interdictor ([info]interdictor) wrote,
@ 2007-01-10 12:45:00
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So Now What?
It's been more or less 16 months since Hurricane Katrina totaled New Orleans. I've said from the word go that New Orleans would not make a serious recovery -- ever. I've had many detractors claim that I'm being unfair and disingenuous and that New Orleans will be fine. Specifically, [info]cobaltgreen and [info]greenstripe were the most vocal. If you look back to this post from December of 2005, you can read their enthusiastic refutations of my claims. Well, green and green, would you care to revise your claims?

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[info]eyelikeart
2007-01-10 06:12 pm UTC (link)
It's kinda sad, because in my eyes...New Orleans isn't much better today than it was before the storm, and certainly a lot hasn't changed since it came thru either. There's still blocks upon blocks of destroyed homes in neighborhoods just sitting, rotting away.

The crime is WAY up now, the more people come back.

To be completely honest, I'd leave this dump of a city if I had a life set up somewhere else. The city govt. can't get it together, and the federal govt. isn't doing much either. There's a bad stigma about this place now, but with good reason.

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[info]fan_of_happosai
2007-01-10 06:16 pm UTC (link)
IMHO, New Orleans CAN come back. Look at NYC after 9/11. Rudy would take little crap from anyone, he all but demanded that his city heal the wounds and bounce back. Nagin can't or won't do that in NO. His "Chocolate City" needs to put the boot firmly in his backside; and they need to elect someone LIKE Rudy Guiliani. Someone known to NO, well-liked within NO, and not willing to allow NO to remain the wreckage it once was.

Granted, part of NYC's rebound was that only a very small part of the city was affected by 9/11, but I think the theory is still sound.

However, here in the real world; I never see Nagin getting defeated. He's like Barry is here in DC. People here don't care that Barry is a crack-head, or that he ruined DC. They think of him as THEIR mayor. I see Nagin getting all but sainted because he kept New Orleans alive or some such nonsense.

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[info]smjayman
2007-01-10 06:42 pm UTC (link)
The socio-economics and leadership are practically diametrically opposed in the two areas you discuss. NYC does not equal NO. NYC has a disproportionate amount of very wealthy people, as well as a strong amount of middle class. NYC had an exceptionally strong leader under Guiliani. Love him, hate him, whatever, he did some really good stuff after 9/11.

Contrast that with NO, which has always had a large volume of lower income families, people struggling to get by. Those people will not be any source of cash inflow to buoy up NO. NO has always had worse crime than NYC, at least in the past 5-10 years, from my recollection. The crime is now worse, and I'd argue that the socio-economics haven't shifted in NO. Bottom line, that city has a long way to go.

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[info]phanatic
2007-01-10 07:16 pm UTC (link)
Rudy only had to deal with 9/11.

The murder rate in NO right now is 7 times higher than the murder rate in NYC from 9/11.

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an' dat would be ...
[info]btripp
2007-01-10 08:27 pm UTC (link)
"they need to elect someone LIKE Rudy Guiliani. Someone known to NO, well-liked within NO, and not willing to allow NO to remain the wreckage it once was."

Chicago would miss him, but, hey, we leant him to youze guys before, I guess we can lend him to ya again!

Da Coach has even had some experience in the government stuff since he came back here! He's gone down to City Hall to yell at doze Aldermen yahoos who wanna ban smoking even in "Cigar bars" (like a certain steak joint by da name of Ditka's), and he was even being pushed to run against that Barak Obama guy for the Senate (and youze guys don't much care for 'Bama down there either from what I understand).

Anyway, like any member of the SNL SuperFans will tell ya, straightening up New Orleans should take Da Coach a couple of weekends, max! Heck, if you'd bring him down there now he could be back in time for the SuperBowl, which is a subject that I suspect that we would be better off not discussing at this point in da season (if ya know what I mean, and I think dat ya do).

heh ...


Visit the BTRIPP home page!



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Re: an' dat would be ...
[info]loweeel
2007-01-10 10:20 pm UTC (link)
Funny, I don't remember him doing particularly well on his last stay in New Orleans...

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[info]thevirtualjim
2007-01-10 10:26 pm UTC (link)
Its kidna hard to compare NYC to NO, its like apples and oranges. I don't know if it is so much the corruption of NO gov't. look at NYC back in the late 1800's and early to mid 1900's...it was a disaster at times, but the city still grew. Partly it is the much stronger economic force in NYC, and the fact that it was only a very small percentage of NYC damaged, although i think if a Katrina-level disaster happened in NYC, we would bounce back alot faster, and better. partly its the quality of leadership, the importance of NYC to this nation, as compared to NO, the $, and just the sheer tenacity of New Yorkers.

