Whiplash Nagin Strikes Again

Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, who did so much to destroy the city three years ago with his fumbling and stumbling prior to Katrina's landfall has certainly made great strides to get the city ready for Gustav - listening to the experts and getting the city evacuated ahead of the storm was a major accomplishment.

However, he had to go and screw it up by reverting to type. He's flipped and flopped on when people could be allowed back into New Orleans. Instead of making sure that the city is functioning, he's caved in to those folks who demanded they be allowed to return sooner than he had originally said:

As a stream of traffic queued up on the highways leading back to New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin decided Wednesday to let residents who fled Hurricane Gustav back after all — with a stern warning the city was still vulnerable.

Most neighborhoods did not have power, hospitals were running on generators and most businesses remained shuttered. Nagin initially said residents should wait until early Thursday to come back. But those who live here, knowing this storm was no Katrina, were begging to get back home and sleep in their own beds.

“In my humble opinion, I think we’re forcing the issue, but we’re just going to deal with it,” Nagin told WWL-TV. “I am really uncomfortable with this repopulation right now.”

I'm sorry, but if he was uncomfortable with the repopulation of New Orleans, why allow it? You should know better than anyone else whether city services are capable of responding to emergencies or whether power is available. Clearly, they are not when you report that hospitals are still running off generators and businesses were closed.

Instead of waiting until Thursday, you're sending the wrong signals. What this suggests is that Nagin is quite susceptible to bullying by various groups, rather than taking a serious look at the issues and making a determination based on the facts.

One of the reasons that I gave Nagin the Whiplash moniker was that he would flip and flop faster than you could declare the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool fully occupied. He would make one statement about rebuilding and a day later reverse course. It's hampered the rebuilding in New Orleans, but residents, at least those who have returned, don't seem to mind Nagin so much since they reelected him after his disastrous Katrina response.

West Virginia Goes to the Polls

It's expected that Sen. Hillary Clinton will win West Virginia in convincing fashion, but the pundits are already claiming that she has no chance of winning the nomination or overcoming the insurmountable lead in the popular vote held by Obama.

Scott Rassmussen is no longer providing daily updates to the polls between Obama and Clinton, as he's declared things over.

Clinton might not be able to win things unless Obama commits a huge gaffe between now and the convention, but her continued presence showcases Obama's faults - he can't win in many parts of the country based on the demographics. He can't even get a majority of Democrats to vote for him in major states across the country.

Obama will be lucky to be within 15 points of Clinton in West Virginia. Of course, that wont matter, as the media continues to promote the Obama nomination.

Then again, would you want Whiplash Ray Nagin to throw his support behind your campaign? He's a superdelegate from Louisiana, and he's going to be supporting Obama. That's the same Mayor Nagin who is immortalized with the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool, joking with firearms, and whose whiplash moniker comes from his flip flopping on providing direction in reconstruction and recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina. He's also known for calling New Orleans a "chocolate city" and whose views on race are odious and reprehensible (which makes it a perfect fit for the Obama campaign given Obama's penchant for hanging with such people).

UPDATE:
Quite a few Democrats want to see the campaign continue, and it looks like they'll get their wish through at least June 3.

UPDATE:
Hillary wins handily. 2-1 margin in fact and won across all demographic groups. Obama fans in the media are going to try and ignore this race, and all the rest to come as though Obama has sown up the nomination and that his electability is all but assured. Hillary's showing continues to provide plenty of evidence that Obama isn't quite the candidate the left thinks he is, and that come the general election, they will be in for quite a rude awakening.

The Latest New Orleans Kerfuffle

This time, it's because a Times Picayune photographer took a less than flattering photo of New Orleans Mayor Ray "Whiplash" Nagin as he was busy waving a semi-automatic gun around at a press conference, and may have looked like he was taking aim at Police Superintendent Warren Riley.

Video of the event is here. The Times Picayune has clarified its caption associated with the photo, after Mayor Nagin issued a press release denouncing the original photo and how it was received by the press and public.

I have little use for Ray Nagin and his ongoing failures to deal with the deep and pervasive problems in New Orleans, many of which were self-inflicted by Nagin himself (reversing decisions and hence earning the nickname Whiplash), along with the slow pace of the cleanup and rebuilding of the affected areas of the city.

If you want a truly damning photo, this is it. You do remember the Mayor Nagin Memorial Motor Pool, don't you? Here's a refresher:



That one photo tells you all you need to know about this clown. He failed his city and the citizens he's supposed to represent. He gets to clown around with the police department and get photo ops showing him holding firearms purchased to help rebuild the police department that failed the city as well.

Whiplash Nagin's Latest Gambit: Lawsuits

Don Surber points out the latest craziness proffered by the Mayor of New Orleans, Whiplash Ray Nagin. He wants to sue the Army Corps of Engineers for $77 billion.

The latest legal actions were submitted just as President George Bush made his first visit to the area in six months. Mr Bush made several stops across Louisiana and Mississippi, visiting homes rebuilt since the storm with federal grants, bearing the message: “The federal government still knows you exist.”

“I committed to the people of this part of the world and the Gulf coast that the federal government would fund recovery - and stay committed to the recovery,” he said.

But locals are frustrated that of the $110bn assigned by Congress in relief aid, only $53bn has actually been spent. Outside the downtown tourist area, large areas of the city remain disrupted with violent crime and murders on the rise and access to healthcare limited.

Wayne Baquet, owner of the cafe in New Orleans where the president ate, told the Associated Press: “If you don’t get New Orleans straight, the United States will never be the same. Everybody ought to be on the bandwagon trying to get New Orleans back.”

Let's get this straight. Tens of billions of dollars was set aside by the federal government for rebuilding areas affected by the Gulf Coast hurricanes, and while some areas have done a good job at using the money to rebuild, others have not.

New Orleans for example.

The state and local government in Louisiana has done an awful job of dealing with the situation. They've repeatedly reversed course on key decisions - which is why I've given Nagin the whiplash moniker.

They're still trying to get their hands wrapped around the situation and yet their lawsuit only calls for $1 billion of the $77 billion to go to infrastructure repairs. The rest is nothing more than a shakedown of the federal government to cover up the failures at the state and local level.

Meanwhile, the Times-Picayune has a story up showing that it took 6,000 years to build up Southern Louisiana's coastline, but much of it has disappeared over the last 75 years and we've got only 10 years to fix the problems. Much of the problems stem from one entity - the Army Corps of Engineers, which has been called on time and time again to ensure that flooding doesn't occur as a result of the Mississippi River. That means that the ACoE has straightened the channel, limiting where the sediment carried by the river goes.

Lay of the Land

Just as NYC has continued to find remains of 9/11 victims more than five years after the Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Louisiana workers continue to find remains of victims of Katrina as they clear the rubble in the Lower Ninth.

The coroner's office has arranged to have volunteers from several city agencies search areas that have not been entered since Katrina, Gagliano said. The St. Tammany Parish search and rescue squad also will assist.

Coroner Frank Minyard told the City Council last month that the Michoud area of eastern New Orleans had never been searched for bodies since Katrina and should be investigated as soon as possible.

Minyard said he did not want a repetition in New Orleans of what happened in New York, where in October the bones of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were pulled out of a manhole near the World Trade Center that apparently had never been searched.

Firefighters on July 31 discovered one of the last Katrina bodies found in the city when they broke into a house in eastern New Orleans and removed skeletal remains. The house flooded after the storm.

Meanwhile, the Louisiana unit of Travelers Insurance is looking to cease issuing new business policies for New Orleans. There are a couple of angles to examine here. Insurance is a key part of any rebuilding in the region because the willingness to provide insurance is a gauge that businesses look towards to see how they can minimize their risk. If there are few insurers willing to do this, those businesses will look elsewhere to conduct their business.

