I'm officially DONE feeling sorry for the city of New Orleans. I've had it, really had it. Talk about a "can't-do" town! As bad as their troubles were and are, what have they really done to take responsibility for their own role in them? So far, all I hear is blame, and even Mayor Nagin admits to "piling it on" as much as possible, just to "see what happens."
You read correctly. They who squandered BILLIONS upon billions over the years, money they were supposed to be using to rebuild the levvies, are now seeking over $70BIL from the Army Corps of Engineers to compensate them for such esoteric and subjective things as "damage to the city's IMAGE."
Never mind that their image was of a modern-day Gomorrah, a dirty, crime-ridden ass-backwards city only worth visiting if you like Jazz, Creole food and getting publicly drunk and baring your breasts in front of thousands of total strangers (have I missed anything?). So how far can you fall from bottom anyway?
If anything, what has tarnished the city's "image" is their constant whining about how their plight is everyone else's problem! As IF they contribute to the nation's GDP (or culture) to such a significant degree that any of us would have noticed if they had been flooded permanently off the map!
This is not to say that I don't care about individuals who lost everything, I do. What I have no use for are the politicians who--instead of taking responsibility for what happened, and what needs to happen moving forward to raise a decent city from the muck and the mud--they (once again) are looking to blame everyone else, and use our collective guilt to shake us down for way more than they deserve--as if no other city in America has problems of its own to solve, problems that also require money to fix!
What about the Katrina victims in MS? Don't see them suing for billions, yet FEMA didn't hurry in there any faster than into New Orleans. Sure, theirs wasn't an issue of levvies breaking, but was their damage any less severe? So just because most of those affected were WHITE they should rebuild on their own, often without even their insurance coverage to help them, but those who didn't even OWN their property, who were already living on government largesse, they should be made whole? Whole to what exactly? As the song says, "nothing from nothing leaves nothing," right?
Sorry, I may be coming off really cold, but this is how I feel. After 9/11, I wanted to go to NYC and spend money to help people who'd lost so much. But with New Orleans? Not only am I hoping they LOSE their lawsuit, I'm hoping they rot in their own filth and I for sure have no intention of making a trip there--as a tourist especially! What would I tell my kids? "Girls, we're going to visit a city populated entirely by parasites who only know how to mooch off the labor of others, people who expect to be rewarded simply for breathing!
Posted by insomnomaniac at March 3, 2007 4:24 PM | TrackBackBoy,
You are so misinformed on so much here. Where are you getting your news? First, keep your sympathy. It is not helping us anyway. Points:
1.)Billions? Sorry, the levee borad never had billions to maintain the FEDERAL levees.
2.)So an American city has to meet YOUR moral compass before they are considered worthy? All of those people on Bourbon Street are tourists living out their inhibitions of what they think New Orleans is. The city life is elsewhere.
3.)All levels of government are to blame. One can't work without the other. The federal share has been it is incompetent and totally tied up with insurmountable redtape. It has put conditions o the Katrina disaster areas in has not on the last 30 disasters handled by the feds. It has made it impossible for the localities to get accaess to the "billions allocated". The state has failed in hiring an incompetent Virginia company to run the Road Home program. The city has failed to come up with a realistic plan. And all the while the citizens have been left to fend for themselves. And they have done so with courage and humor. But you don't get to see that story.
4.) The reason you don't see MS suing is that MS was destroyed by a natural disaster. New Orleans was destroyed by an admitted neglience of the Army Corps of Engineers. MS IS suing where they (and LA) are being screwed- the insurance industry. The LA law suit is a means to get the Corps to release information they have refused to release to date-information on what they knew when as to flood protection of the city. If they do not respond in six months, then the lawsuit WILL go ahead. I doubt anybody believes any money will be seen except by the lawyers organizing the class actin suit. We want information and for the government to clearly state the flood was what it was- the biggest engineering failure in the history of this country.
Living off the government largesse? So because you saw poor people on TV you think the entire populatin of the city is poor and black? Just like any city we have all economic levels and all races. We do have more blacks than your typical American city. Is that what bothers you so much? Last time I looked at the constitution, that wasn't a crime or an exemption to being an American.
5.)That last paragraph, I can't even comment on. It says much more about you and your misconceptions than it says about New Orleans. The difference is that I truly feel sorry for you and the world you inhabit. I would rather live in a destroyed New Orleans where people are living under depressing hard conditions and are fighting with all their might to help one another and the city they love than in the hate filled world you have created in your mind.
Hey Deb - Whats up?
Miss you since I left EKFSP in the fall -
I have to take issue with you on this -
It was the FEDERAL Government who provided, administered and SPENT the "BILLIONS" - not the local levee boards - the boards mainly mow grass -
It is the CORPS' responsibility to create, approve and oversee the design, supervise the construction of and to maintain the structural integrety of the levees along all navigible waterways - to protect the WATERWAYS primarilly, the land areas behind them secondarilly -
That these billions of dollars were wasted is not the fault of the residents of the City of New Orleans - it is an item of NATIONAL outrage as well as a betrayal of the local population in the New Orleans area -
The Corps has been building and rebuilding the levees that failed catastrophicaly following this storm along the 17th Street Canal, the London Ave Canal and the Industrial Canal since I was a kid and Camille was a "near miss" on the city in 1969. (These are my neighborhoods - the "upper ninth", Lakeview, Gentilly - where I grew up and went to school and lived - New Orleans was such a livable city - accessible, integrated, diverse - all at once!)
The "if Camille had hit the City of New Orleans" refrain was ongoing in the reconstruction of the levees: bigger better (presumably) stronger (certainly more costly) - yeah - the Corps will protect us - better than they did for Betsy!
HA -
The people of New Orleans are good decent God fearing hard working American people - and many of my freinds and relatives number among those who are STILL impacted -
oh well I lost all of the info I wrote about who they are - middle class, fully insured, hard working middle and upper middle class folks from beautiful neighborhoods - and it is dinner time at my home in the hills of St Francisville - must go now -
you are so saddly misinformed and have misunderstand what has happened and is going on -
I will try to clairify further at a later post -
Your kids and you will truly be missing a wonderful, economically (ask the midwestern farmers who couldn't export thier food for months! - Why did Jefferson want to BUY New Orleans? The rest of the LA Purchase was just lagniappe) and Culturaly Significant resource with that kind of attitude -
There are no more ignorant people in New Orleans than anywhere - tho it is though to figure out how Nagin got re-elected - lots of really bad politics every where -
Also - FEMA DID HURRY INTO (Republican) MS a lot faster than they got to New Orleans - and, in spite of the fact the majority of the impact of Post -Katrina has been on LA - MS HAS gotten MUCH MORE recovery money -
You are mistaken on so much of your posting - It is disheartening from this end -
LOL
Ellen McFarland
Posted by: Ellen Mac at March 19, 2007 5:38 PM