"Choices" In New Orleans

Voters go to the polls in New Orleans for a historic mayoral election in a city still devastated by Hurricane Katrina...., New Orleans Heads to Historic Mayoral Race, Breitbart.com, May 19, 2006

Let's see. We have a former Republican who couldn't get out of his own way during the Katrina catastrophe running against Mitch Landrieu, heir to a proud Louisiana tradition that included a former Mayor (his father "Moon") who ended his term of office in prison. After the last catastrophe like this, which occurred in 1927, the entire political establishment of the state and city was overthrown by Huey Long. Not this time -- have Louisianans become more nuanced in their judgments?

Let's see. The Governor didn't do a thing. Mayor Nagin spent most of his time doing nothing in a crisis center in the Mariott. A third of the police force ran away. The National Guard was never called. 90% of the Levee Board's money was spent on building casinos and rebuilding a fountain (spent by the half of the Board not under federal investigation or looking at prison time). The Army Corps relentlessly refused to remove a channel that was diverting so much river mud from the delta that the natural protection against storm surges had been largely lost. But, instead of trying to learn from this, or change procedures and traditions, the city's mayor and the state's governor held daily press conferences in which they spent most of their time, often using extraordinarily vulgar language, decrying the Bush Administration for failing to a) stop the hurricane, b) rescue the people that Louisiana's elected and appointed officials were sworn to look after, c) manage the law enforcement problem the catastrophe caused, d) pay the entire bill, as well as manage the entire reconstruction of the city. In this writer's nuanced opinion, it's a pity Huey Long doesn't have any great-grandchildren of a similar state of mind to his, that is, a willingness to throw off a profoundly corrupt state and city political establishment and start afresh.

Maybe Huey Long could be brought back to life with genetic engineering? One thing's for certain: in Louisiana, as elsewhere, pigs can't fly.

Luther