St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc., Louisiana's largest commercial insurance provider, plans to cancel all its commercial property policies in the New Orleans area next year, sparking fears that other insurers will follow and slow the region's economic recovery.

While the St. Paul, Minn., company refused to say how many commercial policies will be affected or specify where the cuts will be in South Louisiana, two insurance brokers who were briefed by the company this week say Travelers will not renew any property insurance for businesses in Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and eastern St. Tammany parishes. Cuts will also affect individual businesses in other parts of South Louisiana, including St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes.

"I said, 'May I tell anybody who asks that Travelers is withdrawing from the commercial property insurance market in southeast Louisiana?' " said Anderson Baker, president of the New Orleans agency Gillis, Ellis & Baker, who met with the company Wednesday. "The answer was, 'Yes.' "

Travelers spokeswoman Jennifer Wislocki said the company has "a high concentration of commercial policies in the hurricane-prone areas of Louisiana" and will not renew many commercial policies when they expire.

"To keep future losses to a more acceptable level for continued financial stability, we are reducing our exposure in some of these areas by non-renewing a number of small to mid-sized commercial properties," Wislocki said.

New Orleans has been operated incompetently for quite some time - even to the point of reelecting Whiplash Nagin over Landrieu because Landrieu was perceived to be even worse. That tells you something about the political situation in New Orleans and Louisiana in general.

The political leaders have failed to grasp this. It would also be instructive to examine what happened in Florida following Hurricane Andrew. There, political leaders recognized that the way the state approached natural disasters and disaster preparation had to change. Building codes needed to be improved in a big way. While there are still parts of South Florida that are deserted and show the scars of Andrew 10 years later, the areas that have been rebuilt are much more able to withstand storm damage.

The same cannot be said for New Orleans. Large parts of the city are still below sea level and reliant upon levees that are rebuilt but not strengthened past the levels they were when Katrina made landfall. A comprehensive levee management system has not been put in place because the locals don't want to cede their power and control to someone else. It will be at least four more years before the NOLA region will be able to deal with a storm like Katrina.

Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers expect New Orleans area levees to get higher and better every year, but they acknowledge four more hurricane seasons will pass before they can completely correct fundamental weaknesses responsible for much of the devastating flood -- and that timetable may be optimistic for the largest structures. Those long-term improvements include permanent pumping stations along Lake Pontchartrain to block storm surge from entering drainage canals, gates to keep surges out of the St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans area, and armoring the fronts and backs of levees and floodwalls with materials such as concrete to prevent scouring and erosion.

The biggest accomplishment to date is the installation of new floodgates along Lake Pontchartrain at the 17th Street, London Avenue and Orleans Avenue drainage canals in New Orleans. Floodwalls lining the 17th Street and London canals fell apart during Katrina, allowing a swollen lake to pour into the city for days.

The floodwalls are under repair where they breached, but federal officials feared that they simply cannot stand up to high water, and opted for gates to take all 22 miles of canal floodwalls out of play. The newly installed gates, stronger and anchored to far greater depths, are intended to prevent storm surge from ever again getting into the canals.

Had they been in place before Katrina, the gates could have reduced flooding in Orleans Parish by about 60 percent, according to Dan Hitchings, the corps' Task Force Hope chief, helping oversee Katrina recovery and system rebuilding.

So, instead of heeding the warnings by taking action to rectify the situation by improving the levees that a comprehensive management program would provide or taking steps that would minimize storm damage going forward, the politicians are likely to resort to the old tricks of imposing requirements on insurers or demand the creation of new government funded insurance programs to cover and spread the risk. A special session has been called to address this issue among others.

If Travelers does leave NOLA, other insurers may follow and premiums will rise as there are fewer options available to businesses.

Elsewhere, what has happened to those people who have been shed from the FEMA rolls for aid? That's not entirely clear as FEMA hasn't kept track of those people.

Finally, a special election to determine NOLA's Congressional Representative. It's a runoff election between William "Cold Cash" Jefferson and Karen Carter. Jefferson was found with $90,000 in cold cash stuffed in his freezer when investigators searched his premises in an investigation into fraud and other misdeeds. Will voters return Jefferson to Congress, or will sanity prevail and result in the election of someone who is not tainted by an ongoing bribery and corruption investigation where Jefferson was caught red handed with the cold cash? Given that Nagin was reelected, I'd put even odds on Jefferson being reelected.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; hurricane rita; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour; hurricane rita; hurricane wilma.

Additional Thoughts On Katrina Anniversary

Here are some additional thoughts to those I composed earlier this week. Red tape continues to hamper the relief and recovery efforts. No surprise there.

What is a surprise is just how many folks appear to conflate the amount of aid that the federal government allocated for the purpose of rebuilding and the amount of money spent. The former is the not equal to the amount of the latter. $200 billion may have been authorized by Congress to spend on rebuilding, but that does not mean that all that amount will go to New Orleans, or even that it has all been spent. Thus far, only a fraction of that amount has been spent across the entire region, and only a fraction of that amount has been drawn upon by Louisiana and New Orleans. Some of the money is being stalled by bickering between Gov. Blanco and Whiplash Nagin.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of other folks writing about the anniversary. Bob Owens still thinks rebuilding New Orleans in its current location makes little sense given the geological makeup of the region and subsidence rates. Paul at Wizbang makes the argument that Katrina actually saved lives because the levees were dangerous even under normal conditions and the hurricane meant that far fewer people were in the path of the raging floodwaters than otherwise would have been. He bases his argument on a video showing the first stages of a failing levee, and that the water levels in that particular area were not overtopping the levees, or even at their high water marks.

Paul's point about levee integrity is relevant even today. The levees still aren't built to withstand category three storms; the levees failed during Katrina when the storm was only a category one storm over New Orleans. The Corps is late in getting flood control projects completed, including new pumps that are supposed to work to pump water out of New Orleans when flood gates are closed. That loud sighing sound you heard earlier this week was that of the Corps administrators knowing they dodged a huge bullet.

Oh, and there are still issues with paperwork at the Louisiana state and local level. Red tape at the state and local level has finally been navigated so that construction of improved flood control can begin. And New Orleans isn't included in the areas where the bureaucratic issues have been resolved:

After several weeks of negotiations, amendments to existing cooperative agreements have now been signed between the corps and local governments that will let contractors begin lifting subsiding levees, do pump station work, and shore up some flimsy floodwall in East Jefferson, as well as finish building 11 miles of levees on the east bank of St. Charles Parish.

But none of the new work can begin in Orleans, St. Bernard Parish or on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish, and no new Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control, or SELA, projects in Jefferson or Orleans parishes can be let until local, state and federal authorities resolve remaining disputes and amend their Cooperative Project Agreements as well.

Constructing new wetlands barrier space is probably the best idea I've seen in a while. It's potentially far cheaper to create the wetlands than to build new levees, and it opens up ecological and wildlife areas that would be a boon to fishermen and outdoorsmen, not to mention birders and nature lovers. Wetlands can absorb and provide a buffer against storm surges, and lessen the impact of hurricanes. The downside is that they, like barrier beaches, are temporary and will flow and ebb depending upon storms. If done right, however, they could provide advantages that levees cannot.

President Bush, meanwhile, pledges a better government response. Well, what about the state and local level? As we've seen elsewhere, the ability to deal with natural disaster varies greatly and depends upon the abilities of the local leaders to actually lead. New Orleans and Louisiana suffered for the lack of leadership.

