louisiana was at .48%, while at the same time 12% of Georgia recieved food stamps with Louisiana ahead by only 4% at 16% 1. Remove Atlanta from the equation and I'm sure it would increase, but that wouldn't be fair. It's also interesting that the increase in food stamp recipients between now and then in Georgia is double the increase in Louisiana 2. This little cesspool of a state can also have oil prices in Georgia so high at the drop of the dime that the pinch will be felt from the freeways all the way up to Delta. Think back to October 2008. At this point I've tried to be civil with you and I've even given you a link to the budget, obviously you just want to troll. I'm leaving it here, you can say whatever else you want but I'm done.

[Newsboy]

Originally Posted by WestbankNOLA

Now to keep people from confusing "welfare state" with "welfare society", let's point out that .42% of Georgia was on cash welfare in 2008 while Louisiana was at .48%, while at the same time 12% of Georgia recieved food stamps with Louisiana ahead by only 4% at 16%

I'm not talking about the number or percentage of population on welfare, I'm talking about how much FEDERAL DOLLARS have to go to your state just to keep it operating, versus how much the state actually pays into the system. For the year 2005, the latest stats I could find:

LOUISIANA ranks 4th in federal spending per dollar collected and 12th in federal spending per capita -- for every $1 in federal taxes collected, the state of LA receives $1.84 -- almost double -- in federal spending. (I'm sure it's gone up significantly since 2005)

GEORGIA ranks 32d -- for every $1 in federal taxes paid, the state receives just $1.01 in federal spending ... in other words, we break even.

THAT is what I mean by "welfare state" -- and what prompted this whole thread to start with. Why does Louisiana have a $27 billion state budget? Where is that money coming from? And where is it going? I think we're starting to get the picture ...

http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/ftsbs-timeseries-20071016-.pdf (broken link)

[Prytania]

State taxes aren't that high here, its got to be FEMA/etc money....

And New Orleans is very much on the right track....

[bustaduke]

Originally Posted by Newsboy

If not for that hurricane forcing them out of the Lower 9th Ward they would have been kept enslaved by the state of Louisiana forever.

Sorry if that seems insensitive, but as someone who visited NO plenty of times BEFORE the hurricane, it always burned me up that it took a hurricane for the rest of the world to "discover" what an awful, impoverished, crime-ridden, third-world existence many of the people who lived there were forced to endure all these years. And it sounds like that instead of trying to make it "better" they are intent on just recreating the "chocolate city" ghetto that Ray Nagin so valued and missed.

Well it burns me up when outsiders think they know why people here live this way and blame it on the State of Louisiana.

These people are not forced to live this way. They made a choice to not get an education and better their lives. They choose to drink and use drugs when they should be putting family decisions first.

And I know that not all people that lived in the lower 9th ward were not bad people, but to blame the state for the way they live is wrong.

Everyone has a chance to have a better life but these people made bad decisions when it came to education and the consequences for that is a life of poverty. Bad decisions and bad choices are inseparably linked to consequences.

What do you expect when you have a class of people who think education is not the answer to a good life and it's Ok to have baby after baby after baby without knowing who the daddies are, and collection money from the government every month for each baby. Plus when you have most males think it's OK to drop out of school at 14 and selling drugs on the corner is a good business decision.

These people are this way because they don"t have a good family supporting them and making them stay in school and get a good education.

They are this way because you have babies having babies and the dads not sticking around to be responsible parents.

And don't mistake what I'm telling you as a black family problem, because it is not. I live in a neighborhood that has a lot of blacks and I can say that all people here, black or white make sure our kids get a good education. We also make sure that our kids have a good core family around them to guide and support them because we know our kids only have one chance to make it and it is up to us parents to give them that chance.

And we have people in my neighborhood who are well off and who are not but parents know that they need to be involved and the schools know they need to be involved if our kids are going to make it.

We are making good decisions and good choices for our kids and the consequences will be good. Were is the people you are talking about made bad decisions and bad choices and the consequences are bad.

Its not the States fault, it's bad parenting and the blame should be on them.

busta