New Orleans Bulletin

Protecting a Business During a Flood

2009-07-01T15:10:00.003-04:00

A press release from Timothy M. Young, timothymyoung@hotmail.com:

A proposal entitled “Protecting a Business during a Flood”, has been developed that may be of interest to the businesses that are located within areas that are susceptible to flooding; such an area would include New Orleans. Including the title page, the table of contents and the cover letter, this proposal is approximately 18 pages.

The purpose of this proposal is to describe a structure that is to be placed at a business, which has a history of flooding; such flooding could be the result of a riverine flood, an estuarine flood or a coastal flood. This structure is to be used by the business prior to an event that might cause flooding (e.g. the failure of flood protection device, snowmelt or a storm surge).

The proposed structure is to serve as a source of protection for businesses, which are not limited to, building supply facilities that have outside material storage, automotive dealers and oil/fuel storage facilities that are in flood prone areas.

Please review the following webpage to learn more about obtaining this proposal:

http://www.webcosmo.com/listing/details.aspx?gId=1&dId=12&countryId=1&stateId=159&cityId=895&postId=320308

I would like to thank the New Orleans Bulletin for its willingness to share this message with you, and also your willingness to review this message.

Hiatus in Publication ...

2009-03-15T01:01:00.001-04:00

Our Egyptian trip (Luxor is pictured) was canceled due to the long aftermath from Susan's asthma attack.

We are also taking a brief hiatus from weekly publication, and entries now will be occasional. If you would prefer to receive these occasional entries by email, please let us know.

Thanks,
John

Egyptian Etiquette ...

2009-03-08T01:01:00.001-05:00

Were it not for illness in the family, we would be returning from Egypt tomorrow. (Pictured is King Tut) Here is some of what we learned in our research for the trip.

The following is adapted from Frommer’s Egypt Travel Guide:

Appropriate Attire -- To avoid harassment, women should wear skirts or trousers that reach below the knee, and sleeves that cover the shoulders. At beach resorts, clubs and very upscale restaurants, the dress code is much looser, and young, rich women can be seen in skimpy skirts and tube tops. In mosques, women are expected to cover their hair, and not expose any skin other than their hands, face and feet.

Men should always wear shirts that cover their shoulders and refrain from wearing shorts unless they're in a beach area. Both men and women should take their shoes off before entering a mosque. In general, it's a good idea to wear closed shoes if you expect to do a lot of walking, since Egyptian streets are often muddy, or strewn with garbage and broken glass.

Gestures -- The most useful gesture is placing your right hand over your heart, which expresses gratitude and humility, and is often used as a polite way of saying no. For example, it can be used if someone is insisting that you enter their shop for a cup of coffee, or trying to hand you a gift that you don't want to accept.

Holding your hand in mid air, palm down and tipping it back and forth means "so-so" or a "little bit."

Stretching your hand out with your palm facing out is a way to ward off evil, and is offensive if you do it in someone's face. If you want to indicate the number five, make sure your palm faces you.

It's impolite to show others the soles of your feet or shoes. If you're sitting with your legs crossed, always make sure your soles are facing down.

Avoiding Offense -- Egypt's complex behavioral code is all about maintaining honor, saving face and skirting touchy subjects.

The formality of relationships between the sexes is one of the most important differences you should be aware of. When greeting a member of the opposite sex, a handshake is sufficient, as only members of the same sex hug and kiss. Aggressive flirtation, whether it's eye contact or touching, should be kept to a minimum. Especially if you're a woman and engage in this kind of behavior, you'll be considered "loose," and your advances will be interpreted as an invitation for sex.

FEMA Assistance in Seeking Grants …

2009-03-01T01:01:00.003-05:00

From L’Observateur, Laplace:

Many Louisiana parishes have greatly benefitted from grant information provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which has its own funding and resource development team that specializes in finding possible grant opportunities for recovery projects throughout the state.

Great recovery work is being done by parish and municipal government agencies and by nonprofit organizations in Louisiana, said Jim Stark, director of Louisiana’s Transitional Recovery Office. In addition to providing FEMA Public Assistance funding, we are happy to help facilitate recovery efforts by providing both technical support and aid in the identification of potential non-FEMA sources of funding.

To date, FEMA has developed and maintains approximately two dozen databases, identifying funding programs by sector, including fire departments, affordable housing, libraries, schools, economic development, parks and parkways and a number of other entities. This information is available to the public upon request.
Many resource development professionals now rely on FEMA because it saves them a tremendous amount of time in terms of research.

When I found out that FEMA has someone who searches and sorts through grant announcements, then puts them in a database and sends them to Congressional and other government entities, I was thrilled, said Holly Sibley, staff assistant to U. S. Rep. Charles Boustany. The information I’ve received has been an enormous help when I’m assisting constituents who are trying to locate grants for specific programs.

Smaller agencies and organizations often lack resource development capacity to secure the additional funding that is needed to fully implement their recovery projects. FEMA’s funding and resource development team addresses this need and supports the recovery efforts of these entities as they work to secure grant funding.

Since FEMA programs like Public Assistance are supplemental in nature, the grant opportunities we find help fill in holes for improved or alternative projects, said Paul Bratton, a funding and resource development specialist with FEMA.