Brenadan Loy, who blogged the hurricane landfall and the aftereffects (and blogs on hurricanes generally), has much more, including an appearance in the Spike Lee joint on Katrina's effects on New Orleans. Oh, and he gives Spike a thumbs down on the fairness and balance of the 'documentary.'

Others blogging: DJ Drummond, Sister Toldjah, Hot Air, Gateway Pundit, and A Brief Period of Me.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.

The Gulf Coast One Year Later

One year after Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast killing more than 1,500 people with a combination of failed levees in New Orleans, massive storm surge from Louisiana to Mississippi, and flooding and strong winds throughout an area of 90,000 square miles, the region is still struggling to regain its footing. The challenges facing the region are unprecedented in US history and the rebuilding efforts will be generational, not simply measured in months or years. Still, it is instructive to see what has been done thus far in the region to rebuild and recover from the disaster in the year since Katrina came ashore in the Gulf Coast.

Some people who came back to New Orleans are now choosing to move out of the city. The city is slow to deal with basic infrastructure and crime is still a headache. Perhaps Nagin should spend more time focusing his efforts on dealing with the basics than trying to deflect attention away from his shortcomings by showing how slow rebuilding has been at Ground Zero with insensitive remarks.

New Orleans is complaining about the difficulty in tapping federal aid because of the red tape involved. The city has to spend its own money in applying for the aid before it is disbursed; which is designed to cut down on fraud and misapplication of the funds to items other than those that should be funded by the federal government.

For every repair project, city officials must follow a lengthy application process — and spend their own money — before getting a dime of federal aid to fix at least 833 projects such as police stations, courtrooms, baseball fields or auditoriums.

Residents don't care much what the cause is. They're just tired of crater-like potholes, sudden drops in water pressure and debris-clogged storm drains.

"We're not asking for a lot. At this point, we're just looking for basic services: power, gas, water. Sewer that doesn't back up into your house would be nice too," said Jeb Bruneau, president of the neighborhood association in the Lakeview area. "Whatever the snafu was, the result is Joe Blow Citizen isn't seeing the effect of that federal money."

Louisiana eventually expects to get at least $25 billion in federal money for rebuilding projects, including everything from levee repairs to homeowner assistance. Of that money, $6 billion to $8 billion will be doled out statewide to repair broken roads, schools, water pipes and countless other problems.

But to get the money, the city — and other agencies such as the Sewerage and Water Board, the Regional Transit Authority and Orleans Parish School Board — must fill out worksheets for every construction project.

The worksheets are submitted to FEMA, which determines whether the project is eligible for federal aid. If approved, the federal government releases the approved money to the state, but the local government fronts the money to have the work done. After that, the local government can submit receipts for reimbursement.

Should this process be expedited so that the affected communities can rebuild faster? Well, given the problems associated with the FEMA disaster relief credit cards, where recipients spent the money on items completely unrelated to the disaster - from purchases of lap dances to sex change operations, some kind of oversight appears warranted. Yet some states did a better job in demonstrating that there were proper checks on the appropriations process. For example:

The money for the homeowner program was slower to arrive in Louisiana than in Mississippi because Mississippi was quicker to submit a plan that demonstrated checks and balances on the funding.

Many of the problems in Louisiana can be traced back to the 'leaders' in Louisiana - Gov. Blanco and NOLA Mayor Nagin. All the same, housing remains a major priority in Mississippi as it does elsewhere along the coast. Housing stocks were devastated by Katrina, Rita, and Wilma and hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced as a result of the storm damage.

While many media outlets push stories showing how the disaster affected the Bush Administration, less attention is put on the state and local governments that have to cope with the situation on a day-to-day basis. Yes, the Administration has suffered as a result of the slow perceived response, but that is exascerbated by the failings at all levels of government to deal with the situation and to be prepared for natural disasters. Billions in federal aid remains available to be tapped, but as we've seen, state and local government application for the money is varied in its efficiency.

The Sun Herald and the Times Picayune will have a running expose on life in South Mississippi one year after Katrina hit. So does the New York Times, New York Post, and other outlets like MSNBC whose Rising From Ruin series details the efforts of areas in the Gulf other than New Orleans.

Cehwiedel has been on top of the hurricane relief efforts with the Carnival of Hurricane Relief. There have been 52 editions since the hurricane came out, so check it out.

UPDATE:
The Army Corps says that it still hasn't completed repairs to the levee system and Governor Blanco has said that if a hurricane heads towards the city, New Orleans residents must get out because there's no guarantee that the flood protection systems will hold. This news comes on the heels that Tropical Storm Ernesto heads into the Carribean. The news that the Corps hasn't completed repairs comes even as the Corps missed the June 1 deadline for repairs and shows just how badly managed the flood control systems around New Orleans have been.

Mayor Nagin now claims he wishes someone else was Mayor? Well, doesn't that beat all. He could have chosen not to run, but did so. Nagin really ought to keep silent on these matters as every time he opens his mouth he does something to remind us how awful a leader he has been.

Meanwhile, ABC News looks at the economic fallout from Katrina a year later. One area of concern is the lack of progress in replacing the nearly 200,000 homes destroyed by the storm. Part of the problem relates back to the flood control situation, as well as insurance company issues and red tape. It's a slow process, and as someone who has visited Homestead Florida where Andrew made landfall in 2004, I can tell you that damage from these storms remains to this day in the form of empty lots, damaged buildings, and trees that still suffer the marks of that storm a decade later.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.

Whiplash Nagin on NOLA and Ground Zero

On a tour of the decimated Ninth Ward, Nagin tells Pitts the city has removed most of the debris from public property and it’s mainly private land that’s still affected – areas that can’t be cleaned without the owners' permission. But when Pitts points to flood-damaged cars in the street and a house washed partially into the street, the mayor shoots back. "That’s alright. You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair."

Mayor Ray 'Whiplash' Nagin thinks that folks shouldn't complain about the situation in NOLA because of the problems with rebuilding at New York's Ground Zero. Well, there are a couple of ways of looking at this. One is that we're five years into a building process at Ground Zero that includes bureaucratic infighting between Mayor Bloomberg, Gov. Pataki, Gov. Corzine, Speaker Silver, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, Port Authority, and Larry Silverstein, questions over how to best memorialize those who were murdered by the Islamic terrorists on 9/11 and tons of other issues big and small that are slowly getting resolved. Yet, construction has begun on the transit hub, memorial, and even the Freedom Tower.

NOLA has widespread devastation many times greater than that of Lower Manhattan and many of the same issues facing the rebuilding at Ground Zero, except that it was Whiplash Nagin who was a one-man bureaucratic infight. He reversed himself on key decisions in the early stages of rebuilding so many times that businesses and residents had (and continue to have) little idea about whether or where they can and should rebuild. That there is still debris on the streets where those items should have been removed suggests that Nagin ought to take a closer look at how effectively he's managed the cleanup. He's right to note that the city can't remove debris from private property without permission of the owners, but in instances where debris is on the streets, it should have been cleared. Lawsuits have limited the cleanup in some areas as owners seek to limit the city's ability to clear condemned properties.

In NYC, they managed to clear the debris from Ground Zero within 9 months, and restored the subway through that area, along with the temporary PATH station within 18 months. Other damaged buildings in the area were restored and renovated, although there are still problems with the Deutsche Bank building and Fiterman Hall, both of which need to be deconstructed due to the structural damage sustained in the 9/11 attacks.

Meanwhile, we're still hearing about cars and other debris lining the streets today in New Orleans. Maybe Nagin should focus on those issues - the ones wholly within his control as Mayor of the city of New Orleans instead of deflecting the criticism by saying that some other folks have done a worse job.