I was going to school in seattle in 2001, but I happened to be visiting back home during the terrorist attacks, and one big thing i noticed was that when I went back to seattle, people were freaking out alot more about it than us New Yorkers were. So, I think a big part is the attitude of the people. One of my favorite lines about NYC after 9/11 is: "You can't stop New York". I don't know if you can say that about all US cities.

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[info]clobby
2007-01-11 01:16 am UTC (link)
NYC and NO are not comparable, and no, New York has not bounced back.

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And not to make light of it....
[info]lonewulf
2007-01-12 06:02 am UTC (link)
but only one bldg was destroyed in NYC while most of NO was destroyed. Big difference....

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[info]ms_cantrell
2007-01-10 06:55 pm UTC (link)
i think we're going to see NO become a major topic in the coming presidential elections. very emotional, large scale, and very divisive. how that works out will, i think, have a large affect on how NO works out.

clearly, the US has a very short attention span. this is a way to employ a lot of people, build a new infrastructure, and unify a region and a country around a common and positive goal.

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Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]a_motley_fool
2007-01-10 07:09 pm UTC (link)
It's like health care. Ask the average American what they think of Universal health care they'll say "I'm for it." Ask them if it means that they'll personally have less of a choice in their doctors or what they think of waiting lists and support drops substantially.Ask them if they are willing to have higher taxes so that the minority (remember an overwhelming majority of Americans have health care of one kind or an other) can have health care, support drops even further.

Health care is something that affects 10s of millions of people. New Orleans touches the lives of a few hundred thousand. If I have to raise my taxes one cent to that some drug dealer outside of the French Quarter has a better life, why the fuck should I?

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]ms_cantrell
2007-01-10 07:44 pm UTC (link)
eventually, NO will end up costing a lot more money. one way or the other, the area needs to be brought to a functioning and self-sustaining level, and the amount of contaminated/toxic mess is going to make that expensive. to offset those expenses, NO needs to have an economy. to have an economy, it needs an infrastructure.

personally, i think it would be more appropriate to not raise taxes, and to cut other existing costs in order to pay for the rebuilding. is that a naive thought? i don't think so. at one time, not so long ago, you could ask an american to go without something in order to help the 'greater good of the country.' now, the gov't doesn't want to risk that american voters might choose something inconvenient, so we're not asked to help, we're just told we'll pay more taxes.

national health insurance doesn't need to be structured the same way it is in canada. further, most people with insurance are given a choice between a limited number of clinics, and within those clinics they're frequently not given a choice between docters: you see who is available. only good HMOs give you a choice between docters, and even then the docters themselves limit their availability. not so drastically different from canada. further, canada offers stuff i would never want offered here, like free fertility treatments. that makes me nuts.

personally, i'm not a liberal, however much i may sound like one. i am also not well enough informed to offer suggestions on how a private version of national health would work, but i've heard some good ideas on it from a few economists.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]phanatic
2007-01-10 07:59 pm UTC (link)
NO needs to have an economy

Why? Lots of places with no people there don't have an economy. Why does NO need an economy if nobody wants to live there?

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]ms_cantrell
2007-01-10 09:41 pm UTC (link)
copied from post farther down:

other regions, in the US, may be in wretched condition in many regards, but they're relatively stable: crime is high very high, but it's stable; unemployment is high, but it's stable. NO is unstable - the population, infrastructure, crime, poverty - all unstable. adding to that - eventually all the contamination from sewage & toxic spills will need to be cleaned up, or they'll contaminate more living areas, drinking water, food supply.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]phanatic
2007-01-11 12:02 am UTC (link)
crime is high very high, but it's stable; unemployment is high, but it's stable.

What are these places you're talking about? NO has the worst murder rate in the country right now. Other places with a population similar to NO have far lower crime rates.

NO is unstable - the population, infrastructure, crime, poverty - all unstable.

