[pooh74]

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I frankly think that Nagin suffered some sort of breakdown in the week after the storm and hasn't made a lick of sense since. He has been floating ridiculous ideas one day and taking them back the next. He advocates one thing today and the opposite tomorrow. Each time Nagin says something odd, Oliver Thomas steps in and says something reasonably coherent. Olover Thomas is obviously looking to get Ray's job, and if he actually steps up and provides some leadership he may deserve it.

But all of this is taking place in a poisonous atmosphere of racial hysteria and paranoia. Certain loudmouths in Lakeview (which is almost 100% white and is 100% destroyed) have been crowing about how New Orleans will go back to being the white majority city of their childhoods--and if it doesn't Lakeview should secede. Meantime the Urban Land Institute (carpetbaggers) and the Bring Back New Orleans committee (non-carpetbaggers) have been advocating that the flooded areas be abandoned (80% of the city), and this has gotten all the flooded property owners in a tizzy, especially the black property owners in the Lower Ninth Ward. Because those properties have been handed down for generations, they were not mortgaged and didn't have flood insurance. Therefore their occupants cannot come back unless they have significantly more help than they are getting--which isn't likely as things stand. SO they are hysterical. Meantime Nagin put Joe Canizaro, a major developer, in charge of the land use planning, seen by one and all as akin to hiring Mr. Fox to guard the chicken condominiums. Everyone, including me, sees hidden agendas and ulterior motives everywhere. After 25 years in New Orleans, I have no doubt whatsoever that some folks are maneuvering to take bigtime financial advantage of people with distressed property. It is beyond clear that if the recommendations of the BBNO are enacted, the deck is stacked against poor African-American owners and renters. There have been, for example, no efforts made to reopen public housing even where units are said to be habitable. The trailer fuss is based on concern that poor blacks will live in the trailers near more affluent people (black and white). Each of the planning districts has been charged with coming up (on their own) with a plan to redevelop a viable nighborhood with a May deadline. Lakeview perhaps has the human and financial resources to do this, but the Lower Ninth does not. Any neighborhood which is not deemed viable in that time has been threatened with abandonment. The BBNO has called for a 4-month moratorium on building permits, while Nagin has been urging people to run and get the permits while they still can (before FEMA raises the base flood elevations). So that's the context--Nagin is trying to assuage the fears of his scattered African-American constituents and assure them that New Orleans will still be a black-majority city with the political power still in their/his hands. But he sure put his foot in it.

As for the God remarks, New Orleans African-Americans are highly devout, whether they be creole Catholics like Nagin or American Protestants, and they do believe that they are sinners in the hands of an angry God. But that type of thinking does not belong in the political arena, and Nagin has apologized for it. In New Orleans the barrier between Church and State is, well, permeable, too permeable IMO.

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good post!