UPDATE:
Louisiana Governor Blanco has distanced herself from Nagin's comments, and the two continue their war of words over how much aid New Orleans is receiving, with Nagin complaining that the state is holding back on disbursing aid to the city. Actually, there's a really good question there - where is all the money that was provided to the Gulf Coast states going? Is it going to where it's needed, or has it gone down the rabbit hole never to be seen again - billions of taxpayer dollars wasted while the Gulf Coast residents continue to deal with inadequate infrastructure and failed state and local governments.

Others commenting on Nagin's comments aren't nearly as kind as I am. They include Michelle Malkin, Hot Air, Take Back the Memorial, and Ed Driscoll.

UPDATE:
A spirited discussion of Nagin's comments and comparisons to Rudy's response in NYC is going on at Wizbang.

Compare and Contrast

The New York Times, a national newspaper of some repute, claims that the real estate market is booming in New Orleans.

The local paper, the Times Picayune, has a slightly different take.

Which one is right?

There are speculators who are pushing up the prices of some properties, but the fact that the local political scene is a mess is pushing people to reconsider staying in New Orleans if they weren't already displaced by the flooding. The population is way down in the city, and much of the housing stock is damaged or destroyed.

Considering that the housing stock in New Orleans was devastated by the flooding due to failures in the levee system, the system isn't fully operational, and there are questions about those parts of the levees that didn't fail, people aren't waiting around to find out. The political situation remains a mess in Louisiana. I didn't give Mayor Nagin the monkier Whiplash for no reason. The guy changed his mind on major aspects of rebuilding the city faster than you could possibly imagine.

People are speculating about certain parts of the city - namely the areas that didn't flood, and will continue to buy there. The rest of the city continues to be a wasteland as rebuilding plans are still being debated and resisted by those who fear change.

The Money's There But No Plan In NOLA?

Yet another sign of problems for New Orleans:

Billions of federal dollars are about to start flowing into this city after President Bush on Thursday signed the emergency relief bill the region has long awaited. But, with the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, local officials have yet to come up with a redevelopment plan showing what kind of city will emerge from the storm's ruins.

No neighborhoods have been ruled out for rebuilding, no matter how damaged or dangerous. No decisions have been made on what kind of housing, if any, will replace the mold-ridden empty hulks that stretch endlessly in many areas. No one really knows exactly how the $10.4 billion in federal housing aid will be spent, and guidance for residents in vulnerable areas has been minimal.

A month into his second term, Mayor C. Ray Nagin has said little about his vision for a profoundly different city. In an interview on Friday, he said it would be six months before a "master planning document" was issued to address questions like which areas should be rebuilt, although he suggested that thousands of residents were making that decision on their own.

Caution should be the watchword, Mr. Nagin said, months after the apparent demise of a planning committee he set up. "New Orleans is a very historic city," he said. "We can't come out and just do something quickly."

But a close collaborator of Mr. Nagin acknowledged that the process has lagged. "Let's just admit something straight out: we're late," said David Voelker, a board member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Nagin is pushing off any kind of definitive statement this time - as earlier attempts to provide leadership only turned into repetitive bouts of whiplash as one statement would be reversed by another only moments or days later.

Neighborhoods that can't wait for the government to figure out what to do have taken it upon themselves to move on - and some may end up being penalized for taking the initative.

In the absence of a redevelopment vision from the city, residents are pushing ahead on their own, a process likely to be accelerated late this summer when washed-out homeowners begin receiving checks from the federal housing money appropriated by Congress. Whether homeowners who are rebuilding in ruined areas will remain isolated pioneers or will receive city services is still unclear.

A few badly damaged neighborhoods have undertaken their own planning efforts. "The initiatives for planning and rebuilding are coming from the neighborhoods themselves," said Pam Dashiell, a member of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, in the city's Ninth Ward.

The Broadmoor district, with a mix of incomes and races, has plans for converting abandoned dwellings to community use and wants to provide housing incentives for police officers and firefighters.

But few neighborhoods are as far along, and none of the efforts are being centrally coordinated.

And where does the responsibility lay in putting together a coordinated plan? Mayor Nagin.

Good luck New Orleans.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; hurricane rita; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour; hurricane rita; hurricane wilma.

New Orleans Goes to the Polls

Today is election day in New Orleans. A huge turnout is expected.

It's Ray 'Whiplash' Nagin versus Mitch Landireu.

Nagin was as incompetent as it comes in the runup to Katrina and in dealing with the aftermath (reversing himself on numerous decisions so many times that I started calling him Whiplash) and brushes off his incompetency by blaming the legendary corruption in Louisiana politics.

The Times Picayune endorses Landrieu.

Whoever wins will face a huge task ahead of them. Much of city remains heavily damaged or destroyed. Half of the city's population has been scattered around the country, and unless critical infrastructure is rebuilt (including fire, police, and health care systems) and all the millions of tons of debris are cleared so that people can get a fresh start on rebuilding, the impending bankruptcy of the city only looms larger. The city needs people to come back to rebuild - especially for its tax base - and that will happen only when the rebuilding of privately owned property is streamlined. Ensuring that there are enough inspectors to sign off on repairs will improve matters greatly.

Ultimately, it is up to the current and former residents to decide who will do a better job rebuilding the city. Let's hope that they make the right choices for the right reasons. Otherwise, New Orleans' misery will only continue.

Whiplash Nagin Surprises in Big Easy Election

Well, Nagin did far better than I thought possible. And his former supporters avoided him like the plague while African American voters came to his defense and voted for him in great numbers.

In a complete reversal of support from four years ago, Mayor Ray Nagin scored heavily with black voters and was practically abandoned by whites as he and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu won spots in a mayoral runoff election.

The black incumbent, who received most of his support from white voters in the 2002 election, garnered less than 10 percent of the vote Saturday in predominantly white precincts, according to GCR & Associates Inc., a consulting firm analyzing demographic data for the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.

But Nagin, who offended many white voters in January when he suggested God wanted New Orleans to remain a "chocolate city," saw black voters rush to his defense. He received 65 percent or more of the vote in predominantly black neighborhoods, the consultant found.

Landrieu, who is white, finished with 29 percent of the overall vote to Nagin's 38 percent. He finished second in black neighborhoods to Nagin and second in white neighborhoods to third-place finisher Ron Forman, bolstering his claims that he can help bring together diverse groups to help New Orleans emerge from the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

Landrieu said Sunday that the number of voters who chose candidates other than Nagin demonstrated that voters want change. "This city, this great city, calls for change," he said.

Nagin, a former cable executive seeking his second term as mayor, said his overall win is an endorsement of his performance and his plans for the city's future.

"I just feel we're on the right track, and people have verified that to me," he said.

The numbers suggest it will be a serious challenge for Nagin to broaden his support in time for the May 20 runoff.

"His one shot is to get enough of the whites who liked him four years ago to like him again," said political analyst Elliott Stonecipher.

Those votes are all the more important because the city is whiter than it was before Katrina hit Aug. 29: Fewer than half the city's 455,000 residents have returned, most of those displaced are black. Only about 20,000 evacuees participated in Saturday's election by absentee ballot, fax and satellite stations, although an unknown number returned to the city to vote in person.

So, we're going to have a runoff election in May between Ray Nagin and Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. Nagin has done an incredibly poor job considering his backtracking and reversals on key rebuilding issues, not to mention his poor judgment surrounding the evacuation of New Orleans.

This much seems clear, though: The out-of-town vote proved to be less important than some analysts initially believed it would be. Turnout appeared to be remarkably high in precincts that remained dry after Katrina, and lower in those that didn't. And while thousands of residents indeed drove long distances to the polls on a picture-perfect day, the armadas of buses some predicted would ferry voters from Houston, Atlanta and other hubs never materialized in great numbers.