You're still not answering why it needs an economy. I could just as easily say it needs anyone who's currently there and isn't a dirtbag to go elsewhere.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]ms_cantrell
2007-01-11 02:02 am UTC (link)
right, NO has an extremely high murder rate right now. which is why i called it unstable. the violent crime rate has gone up dramatically in the last few months, and likely will continue to spread to a generally much higher and broader incidence of crime in the area, unless and until the population stabilizes.

a strong economy will make the area self-supporting again, without further federal intervention.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]entheos93
2007-01-11 02:44 am UTC (link)
Alot of people live here. Obviously we want to- nobody would be putting up with this crap if they didn't. There are almost a quarter million people within the city limits, tons more in the burbs- alot more than there used to be.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]a_motley_fool
2007-01-10 08:00 pm UTC (link)
Post Katrina New Orleans has about 250,000 people. Really why should the country care?

Look at Darfur, sure the world could put a stop to it. Sure it's sad. But how many people die every year because of a lack of DDT*? Many more than have been butchered in Darfur or Rwanda, or hell in a good year of the Nazi's.

So I'll ask again, what makes New Orleans so fucking special? So deserving of more billions?

*the answer is over 3 million.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]ms_cantrell
2007-01-10 09:24 pm UTC (link)
is it more special than any other region? no.

other regions, in the US, may be in wretched condition in many regards, but they're relatively stable: crime is high very high, but it's stable; unemployment is high, but it's stable. NO is unstable - the population, infrastructure, crime, poverty - all unstable. adding to that - eventually all the contamination from sewage & toxic spills will need to be cleaned up, or they'll contaminate more living areas, drinking water, food supply.

we're not talking about darfur. this is in our country. we're not talking about DDT - i actually prefer the existance of bald eagles to over-population of people. we're talking about a city and its surrounding environs, and the risk that if that area isn't rebuilt, it will become one big-ass crime zone with squatters in the abandoned areas, infected drinking water, and a larger, long-term need for federal management than is necessary. a large amount of proactively spent money now could save a huge amount of money later on.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]entheos93
2007-01-11 12:15 am UTC (link)
That's a great point. I live here in NO, and it's really chaotic. The country isn'y going to be able to turn it's back and escape from an area this large turning into Mad Max Land. It's bound to have some serious and far-reaching repurcussions.
We need help- like, yesterday. Ignoring that fact is not going to make it go away. It's going to make it grow into a monster.

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]ms_cantrell
2007-01-11 02:05 am UTC (link)
i was supposed to come out for a half marathon in february, and the husband is thinking i'll be staying home, rather than risk the dangerous streets of NO. shakes head. if it is that bad, then someone needs to step in.

is there a community or board where you all discuss it? i'd like to hear what the locals are saying about it...

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Re: Why would the rest of the country care?
[info]entheos93
2007-01-11 02:41 am UTC (link)
Oh, and there is an LJ comm- new_orleans

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[info]a_motley_fool
2007-01-10 07:25 pm UTC (link)
They should flood New Orleans and change it over to being a port. The billions of dollars that would have gone into rebuilding that shithole can go into the country's infrastructure, or research, or back to the tax payer in the proportion it was paid.

But spending that kind of cheddar on a stinking, sinking, corrupt city -- that will only be hit again by a large storm and that current engineering can not keep safe is stupid. It's like my YaYa insisting she's a size 5.5 in shoes and than cramming her little cloven feet into them (and the complaining her feet hurt).

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[info]benkilpatrick
2007-03-02 07:45 pm UTC (link)
Um. The Port of New Orleans and Port of South Louisiana (about 30 miles away) are, together, the largest port system in the world...

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[info]montieth
2007-01-10 08:16 pm UTC (link)
It was run by a corrupt administration before. It's still run by a corrupt administration. Nothing has changed.

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Look at Galveston, TX
[info]ktynes
2007-01-11 12:12 am UTC (link)
Galveston certainly recovered from the Hurricane of 1900 which killed 6,000 and decimated the city...but it was on it's way to becoming the biggest thing in Texas. That growth potential was NEVER recovered.

I suspect it will be the same with New Orleans. Much that was lost will not come back. It may not be visible immediately, but Katina and predictions for increasing severe storms will prevent investment by business in the future.

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[info]center
2007-01-11 04:33 am UTC (link)
"New Orleans would not make a serious recovery -- ever."

Those are pretty strong words -- especially "ever". First, one needs to define what a "serious recovery" is.. second.. one needs to realize "ever" is an absolute..

New Orleans will make a 'serious recovery' EVENTUALLY. How soon? I don't know, but then of course I'm not sure what you mean by serious recovery, either.

