Posted on 10/17/2005 5:26:53 AM PDT by stan_sipple
Mayor Ray Nagin's proposal to make New Orleans' central business district a Las Vegas strip of giant gambling casinos explains the business community's disappointment with elected officials reacting to Hurricane Katrina. Before revealing the idea, Nagin did not consult his own commission on rebuilding New Orleans. "It's not going to happen," one commissioner told me, dismissing the mayor's gambling scheme.
Nagin is described by business leaders as overwhelmed. His disorganization was reflected when neither the mayor nor his representative attended the first planning meeting last week for next year's Mardi Gras, an event essential for reviving the city. Nagin at least is trying. Gov. Kathleen Blanco is seen as a total embarrassment. The state's two senators, Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter, are laughed at for begging open-ended multibillion-dollar expenditures. After a slow start, President Bush is intimately engaged. But out of 2,520 small-business loan applications, only six have survived the Washington bureaucracy.
What business leaders want most is restored government services and police protection so businesses can reopen. After that, they feel, the magic of commerce will do its work. Business wants a property tax holiday to begin building a smaller, better New Orleans. That is a long way from the post-Katrina talk about a new nationwide war on poverty.... So many poor black people are expected never to return to New Orleans that the Rev. Jesse Jackson claims a sinister plot by Bush adviser Karl Rove to send African-American voters into "perpetual exile." More than the poor are leaving forever. Ruth's Chris Steakhouse is moving its headquarters to Orlando, Fla., and New Orleans may never again see its Saints football team.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
Good.
Maybe the dark pols are in the dark on reviving NO. Any pol that has seen the light knows that the dead are best left dead. Bram Stoker, zombies and so on come to mind. It is not difficult to make the analogy of old New Orleans as Frankenstein's monster. Let the dead repopulate this city of mud. Let the rest of us take the lesson.
Someone has the New Orleans' Voo-Doo Doll and keep sticking pins in it.............
If a state falls into the red-state column and the media fails to report it, can it be said to have happened?
Louisiana is a red state.
Maybe they'll finally make up their minds not to if Wilma hits NO.
I see nothing has changed.
Louisiana is a red state.
New Orleans is a Blue Third World Country.
So much of this stuff is irrelevant. The biggest issue is housing - how many businesses are saying that if there is nowhere for their employees to live they will have to leave? There are only two issues - safety (levees? From what I've read, more logical to let the low-lying areas be reclaimed by the river) and housing. Everything else depends on these things.
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