A clue to the diminished significance of the diaspora came at forums held in those hubs and others. Though many candidates traveled to out-of-town debates, few voters attended most of them. And perhaps as a result, candidates didn't pour money into out-of-state media buys at the rates some had expected.

The campaign was infused with a racial subtext, in part because those displaced by the Aug. 29 storm were disproportionately African-American. But despite fervent pleas by some prominent black leaders, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Legislature refused to set up satellite polling places in cities such as Houston, Atlanta and Jackson, Miss., where tens of thousands of evacuees are living.

The mayoral primary and runoff originally were scheduled for Feb. 4 and March 4, but Gov. Kathleen Blanco postponed the elections after Katrina left more than half the city's polling sites unusable and forced voters and poll commissioners to evacuate. The April 22 date was approved by U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle, who is black. And as late as Friday, Lemelle ruled that the measures taken to ensure a fair election Saturday met standards laid out in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Nonetheless, some black leaders have suggested the election was a ploy by the city's white power structure to "take back" City Hall, which since 1978 has been occupied by a black mayor. Nagin, the black incumbent, at times seemed to try to tap in to such anxieties, noting at an appearance in Houston that "very few" of his opponents "look like us."

It's an unfortunate decision on their part, but they're the ones who will have to live with that decision. However, given the need to rebuild many areas of New Orleans, taxpayers around the country will be on the hook for some of the mayor's decisions.

The Katrina Rebuilding Roundup

Today marks the election day for New Orleans to look towards the future and find a replacement for Mayor Ray 'Whiplash' Nagin, who was in charge before, during, and after the debacle that was known as the New Orleans hurricane response 'effort.' Nagin is facing competition from 22 other candidates, and among the questions is just how many New Orleans residents will actually vote.

Given these stakes, if evacuees don't vote in large numbers, it will likely become a topic of an emotionally charged debate: Is it because they wanted to vote but weren't able to because they were disenfranchised, or because they just didn't want to vote? Historically, African-Americans, particularly low-income African-Americans, have not shown much inclination to vote absentee. Many evacuees have settled into their new locations, found housing and jobs and put their kids in school. They may not see New Orleans, with its crippled economy, housing shortage and battered school system as having much to offer them. But the suggestion that some evacuees may not want to vote is anathema to civil rights activists and advocates for New Orleans, who insist that the evacuees want to return to the city but can't, and point out that voting is one way to show they still consider themselves to be residents.

No one knows how large the electorate will be. More than 13,300 current and displaced residents of the city have cast ballots after a week of early voting. According to Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater's office, a large percentage of those voting so far have been African-American. A majority cast their votes in person at polling places set up in 10 parishes across the state, while a small percentage have mailed in absentee ballots.

It is a very distinct possibility that those who were displaced by Katrina are not looking back and are making a new and better life outside New Orleans. They may choose not to vote because they no longer have a stake in the future. And the civil rights groups are going to raise the inevitable stink because it is their core constituency that decided to turn its back on the city if they choose not to vote.

Not that any of that might matter because the city will be bankrupt in a month unless something radical is done in the short term. And the problems are so big, that experts are saying that bankruptcy wont solve them.

Elections in Slidell, LA aren't nearly as difficult to figure. Mayor Ben Morris won in overwhelming fashion with 80% of the vote.

The Louisiana Public Facilities Authority has approved an agenda that includes nearly $700+ million in projects:

$500 million for Entergy New Orleans, Inc. to rebuild facilities in Orleans Parish that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina;

- $135 million for Sugar Growers of Central Louisiana, Inc., a non-profit organization, to build a sugar processing facility;

- $75 million for a high-rise residential facility for seniors in Jefferson Parish;

- $16 million for a 300-400, single-home development north of Slidell in St. Tammany Parish; and

- $1 million for a water well and water treatment facility in Eunice.

The $500 million would be in the form of a bond offering.

And if you thought that Trent Lott was out of the political picture, you'd be sadly mistaken. He's working on a political comeback, precipitated by the destruction caused by Katrina to his hometown of Pascagoula, MS.

A turning point for Lott came in August after Hurricane Katrina struck his home state, destroying his stately home in Pascagoula, Miss., a framed photograph of which sits on his office coffee table. In announcing last January that he would seek election to a fourth Senate term, Lott cited the need to help Mississippi recover.

Friends say Lott is giving serious thought to a bid for an official leadership post next year, perhaps seeking the job of Republican whip, the No. 2 slot. But Lott said he was not "obsessed" with the idea.

"I am OK with the role I'm playing now," he said

While some senators have urged Lott to run for leadership, not everyone believes reinstating Lott is a good idea. Some say the baggage from his Thurmond comments remains damaging and that the party needs a fresh face.

Not sure that he's the right guy for a leadership post, but his unique perspective having watched his own home destroyed by Katrina gives him insights into what thousands of other Americans face throughout the Gulf Coast. Lott has the potential to be an effective spokesperson for them.

Rebuilding is still going in fits and starts, though having flood plan maps is a start - though the maps don't entirely make sense considering that raising your building three feet would do little to spare it from total devastation where some areas of New Orleans were flooded by 12-15 feet of water for weeks at a time. This graphic shows just what some of the changes might mean in New Orleans. Have no doubt that the decisions were determined by cost, not necessarily by how safe the resulting flood maps will be. Mississippi localities are also looking at their flood maps.

People are still working to get their financial situations in order, and state and federal programs are straining to keep up. More than 29,000 are expected to seek assistance in Mississippi alone under programs that would assist property owners who were flooded out but not within flood zones:

Bailey hopes he qualifies for some money from the $3 billion in federal grants the Mississippi Development Authority soon will hand out. An estimated 29,000 homeowners are expected to qualify for grants totaling as much as $150,000 each to help them rebuild their insured, flooded homes that weren't in flood zones.

After months of anticipation, applicants will begin meeting MDA officials on Monday in Gulfport, Gautier and Bay St. Louis.

MDA spokesman Scott Hamilton said about 11,900 people already have called to make appointments.

"No one has gotten a busy signal," he said. "There are 70 people at the call center. Fifty work at a time."

Pete Smith, Gov. Haley Barbour's spokesman, said as many as 75,000 people could apply, although they all won't be approved for this phase of the program.

"We're not going to discourage anyone from applying," Smith said. "The governor has said we have never done anything like this before. It's not going to be very smooth."

A second phase of the program could make about $1 billion available to uninsured homeowners and apartments owners. Those plans have not been announced.

Problems aren't confined to the physical rebuilding of the city. The legal system is also suffering from problems as well. Defendants aren't able to get court appointed attorneys for criminal cases, and that's affecting the disposition of many cases.

New Orleans Voting On the Future

Residents of New Orleans are starting to cast their ballots to pick the next mayor for the city, which was heavily damaged in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mayor Ray 'Whiplash' Nagin is facing a slate of candidates eagar to put Nagin out of our collective misery.

Today, nearly two weeks before the official election day, the first votes will be cast in New Orleans' unprecedented mayoral contest, which is taking place among an electorate that is dispersed around the country.

Voters meeting certain qualifications can cast their ballot for one of more than 20 candidates at a select early voting precinct set up around Louisiana.

At the moment, there's a lull in the legal challenges posed by civil rights groups which have sought to postpone the April 22 election, arguing that the voting process is unfair to minorities.

This isn't unfair to minorities. It's unfair to Nagin and his supporters who realize that those who are coming back to New Orleans are in no mood to vote for him and his cronies because of his massive failures before, during, and after Katrina. Those seeking to delay the election think that providing more time will enable more of their supporters to get back to New Orleans or get themselves in contact with election officials to cast ballots for Nagin and the policies they support.

