Some Insight on the New Orleans Dilemma

Many of us that do not live in or around New Orleans have been confounded by many of the things that we hear and see coming out of that region. Things like why Ray Nagen was re-elected and what's up with the levee system. Tonight I had the privilege of getting to hear from and talk with the head of relief efforts in N.O. for Northwest Medical Teams. Being that he is not only working for a relief organization, but is also a resident of N.O. he had some interesting insights.

1. The Levee System - As you can imagine the levee system is something of a big topic in N.O., particularly why it broke and what is being done to make sure it doesn't happen again. According to this guy - I don't remember his name - the Army Corps of Engineers has admitted that they skimped on building the original levee. In fact an outside investigation turned up errors that were so basic as to make the investigator speculate that they could have only been made purposely. The ACOE is saying that the levee is now up to Cat. 3 protection levels again, but they've lost so much credibility already that basically nobody in N.O. believes them.
   
   
2. Ray Nagan - We have many times on Mod-Blog speculated what was wrong with the residents of N.O. to re-elect Nagan. The speaker came straight out with his bias that he is not in any way a supporter of Nagan, he had many harsh things to say about Nagan. With that said he said that the other guy would have been worse for the city than Katrina was. Supposedly the other guy would have made N.O. significantly more corrupt than it already is. So the choice of Nagan was the choice of the better of two evils. According to the speaker, Nagan is a very successful businessman and has the ability and contacts to actually rebuild the city with a better infrastructure than it had prior to Katrina. So, as long as he doesn't open his mouth in public and another major natural disastor doesn't strike - he is the better of the two choices presented to the people of N.O.
   
   
3. Federal Government Relief Money - This was an interesting thing to hear about, given the media's spin on it - the Fed (read Bush) hasn't kept their promises and the people of N.O. are suffering for it. According to the speaker the real problem isn't that the money hasn't come to N.O., because the money is there, it's just on hold until the city can come up with a final plan on how they're going to do the rebuilding. Unfortunately for the residents of N.O. the mayor put the planning on hold while he was running his campaign to be re-elected, so they'll have to wait even longer for the plan to be finished and the money released.
   
   
4. Clean Up - There is some question as to why it's taking so long to clean up the mess down there. First off there's a lot of mess to clean up. But more importantly there are still many areas of the city that are unsafe for the average person to be passing through - never mind working in. Secondly, many people are waiting to decide what they're going to do until the city finalizes the new plan - because it's possible that where their house presently resides will be "green area" or just not residential, so it's not worth spending the time and effort to rebuild if the city is just going to seize it anyway.

The most interesting (and heartening) thing of the night was that in a recent poll of the residents as to what group is doing the best job of helping them to get back to normal, the majority opinion was that it is Christians who are doing the best job. More proof that Christians are witnessing better when they're getting their hands dirty than when they're producing TV programs.