So, the voters of New Orleans left themselves two options:- 1. Nagin - Failed Mayor of a failed City Government.
- 2. Landreiu - Failed Leutenant Governor of a failed State Government
I can only ask a Reaganesque question of the citizens of New Orleans:
Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Do not look my way for more support and backing.
You set your options with full knowledge...
Then, you picked your winner...
Gotta Go!!!
2 comments:
Actually, yeah, I am better off than I was 4 years ago. Lots of people I didn't want around are gone from my city. Housing projects I wanted closed are closed. I'm renovating my house--well, that's not so much because I want to, but because I have to, but at least I'm finally getting a little bit of those insurance premiums I've been paying for a couple of decades back. It's virtually impossible for outsiders with nothing but the shallow, ill-informed national media reports of New Orleans' situation and politics to rely on, to comprehend the extent and complexity of both the catastrophe we're recovering from and the resources that we had and still have. I have issued dares on other blogs to people who judge Nagin's performance from their cozy chairs to seriously consider whether their own mayors really could have done any better against a Cat 3-5 hurricane. Guess what, no one has stepped up and they won't because no politician can stand up to a 20+ storm surge and 150+ mph wind. No city can stand against a hugely defective federal levee project, just like the World Trade Center towers couldn't stand against defective and incompetent national security. Did superman Giuliani rise up like King Kong and brush the jets away like flies? So he's a hero (with 3000 dead in a city block) and Nagin is a goat (with less than a 1000 direct deaths in the whole metro area). Sure New Orleans had problems that were allowed to fester and continue, because our environment is normally so pleasant. It's been that way for 40 years, since Hurricane Betsy and was for many decades before Betsy. Maybe we'll get hit again this year, maybe not for a hundred hears or more. Maybe California will finally crack off and fall into the sea. Will that be Schwartzenegger's fault? Bottom line, Americans help other Americans. Every city has problems, benefits, and some value to the nation. New Orleans has more value than the rest of the nation wants to admit--remember the spike in gas prices after Katrina? Our people got to work and fixed the pipelines and production facilities that allow the rest of the nation to keep driving and have heat through the winter. No one suddenly open drilling off the east or west coasts or forced Iraq to make up the difference. We on the Gulf Coast are still taking care of the rest of most of the rest of the country's petrochemical needs, despite your disrespect. You don't understand that and many other things about us, our region and our politics; but worse, you don't seem to understand that, we're all part of a nation that needs to work together to deal with domestic problems and to face external threats.
Anonymous...this is what you're missing...remember, I lived in New Orleans, and I love many things about the south, Louisiana, and NO in particular, but the excusing gross incompetence with "it could happen to anybody" is a crock. State, local, and federal governments and agencies require compentent leadership to be effective...day to day, and in crisis. Voting as part of a party machine, selling votes, and not voting, come with their price. In 2005 the price was not the full cost of Katrina, but the delta between what the impact would have been had the efforts in Louisiana and NO had been compentently led by their local, ELECTED leaders(?).
In terms of net damage...probably not much else could have been done. In terms of organization, streamlining evacuations, lessening the death toll, easing the trials of all evacuees, avoiding the fiascos in the convention center and the Superdome...a lot more could have been done...even by a maringinally empowered lance corporal. The performances of Nagin and Landreiu were pathetic, and to reward them with re-election speaks volumes about the deep seated problems that plague New Orleans and Lousiana...the foremost being a collective ambivalence about their own well-being that only feeds the corruption that has feuled the state for near two centuries now.
Don't push back, and defend this gross and reprehensible action by voters...the got what they voted for before and they will now truly get what they deserve in the future. For they knowingly voted for incompetent party cronies who will endanger the lives of their constituents, via their incompetence, again. Good luck...you'll need it. MM
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