It remains to be seen just how many displaced New Orleans residents actually want to return or want to cast ballots in the NOLA race when they may have already settled down elsewhere in the country. The Times Picayune has profiles of the candidates. The paper has also endorsed Ron Forman for Mayor.

A Katrina Rebuilding Update

So, people affected by Katrina want to be told whether to rebuild or not.

New Orleans' elected leaders need to make tough decisions now about what areas of the flood-ravaged city can be rebuilt, about 150 Hurricane Katrina evacuees from across the city and some of their religious leaders agreed Saturday.


Making a statement that directly counters the insistence by residents of many devastated neighborhoods that they should be able to control their own recovery, members of the Jeremiah Group and the Industrial Areas Foundation Katrina Survivors Network said they want the mayor and City Council to "tell the truth" about which neighborhoods may perish because public services, such as trash pickup and basic utilities, probably won't be available there.

People aren't completely stupid. They may want to rebuild their homes but if the municipalities simply aren't willing, prepared, or capable of providing basic municipal services, these people want to be able to get on with their lives and go elsewhere.

That means they want to hear from folks like Mayor Whiplash Nagin whether they should rebuild the Lower Ninth and other heavily damaged areas. Of course, listening to Nagin may cause the listener grievous bodily harm from the flipflops on such key issues, but he's the guy in charge for the moment.

And the pace of cleanup isn't helped by the fact that there are still lawsuits and other delays to the razing of buildings that are an ongoing danger - from the structural deficiencies, the discovery of additional hurricane dead, and from the toxic hazards that they may harbor.

Demolition of many heavily damaged Lower 9th Ward homes, including those barely standing seven months after a levee breach during Hurricane Katrina flooded the neighborhood, must move forward for both financial and moral reasons, some neighborhood residents said Saturday.


Others disagreed, saying they still aren't ready to let their homes be torn down.

On the minds of the residents was a looming June deadline to ensure that the federal government pays for demolition and the knowledge that human remains -- including those of a girl between age 6 and 10, found Friday -- continue to turn up in debris piles.

"They are finding so many bodies that don't belong to the houses," state Rep. Charmaine Marchand, D-New Orleans, said at Saturday's weekly meeting of Lower 9th Ward homeowners. "They floated in from somewhere else."

Marchand, who lost her house to the flooding, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency won't pay for demolitions past June. Homeowners need to make the difficult decision now to have collapsed, and nearly collapsed, houses razed, she said.

Meanwhile, Louisiana still hasn't figured out how to deal with nursing home evacuations. Seven months after Katrina killed at least 70 residents at nursing homes (at least 30 in St. Rita's Nursing Home), and the state can't get its act together.

The nursing home industry and its legislative allies want the state to assume much of the burden and cost of evacuations, while Gov. Kathleen Blanco's administration is pushing a plan that would provide new state oversight but ultimately leave nursing homes responsible for carrying out their own emergency plans.

It's a debate that will play out during the 85-day legislative session that begins Monday. Lawmakers will be tackling an issue that drew international attention last fall when 34 people died in a St. Bernard Parish nursing home that didn't evacuate for Hurricane Katrina. That and other tragedies have drawn scrutiny from congressional committees that found the state's emergency procedures sorely lacking.

As we saw in Katrina, there was little or no state oversight, and some nursing homes were criminally negligent in their care of patients resulting in needless deaths from the storm.

As can be expected, people are having their fill of FEMA trailer life. And with the 2006 hurricane season around the corner, these folks are staring down the barrel of a gun because those trailers aren't the place to be should another hurricane come ashore. Permanent solutions to housing is still a distant dream for many.

Build Anywhere?

That's the plan being put forth by New Orleans Mayor Whiplash Nagin. Of course there's a few caveats to that plan. You can build anywhere, but don't expect to receive city services including sewer, water, police, or fire protection. And flood protection isn't a given either.

Great plan. And it took six months to come up with this.

On Monday, he offered to let residents rebuild anywhere, but warned that homeowners in flood-prone areas would do so at their own risk. “I’m confident that the citizens can decide intelligently for themselves,” the mayor said.

Extensive wish list
The report also recommended a host of other ideas, from revamping schools to consolidating some city offices. The wish list of projects included new light-rail systems, new riverfront development and better flood protection.

“We have worked tirelessly,” Nagin told hundreds of residents who gathered to hear about the plan. “It has been controversial in some respects, but I am pleased by the results.”

Residents vented their frustrations during the public comment period, with one black man calling the group “a rotten, racist committee.”

But the commission’s plan has been warmly received in many circles. Ron Forman, a strong mayoral candidate and prominent businessman, applauded the commission’s work and the breadth of the report. But he said it is still short on specifics.

“The only problem I see with the plan is that I don’t see an implementation plan, an action plan, based on dates on when we can expect to be done,” Forman said.

The Times Picayune has far more detail:

Hundreds of people, including at least four City Council members, crowded into a Canal Street hotel ballroom to listen to the speech, which was partly a State of the Union-style laundry list of ideas and initiatives, partly a campaign document for a mayor in the midst of a re-election race.

Applause was infrequent, but Nagin drew laughter when he announced at the start, "I am going to do something I normally hate to do: I am going to read from a script."

Remembering the trouble Nagin sometimes has gotten into with impromptu remarks, notably his "chocolate city" speech on Martin Luther King Day this year, many in the audience chuckled, and one commission member uttered an audible, "Thank you."

Nagin began with the most controversial area of his commission's recommendations: land use.

As he has often done before, he rejected the call by the commission's Urban Planning Committee for a moratorium on building permits in the city's hardest-hit and most flood-prone neighborhoods.

Of course, flood control and prevention cuts to the core of New Orleans' plight. Solve the flood control issue and you'll get businesses coming back quicker and more land will be considered safe enough to rebuild upon.

Some Good News Out of Louisiana

The Louisiana legislature has finally agreed on a levee consolidation amendment to the Louisiana Constitution. That's a significant step that will go a long way to eliminating the graft and corruption that has long plagued the state's flood control operations. It's not the solution I would have hoped for - a single board that consolidates all the individual boards into a single entity, but it's better than the current situation:

The state's many levee boards were quaint institutions dating to the 19th century, intended to allow local control of southern Louisiana's vital systems of flood protection. But over the decades they became known for growth in other areas: self-administered salary increases, sweetheart contracts, expensive lunches, mini police forces, even an airport.

Hurricane Katrina spurred a citizen reform movement in New Orleans and a push for change by a legislator from adjacent St. Bernard Parish whose house was ruined in the floods. All week citizens filled the Capitol here, and the legislator, Senator Walter J. Boasso, now living in a trailer, beat back efforts to preserve the status quo.

Mr. Boasso's work produced a compromise that will soon be signed by Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco: the many local levee boards in New Orleans and surrounding parishes are to be consolidated in two authorities, one for each side of the Mississippi River, instead of the single one Mr. Boasso sought. If voters approve the change in a September referendum, it will go into effect next January.

Mr. Boasso's crusade unearthed two perennial subtexts in the Louisiana Legislature: hostility to New Orleans — rural and suburban lawmakers objected to being put into a government entity that included the city — and fierce protectiveness of small political fiefs, in this instance the levee boards.

That last part is especially instructive. This isn't about flood protection. It's about protecting political power. So the compromise bill compromises flood protection for the sake of getting a deal done. There will now be one board for each side of the Mississippi. Count on the two boards to fight each other over resources and blocking plans to armor the levees claiming that they will flood the other side.

