Robert Novak wrote in Townhall Mayor Ray Nagin's proposal to make the 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 probably figures there will be more graft available to politicians from gamblingNagin is described by business leaders as overwhelmed.
Just as he was before Katrina hit.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.
I agree. Nagin is just overwhelmed. Blanco, Landrieu, and Vitter are bigger disasters than New Orleans.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 that businesses can reopen.
For that they need a whole new police departmentAfter that, they feel, the magic of commerce will do its work. Business also wants a property tax holiday to begin building a smaller, better New Orleans.
I agree with that.That is a long way from the post-Katrina talk about a new nationwide war on poverty. A short visit here reveals the scope of the problem. Only about 5 percent of the city's 460,000 residents have returned or never left. The devastation is complete in the predominantly African-American Lower 9th Ward, 36 percent of whose residents live below the poverty level. Their houses, in poor condition before the floodwaters, are not worth replacing.
I agree. Don't rebuild anywhere that is below sea level.Nobody here takes seriously $250 billion proposed for disaster relief by Landrieu and Vitter. Rep. Richard Baker, a senior member of the House Financial Services Committee who represents Baton Rouge, told me that "we're not just going to dump a lot of money on Louisiana." ....
2 comments:
The rebuilding of New Orleans sadly will be a classic example of gentrification, I can see it now.
I doubt it. Gentrification is the physical, social, economic, and cultural phenomenon whereby working-class and/or inner-city neighborhoods are converted into more affluent middle or even upper-class communities by remodelling buildings and landscaping, resulting in increased property values and the outflow of poorer residents, either through displacement or succession.
I can't imagine any sane person wanting to live in an area that is 7 to 15 feet BELOW SEA LEVEL. Hopefully a new levee will be built to protect the French Quarter and the other land above sea level, and the rest should become a lake.
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