Rove was salivating two minutes after the storm hit at the prospect of a red Louisiana..every electoral vote counts.

They probably KNOW they’re losing the south-west due to immigrants and felt they had no choice if they were to stay in the game for the long run.

But, NO is already red, so what did gaining NOLA give them more of? Probably one more R senator. Remember how they all cried crocodile tears for ‘poor Mary’ Landrieu (D-LA). They are fairly overt about their sins.

… What are you saying is BS? The assertion about transforming New Orleans, or this particular story.

I did read stories in Wall Street Journal and Times Picayune quoting real estate people who used just that word “Las Vegas on the Gulf Coast” So, there were powerful people who had plans. I don’t have the cites from two years ago, but I do certainly remember reading them.

I remember watching some Texas Hold ‘Em p*ker and hearing commentators talking about the spread of cas*nos to several other places (aside from Nevada) around the country. Louisiana was mentioned as a new territory for development. All this was BEFORE Katrina. Was there some Fascistic coordinated redevelopment planning for that area? Who knows.

~~~ModNote: Edited for content to clear filters.~~~

wesgpc @ 80

boxer says: August 30th, 2007 at 5:58 pm

“This is complete BS. I live in N.O., was here during and after Katrina.”

What are you saying is BS? The assertion about transforming New Orleans, or this particular story.

I did read stories in Wall Street Journal and Times Picayune quoting real estate people who used just that word “Las Vegas on the Gulf Coast” So, there were powerful people who had plans. I don’t have the cites from two years ago, but I do certainly remember reading them.

Yes there was a lot of talk from powerful people, but no one is trying to gentrify New Orleans. It’s just not true. The city was initially abandoned after integration (white flight to suburbs) and now is being abandoned entirely by the white establishment. Other than some really special people with there heart in the right place who “get” this place, no white people or people of means are moving here.

I am damn proud to be a no white people of means who lives in New Orleans (Though I hear I will no longer have to pay income tax – we people down hear are very , very grateful to you Americans for all your help)

Boxer is spot on

http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..d=14009346

wesgpc @ 94

boxer says: August 30th, 2007 at 5:58 pm:

“What good is affordable housing without adequate police, healthcare, schools, or any other government service.”

From what I saw, that is exactly the question. Why could these things be restored in Sidell, Bay St. Louis, and finally, this summer starting to be restored in SE between Lake Pontchartrain and MS, but many neighborhoods around New Orleans: nothing. Why can you get the electricity for Waffle Houses (that is MS, I guess mostly) and fast food joints out in the sticks, but not in New Orleans.

I am not saying there is some big US government conspriacy. If this story is true, it could be state or local government or private fraud and authorities are looking the other way.

All I am saying is that as some one who has been down there several times, the uneveness of the reconstruction wrt to some parts of New Orleans is starting to look very odd to me.

I would like to know the stroy behind that.

Basic infrastructure is shot in Orleans parish. Roads, sewer, water, schools, hospitals, you name it. Construction workers are being shot to death while at a job site, and then the copper plumbing is stolen in braod daylight. There aren’t enough cops to go around, even with the National Guard still patroling parts of the city. I think part of the problem is that most of the areas you mentioned flooded, but the water came in and went back out in a relatively quick fashion. Because of the terrain, once Orleans flooded, the water sat and percolated for weeks. The effect of stewing in fetid water for weeks on end will pretty much ruin any structire, as well as underground utilities, which weren’t in great shape before the storm. Of course that is not to say that there is no sketchy behavior going on behind the scenes.

Malignant neglect — combined with the sort of hubris that caused the PNAC Platoon to believe the “flowers and candy” lines Ahmad Chalabi was feeding them. (Hence the title of this post.)

Just as the invasion of Iraq destroyed a system and Bush and his cronies hadn’t prepared for what would happen when that system was destroyed (or maybe they had: to quote Robert Fisk, maybe “chaos is the plan”, since it’s financially benefitting certain Bush-aligned outfits like Halliburton and Blackwater), the way the Bushistas handled — or, for the most part, didn’t handle — Katrina shows a mix of incompetence, arrogance and a not-inconsiderable portion of callousness. But why should they bother their beautiful minds with all that?

Eradication?

Well, tell us what you know. Eradication is consistent with what I saw this summer -some places just seem to have received zip, or nothing at all is happening. I’d like to know the story behind it, in detail, and don’t have any axe to grind about whose fault it is. The reconstruction story and the culpability of the Bush administration is bad enough, no reason to spice it up with speculative charges unless there is real evidence.

I know that New Orleans has some problems that would premit a benign (or malign) neglect policy to be effective for practical eradication of some of the poor black neighborhoods.

I know New Orleasn somewhat, and I noticed that it is not just the lower ninth ward, but some poor and working class white neighborhoods as well -nothing is happening. What is the story? Malign neglect combined with private land grabs? Why can suburbs come back in relative boondocks -I doubt those people are commuting to work in New Orleans. But not neighborhoods in or very near the city?

But if the story highlighted in this post is true, there is something very fishy going on.

HRC and Obama will pull a Dean-Gephardt; they’ll slug away at each other until the cows come, and meanwhile the DNC delegates will start looking at Edwards as the safe harbor — which works for us, because of the three candidates in the top tier, Edwards is the most progressive.

And Edwards is the candidate the Repubs are the most scared to face.

(this took me forever to figure out how to format. likely this has been stated multiple times since I started writing.)