However, a move to cut down the patronage jobs in New Orleans was blocked. It never even made it out of committee. Gov. Blanco had backed that bill, which is not only a subtle dig at the New Orleans governance, but would have gone a long way to restoring a bit of respect in dealing with Washington.

And there's now yet another candidate who's going to run against Whiplash Nagin.

An influential black pastor and frequent critic of Mayor C. Ray Nagin declared his candidacy for mayor Friday, saying Hurricane Katrina exposed the weaknesses of the current administration.

The pastor, the Rev. Tom Watson III, said in his announcement, "We have put up with the political foolishness for a long time, and the impact from poor leadership was not shown until the storm showed it."

Mr. Watson, 50, is the first black challenger to Mr. Nagin, who is also black. Nine others, all white, have said they plan to run in the April 22 election.

Where the New York Times sees race as a key issue, I see individuals who may or may not be qualified to hold the office. Whiplash Nagin is clearly incapable of managing the crisis still facing New Orleans. The other candidates may or may not be capable, but the fact that there are so many candidates shows just how dissatisified people are with Nagin's handling of Katrina.

UPDATE:
Handy dandy scorecard of what Louisiana did during their special session. The Times-Picayune has more on the upcoming local elections.

UPDATE:
Posted to Wizbang's Carnival of Trackbacks, Basil's Blog, Jo's Cafe, Don Surber, [and will be updated throughout the weekend]

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; kanye west; impeach bush; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.

The Katrina Files

Louisiana is opening another Special Session of its legislature to deal with Katrina related legislation.

The governor outlined how she wanted to use $6.2 billion in federal hurricane recovery block grants and $1.5 billion in federal aid to minimize future damage from flooding. Most of the aid, about $5.6 billion would go to housing assistance.

The special session, which must end by Feb. 17, was the second Blanco has called to cope with the damage of Katrina and Rita, which struck Louisiana Aug. 29 and Sept. 24.

Republican Rep. Jim Tucker, chairman of the House GOP caucus, said he was relieved to hear Blanco spell out her plan for spending the federal money. "At least she gave us a basic plan for how the money is going to be spent," Tucker said.

Early requests from Louisiana pegged reconstruction costs at $250 billion and set off alarm bells because of numerous instances of porkbarrel projects being slipped in to the request - namely items that had nothing to do with reconstruction or rebuilding critical infrastructure. Gov. Blanco says she's ready to play hardball with the Administration. Good for her, though I think she might want to bring something more than a whiffle ball bat. Serious requests grounded in what the state really needs - levee reconstruction and fortification as determined by the Army Corps of Engineers and independent consultants (such as those from LSU) to make sure that the system lives up to its claimed tolerances, bridges and roads replaced/repaired to restore critical links, and aid to those homeowners who lacked flood insurance and were flooded out despite not being in recognized flood zones.

The governor went further than ever before in laying out details for how she wants to invest $7.7 billion the federal government has allocated to Louisiana in block grants and hazard mitigation funds.

Subject to approval by the Louisiana Recovery Authority and a legislative budget committee, Blanco said she would spend $4.6 billion to help homeowners repair, rebuild or relocate their homes. Another $1 billion would be used to develop affordable housing.

To breathe life back into hospitals, schools and utilities, she would spend $1.75 billion there, while $350 million would go toward job growth, such as business incentives, bridge loans and work force training.

The emphasis on housing is significant, because the administration feels left out in the cold on the subject after Bush rejected the so-called Baker bill, a proposal with wide support on the local and state levels that would create a public-private incentive program to keep mortgage companies and homeowners from failing financially because of blighted property.

State senators believe that the levee board merger is a dead deal.

Proponents of turning patronage-laden southeast Louisiana levee boards into one state-controlled agency packed a Senate committee room Wednesday and were flatly told by two lawmakers that there is no hope for the proposal.

Meanwhile, while the power grid has been largely restored, the ability of residents to restore power to their homes or businesses is largely a game of chance - there are simply too few inspectors to check each home to make sure they were properly repaired from flood damage so there's a huge backlog of homes awaiting inspection. Some are breaking the law, and quite possibly putting themselves in harms' way by hooking up their homes without the inspections.

Five months after Katrina plunged New Orleans into darkness, roughly 124,000 homes and businesses — or more than 66 percent of the city's structures — still have no electricity, according to the utility, Entergy New Orleans.

The really frustrating part is that since December, power has been restored to 90 percent of the electrical grid — and the street lights are back on in many neighborhoods — yet only one-third of homeowners can draw juice into their homes.

That is largely because the city requires a permit before the utility can reconnect a meter at any home whose wiring was damaged by flooding. Getting that permit from one of the city's few electrical inspectors has been a bureaucratic nightmare involving phone calls, waiting in line at city offices and waiting some more at home.

That dysfunction can't be blamed on anyone other than the state and local officials who aren't putting enough effort into making sure there are sufficient numbers of inspectors to check the city's wiring. The city has only six inspectors. Wanna bet that being connected politically may assist in getting connected to the power grid?

Paul at Wizbang reports that the Army Corps of Engineers is facing a big problem - their own flood control manual belies the claims the Corps has made regarding the strength of the levees. The flooding in and around New Orleans was exascerbated by Corps failures - not the hurricane's intensity.

Paul's also complaining about the pace of the cleanup, but as I noted in his comments, it took nearly 8.5 months for the contractors working with the government to clean up the WTC debris - about 2 million tons spread over about 20 acres. The hurricane damage is far more widespread, there are more people and companies involved, and the local authorities have to take some responsibility on the slow pace of cleanup as well. Louisiana may have screwed itself when they requested $250 billion off the bat not to mention Gov. Blanco's preening and hissyfits - but neighboring Mississippi has the advantage of Gov. Hailey Barbour, who was a bigwig in the GOP for years.

This isn't meant to serve as an excuse for the slow pace, but to note that the cleanup is slow and we shouldn't accept excuses - the feds, state, and local authorities should be working around the clock to get this done (as was done in Lower Manhattan btw).

A poll being conducted by a New Orleans tv station shows that Mitch Landrieu is leading by a significant margin over Whiplash Nagin and four other candidates:

Jimmy Fahrenholtz 2.8%
Ron Forman 29.1%
Mike Hammer 3.8%
Mitch Landrieu 40.4%
Ray Nagin 17.5%
Peggy Wilson 6.4%

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.

It's All About Race in This Race

New Orleans is in a race against time to rebuild. Not only to retain its character and identity, but against the oncoming hurricane season. It needs a competent and skilled mayor to lead the recovery efforts and rebuilding process - both in material and tangible ways as well as to help heal the emotional wounds suffered in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I don't care what color of skin the next mayor has - it's got nothing to do with competency and ability. If that next mayor is white, black, green, gray, purple or gold, I couldn't care less.

But the New York Times wants you to think that there's something wrong with that picture. And they lay the argument that it's all about race in this race.

In great confusion and peculiar circumstances, this city has suddenly found itself in the midst of an unexpected mayoral election campaign. The result may once again upend this city's old order: a white man might be elected mayor in a city that was, until a few months ago, mostly black.

That outcome would have been undreamed of before the hurricane, but the high probability of one of Louisiana's most potent political families entering a race that almost didn't happen could further transform a political calculus that has prevailed here for nearly three decades.

Considering how the city has failed its citizens for at least that long, this transformation of the political scene can't be bad.

But to the Times, this is a problem. The current mayor, Ray Nagin (aka Whiplash Nagin), you see is black. The guy has done an awful job before and after Katrina hit. I've derided his skill, comments, and flip-flopping on key decisions (often within 24 hours of making them). Decisiveness is key to getting things done in a prompt manner and reassures the public that you're doing the right thing. Nagin's polling has continued falling ever since the hurricane hit as people saw just how poor a job he did.