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[info]nessafox
2007-01-11 04:38 am UTC (link)
I think it's sad how everything is turning out down there. Many of you are right: the majority of the country does not seem to care about NO. But it's still in our country. The people that live in NO are still citizens just like the rest of us. I certainly don't have the answer, but there has to be something that can be done to, at the bare minimum, finish the clean-up and find non-temporary housing. People in NO are living like they are in a Third World country and I think it's partly the nation's fault.

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[info]thomascrown
2007-01-12 07:13 pm UTC (link)
My sympathy for the people of New Orleans ended when those dopes re-elected Mayor Ray.

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[info]johnny_crab
2007-01-16 02:37 am UTC (link)
+1 to:
My sympathy for the people of New Orleans ended when those dopes re-elected Mayor Ray.

Add: and when they canned the much-needed engineering schools that made sense to the city's future...

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[info]corvus1970
2007-01-12 12:08 am UTC (link)
What sadly amuses me about this is that I am reminded of those who believed during the cold war that the nation would quickly recover from even a severly limited nuclear conflict with the USSR. The kind of people who read "War Day - And the Journey Onward" and called it liberal nonsense.

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[info]a_motley_fool
2007-01-12 04:28 pm UTC (link)
Some parts of the country would come back. The parts that required the government come in and police the city for them -- would remain post apocalyptic wastelands.

While I have no real love for the Mormons I think their 2 years of food, ample supply of guns and ideas of self governance would go a long way toward maintaining normalcy. West Philadelphia, on the other hand, would look like the Ivory Coast in about a day.

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[info]decibel45
2007-01-12 07:43 pm UTC (link)
I think you hit on a big part of why NOLA is failing... because a lot of people feel it's the government's responsibility to fix it. But if you look at places like New York, or even Chicago (granted, the flood there was nothing like 9/11 or Katrina, but there's still some to be learned from it), you'll see people that not only love their city but they refuse to let it fail. Guiliani could have spouted off at every podium in the city, but if New Yorkers didn't care it wouldn't have made any difference.

Granted, there are a lot of people that do love NO and will do everything they can to keep it, but I think a lot more people that lived there were essentially in an economic prison and at best were ambivalent about the city; the rest just hated it.

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messofme
2007-01-12 12:56 am UTC (link)
like i have been saying for all this time....im in agreement with you. nola will not ever be the same. pensacola is definitely still not the same. people forget about us and blah blah blah no one has homeowners insurance and even the car insurance rates go up.....i work for a large bank and have seen many insurance and fema checks (lets not even get into the flaws of fema...). i dont think people even realize that my customers are JUST NOW getting insurance checks from their homes being destroyed by ivan. we have halves of buildings everywhere still...some are just now being demolished...and we did not even sustain as much damage as new orleans did. top all the hurricane damage off with the severe flood damage and n.o. is in a mess. you people don't even know. the worst part, for sure, is that what little charm pensacola HAD is gone now. so many unique businesses and sights are totally gone...no one will rebuild them. and what IS leftover is being bought by the wealthy who can afford to pay the landowners some extra money that the insurance co didnt pay out....these places are being turned into upscale what-have-yous....totally not even the same city. and you think it wont happen to new orleans? the charm will be put into even smaller sectors of the city...you cant beat artists but some people (mostly the upper crust) would just love to eliminate them from their cities. eh i could go on but my grammar was poor to begin with here and i owe it to being very tired, so im out.

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[info]airin61
2007-01-30 04:56 pm UTC (link)
People do care. I know it doesn't seem like it. This isn't...it's going to sound like I showed up to say "hi I'm cool", please don't think I did. I'm from Wisconsin and I just got back from New Orleans two weeks ago. A group of us spent a week there working on houses and we can't wait to go back. We have no connection to your city other than it's our city too, by virtue of the fact that we all live in the same country. And, you know, if a tornado did the same thing to my state I'd hope some of you would think to help me.
I have to say we met a lot of great people down there, a man who had gutted his own house and just that day had gotten telephone service. But still invited us over to hang out with him and talk about what life was like down there. I think a lot of people have forgotten, but I know a lot of people haven't.

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[info]flemco
2007-02-06 04:47 pm UTC (link)
Oh, hey. I read your journal from time to time, and this post reminded me that I haven't updated my TERROR ALERTNESS SYSTEM OF BEING ALERT AGAINST TERROR STATUS in a while. Since you are the one who made me aware of the fact, I ask for your official verdict:

Is THE THREAT still REAL?

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