Ray Nagin-New Orleans Private Living Voodoo Doll

When Ray Nagin first ran for re-election in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, I told somebody the next time New Orleans was faced with the prospect of having to evacuate due to an approaching hurricane, Ray Nagin would probably be driving one of the buses.

As is more often the case than I would like to admit, I was wrong. Nagin easily won re-election in a run-off election over Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu, brother of Senator Mary Landrieu.

In a way I was glad. Nagin is a man of the people, having risen from the ranks of lowly New Orleans bus driver to the status of mayor of what was then the 27th largest city of the United States. Now, of course, New Orleans is barely a third of it's original size in population, while a great lot of it's heaviest hit areas, most especially those areas that were predominantly or to all intents and purposes totally black, are still in ruins. Decayed human remains were still being found months after the tragedy, though it never rose to the level of the ten thousand that Nagin had initialy predicted.

Nagins on-the-job training seems to have left him in a position in which he was in well over his head before the flood waters ever hit, and some might assert that he still is. And unfortunately, he has an unfortunate tendency to say things he shouldn't say. In some cases, his explanations and excuses only makes matters worse.

The best example of this would be at a speech in which he declared that God was angry at the US for the war in Iraq, of which, Nagin said, God would not approve. He was also, he went on to insist, angry at black Americans for not taking care of themselves and each other.

But, he went on to say that New Orleans was a chocolate city. That is just the way it is. And New Orleans would be a chocolate city at the end of the day.

Of course this caused a furor, and so he explained that by his definition chocolate is a mixture of cocoa and milk, which when applied together you have "a delicous drink."

Well, Nagin still went on to win re-election, though in all honesty he bears a significant part of the blame for the chain of events that left New Orleans unprepared for the disaster and it's aftermath. Now, a hurricane is projected to be on it's path to the Gulf Coast, and the first projections have it hitting landfall anywhere from Southeast Louisiana to Mississippi.

One can only hope he is up to the task, but he is being watched, his every movement and utterrance scrutinized. Such as this recent gem given over the course of a recent interview, in response to criticisms of the slowness of the pace of the recovery and rebuilding efforts of the more heavily damaged New Orleans neighborhoods.

To paraphrase him: "They shouldn't be too quick to criticize, after five years they still haven't fixed the hole in New York City."

Naturally, he has been criticized for this remark, though it so happens he is correct. He should have of course refrained from using the 9/11 terror attacks as a defense, out of sympathy for the family of the victims, yes, but there is an even better reason. And that is, he had a far better target he could have used if he had just thought about it. I am talking here about what has become derisively known as "The Big Dig".

How long has it been now, twenty years or more, and how many billions of dollars, for this mammoth pork barrell waste of tax payers money that was finally ended by the auspices of Senator John McCain when it finally seemed obvious that this was a permanent make work fiasco?

As is so often the case, the projections were heinously short-sighted, both as to funding and the targeted date for the completion of the project. Nor has it yet been completed, and in fact so shoddy was the construction, a part of it collapsed, killing people in one automobile.

Still, until McCain finally said enough is enough, federal money was poured into this project that was far out of proportion to it's value to the nation outside the immediate environs of Boston, as well as out of proportion to the tax revenues generated by the state of Massachusetts. It was money that was considered by Kennedy, Kerry, and other Massachusetts politicians-to say nothing of the construction company involved in the project-as sacrosanct an entitlement as Social Security.

And due to cutting costs and the utilization of second rate at best materials, now lives have been lost. Yet, this would doubtless have gone on for no telling how long.

This of course is not the only example, it is just the most obviously egregious one. There are others. When you add up the roads and bridges to nowhere, the countless pork barrell spending projects that amount to little if any value in way too many cases to anybody outside of the politicians who support them as a means of buying votes, you have to wonder just how it is Ray Nagin, a simple humble politiican from a working class background, has become such an object of ire.

The answer, to my way of thinking, once you look past the part where he does honestly bear a fair share of the blame is that, quite simply, he has stood in the way of the predatory land speculators who would, if they had their way, turn New Orleans into just another temporary seasonal playground for the rich and the upper middle classes. A land of parks, rides, condominiums, office dwellings, casinos, and a few restaurants that might strive to maintain the cities original character, at least on the surface.

The people who dream these dreams might honestly in some cases consider them worthy, but it's time top wake up. The dream does not belong to them. They should find another one. As I said before in about a month long rant where for a period I talked of almost nothing else but New Orleans, the insurance companies should pony up, and stop looking for every hidden clause they can dig out of the fine print, or invent, to keep from making good on legitimate claims.

And, by the way, when they do this, they should not be allowed to pass the cost on to the rest of us.

But the worse part if, this never had to happen. For a relatively small amount of money, the disaster would have not been a third as bad as it turned out being. Nowhere near it. But, the federal governemnt just wouldn't pony up the two or three billion dollars necessary to shore up the levies. The city of New Orleans as well bears some part of the blame for not being better prepared to insure evacuation, and for that matter for not insuring that the pumps which could have lessenned the degree of flooding were actually functional. Nagin himself bars a part of this blame for not being more pro-active in this regard.

But, what is done is done. The people of New Orleans, and the nation, should say, never again. No more billions of dollars for pork barrell projects of dubious value at best, when legitimate needs are refused funding, for whatever reason, be they political partisanship, corruption, negligence, or simple bureacratic stupidity.

Ane we should never forget who bears the greatest burden of blame for this disaster. Not Nagin, the city, or the state of Louisiana, though their share is certainly considerable and perhaps understated to a degree. But the chief burden rests on the federal government, who refused the necessary funding, and stood paralyzed-some might say uncaring, or even hopeful for catastrophe-while a city lanquished in misery and desperation.

New Orleans should rebuild, bigger and better than ever, while no expense is spared to pevent another such catastrophe. But, it should not be a soulless vacation city of tourists and temporary vacationers served by an assortment of temporary and seasonal employees with immigrant work permits, in the midst of a flurry of construction courtesy of federal and state government contracts to the likes of Halliburton.

It should remain the city of African Americans and voodoo practitioners, and jazz and blues, and world class cuisine, and Mardi Gras-real Mardi Gras, not the commercialized, plastic, bubble gum variety envisioned by developers and speculators. Yet, a city that is warmly welcoming, to all, a genuine city with soul, and a history that should never be permitted to pass away.

Hopefully, the city will indeed rise better than it ever was in those areas where it cried out for improvement, in job opportunities and hope for it's traditional residents, a city that will mark an end to the corruption that has plaqued it throughout the past decades from the time of the Carollas, Marcellos and Longs.

Still, at the end of the day, it should indeed remain a chocolate city, and, for good or for ill-yes, Messrs. Bush and Cheney, a DemocraticCity.