That's brought out potential challengers, including Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu and Audubon Institute Chief Executive Ron Forman. Excellent. Now is the time for New Orleans to elect someone who can do the job necessary and vital to the city's rebuilding and rebirth. The city's residents deserve better than they've gotten in the past - and they should demand better of their elected officials. This Washington Post editorial points out the Whiplash effect in action, yet it would seem that race permeates every angle of discussion.

New Orleans politicians and power brokers have helped along the sense of unease, saying and unsaying all sorts of things that trouble the purists. Members of Mayor C. Ray Nagin's rebuilding commission first said all neighborhoods of the city would be rebuilt. Then they reversed themselves, recommending a building moratorium in much of the city and suggesting that some neighborhoods -- many of them centers of African American culture -- be forced to prove their viability or be bulldozed. Amid the ensuing uproar, the mayor came out against the moratorium, reverting to the position first articulated by his committee members.

The mayor at one point announced that he wanted to create a casino district to stimulate growth, then quickly dumped the idea. Later, he declared that New Orleans would again be a black-majority "chocolate city" -- then he apologized, saying chocolate is made by blending dark chocolate and "white milk."

Down in the bowl that is the Lower Ninth Ward, all the back-and-forth has left Shelby Wilson, a graphic artist who stables her two Arabian horses on the Mississippi River levee, feeling suspicious of "a screw job, a power play," despite assurances to the contrary. Her home, a sturdy bulwark with three-foot-thick walls made from old barges, could be bulldozed if her neighborhood, which is predominantly black, is not rebuilt.

The Times is afraid of offending the status quo (a trait that it extends to other things, including foreign policy - a story for another posting perhaps). The problem is that the status quo in New Orleans is not worth keeping. Not when the city's residents were poorly served by a police department that fled in the face of adversity, a leadership that planned poorly for a natural disaster, and did even worse as the days wore on.

Poliblogger also comments on the article.

Don't Cry Me a Chocolate River

One paper admits that it screwed up in covering the Whiplash Nagin 'chocolate city' comments. The paper edited out the 'chocolate city' comments from the story, and readers had no clue that there was even a kerfuffle.

Courier-Journal readers got pretty much all of the AP-reported God stuff in the version of the paper they received on Jan. 17.

But Nagin's reference to "chocolate New Orleans" had been edited out of that same story in these pages. Instead, our version read, "Nagin also promised that New Orleans will be rebuilt and again will be 'a majority African American city.' "

C-J readers would not see the controversial "chocolate" reference -- which was all over TV news and the Internet starting at the crack of dawn on the 17th -- in their own newspaper until a day later, on Jan. 18. That's when the Courier printed an AP story about the mayor's apology for his earlier invocations of God and chocolate.

So, what gives?

The short answer: We messed up.

It's not a monumental goof, but it's one that fuels suspicions some readers have about the news media in general and this newspaper in particular. That's why I'm addressing it today.

Meanwhile, MSNBC is worrying over a report that the racial makeup of New Orleans will never return to its former condition. Is this such a bad thing? We know how successful things were the way the city was run before Katrina, which is to say not well at all.

The city of New Orleans could lose up to 80 percent of its black population if people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are not able to return to damaged neighborhoods, according to an ongoing university study.

“This means that policy choices affecting who can return, to which neighborhoods, and with what forms of public and private assistance, will greatly affect the future character of the city,” according to the Brown University study, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation.

The lead researcher, sociology professor John Logan, determined that if the city’s returning population was limited to neighborhoods undamaged by Katrina, half of the white population would not return and 80 percent of the black population would not return.

The concern seems to rest that there's a perception that the rebuilding will push black people out of New Orleans. One has to wonder just how much of that concern is based on compassion and how much is a political calculation and pandering to get votes. This is, after all, what Whiplash Nagin was talking about in his chocolate comments.

From the article:

It found the storm-damaged areas had been 75 percent black, compared to 46 percent black in undamaged areas of the city. It also found that 29 percent of the households in damaged areas lived below the poverty line, compared with 24 percent of households in undamaged areas.

The breakdown of people who were displaced shows that more than half the people in the damaged neighborhoods were renters - not owners. They don't have any reason to stick around and wait for something to be rebuilt - they can go anywhere that they can find housing. And that they're black or white is secondary. They've already lost whatever they had, and they can get back on their feet through aid programs regardless of where they end up. They've got to wonder why they should wait around for New Orleans to be rebuilt when they can go to Houston or Dallas, or Baton Rouge where the infrastructure is functioning and can find housing easier than waiting for rebuilding to take place.

It's the property owners who have the most to gain or lose from rebuilding - they have to wait and see whether they can be made whole through any of the proposed plans to assist folks who were flooded out by Katrina and who didn't have flood insurance. It's the property owners who have an incentive to come back and rebuild. Ownership in the property incentivizes people to rebuild and stay in New Orleans more than any other factor.

In other news, Local New Orleans hospitals are wondering where the money is for their continued operations.

Stunned subcommittee members said officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency had assured them that the agency had sent $400 million to Louisiana to pay for storm-related health-care services. The members also said they thought Congress had removed the main policy barriers that were blocking funding from flowing through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services immediately after the storm.

But hospital officials appearing at the state Supreme Court building on Royal Street said they have yet to receive a penny.

"I have not seen that funding," said Dr. Jimmy Guidry, the medical director for the state Department of Health and Hospitals. "All I keep doing is filling out applications for funding."

Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina tore through the region, matters of survival have been supplanted by financial concerns for many New Orleans-area hospitals. Some face huge costs to rebuild damaged facilities. Others have reopened but are straining to deal with an influx of new patients, many of whom are uninsured and unable to pay for services.

So where's the holdup in assuring that these crucial services are funded? So if Congress appropriated the money, FEMA and DHHS say that the money was given to the state, and the hospitals have yet to receive it, where did the money go? Is the state government holding onto the money, or is FEMA and DHHS still so screwed up that they're sitting on money that should have gone to these hospitals.

And where is Whiplash Nagin and Gov Blanco to press the case? Getting critical infrastructure would be the key to rebuilding New Orleans, but their focus seems elsewhere. Go figure.

And here's yet another example of New Orleans being New Orleans.

A study by the watchdog Bureau of Governmental Research released Thursday concludes that the different assessors, who were directed to reappraise property to reflect Katrina's flood damage, did so in wildly different ways. The report, which examined only unflooded areas, concludes that the haphazard pattern of appraisal in the city, already well-documented, has only gotten worse since the storm.

It's likely to provide another powerful argument for overhauling the city's appraisal structure -- unique in the United States -- in which seven independently elected assessors set values in their own districts in often starkly different ways.

In general, the report says, residents of unflooded areas of the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th districts received no reductions in their 2005 assessments, while their neighbors in dry areas of the 3rd -- particularly the Faubourg Marigny and the Bywater -- and 6th and 7th districts saw their assessments drop as much as 50 percent.

The contrast, in some areas, is inexplicable and striking. For example, 4th District Assessor Betty Jefferson did not change the valuation of many unflooded homes on Carondelet Street. But just a few blocks uptown, 6th District Assessor Albert Coman cut in half the valuation of similarly dry Carondelet homes.

Assessment and valuation of property is crucial to determining the tax base and revenue for a municipality so that if there are serious problems in the process, they'll severely affect the rebuilding process and stunt the growth of the affected areas.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; katrina aid; slidell; biloxi; gulfport; pascagoula; nagin; blanco; barbour.