FEMA staff typically receives up to three or four dozen funding opportunity announcements a day, information that is readily available to anyone who has access to the Internet. Staff evaluates this information to determine whether certain funding opportunities can benefit Louisiana agencies or organizations. When such information is forwarded, all significant data is highlighted to facilitate quick reference by the potential grant applicants.

If a government official or representative of a nonprofit agency would like assistance from FEMA in obtaining information on potential funding opportunities, please send a detailed written request to Paul Bratton via e-mail at Paul.Bratton@dhs.gov. Paul is also available for one-on-one meetings or for presentations to small groups.

Charity Hospital Still Empty …

2009-02-22T01:01:00.000-05:00

From an article by Rick Jervis and Brad Heath, USA TODAY:

Nearly 3½ years after the flood ended, Charity Hospital is still empty. Plans to replace the soaring Art Deco-era hospital with a new one are stalled. Instead, Charity has become perhaps the most notable symbol here of the languid pace of government efforts to rebuild or replace billions of dollars worth of public works wrecked when Katrina and Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. Among thousands of projects that still haven't moved forward, none has been as big or contentious as Charity.

The result, says Dr. Kevin Stephens, New Orleans' health director, is that the city lacks a hospital capable of handling the most severe trauma cases and isn't able to train enough new physicians. Without that, he says, the city will keep losing doctors, further straining its health care system.

"You have to train the medical students with the best equipment and latest techniques," Stephens says. "Or else the shortage is going to continue."

The sticking point over Charity's future is money. Louisiana wants $492 million in federal disaster aid, money it says it needs to replace Charity with a new $1.2 billion teaching hospital and medical complex; the state plans to pay for the rest. The Federal Emergency Management Agency says much of the damage to Charity was caused by years of neglect that disaster aid wasn't intended to fix. Its latest offer was $150 million.

Even that number may be inflated. FEMA engineers identified only about $99 million in storm-related damage to the hospital, which was in poor shape before it flooded. The government tacked on another $51 million, partly out of "a desire to accelerate the recovery of the health care system in New Orleans," according to an agency report. Federal law generally limits disaster aid in the government's Public Assistance program to specific repairs.

FEMA spokesman Bob Josephson says the additional money is for "disputed damages that could not be conclusively determined as disaster-related." The project is stuck until the funding stalemate ends, says Raymond Lamonica, general counsel for Louisiana State University, which operated Charity.

After Katrina, Charity's doctors worked out of tents. Then they saw patients in shopping centers. They're still in temporary quarters, working out of another hospital near Charity that was hurriedly reopened after Katrina.

The giant downtown hospital opened in 1939 and was a key provider of health care for the city's poor and uninsured. Even before it was waterlogged, Charity was in rough shape. Reports prepared for the state showed its roof leaked, and critical systems weren't up to code, requiring millions of dollars worth of repairs.

Today, the hospital on Tulane Avenue is ringed by an 8-foot-tall chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. Sections of plywood cover windows that have blown out.

Obstacles Encountered by Inspector General ...

2009-02-15T01:01:00.004-05:00

Some of the material in this article is extracted from stories by the Times-Picayune, Cerasoli resigns and temporary replacement named:

Building the inspector general's office proved far tougher than Cerasoli envisioned. And the challenges that remain -- even the basic work of clearly defining city agencies, budgets and policies -- are more daunting than a successor might suspect. After 17 months, Cerasoli said, the office still needs to double its staff and garner basic tools and access to records.

Still, Cerasoli's experience here has opened a valuable view into the inner workings of a mysterious municipal apparatus.

"On a difficulty scale of one-to-10, it's a 10. I would compare it to governments I've looked at in the developing world," said Cerasoli, who has given lectures about corruption in such Third World countries as Sierra Leone and Swaziland.

In New Orleans, he said, "information technology is in a terrible state. Getting access to information people regularly access in other places is a major problem. Public documents aren't being made public, if they exist at all.

"And I don't think the city government truly understands what the inspector general is supposed to do -- and might provide more resistance as it becomes more clear, " he said.

"Nothing's on the level in New Orleans,” he recalled telling one fellow inspector.

Though Cerasoli had fully expected the challenge of his career in New Orleans, he was in for a few shocks. The Nagin administration at first offered him a $250,000 budget -- a ludicrously low figure, he said. In Massachusetts, he had overseen a budget of $3 million and a staff of 49.

"But every one of those things was a big fight, " Cerasoli said. "And after we got the money, we couldn't spend it, because everything we bought had to go through the city's purchasing process."

Requests ranging from pencils to lease agreements took weeks or even months to snake through the Nagin administration's approval process. Inquiries often produced excuses: "The computers are down,” or "So-and-so is on vacation,” or "We can't find your paperwork."

"There was always that mysterious hand there, that made you wonder if somebody was trying to stop it,” Cerasoli said.

Just figuring out who runs what has proved an immense challenge, with a government splintered into scores of agencies, commissions and quasi-governmental nonprofit groups, some with separate dedicated tax-revenue streams, their own auditors and scant scrutiny.

So far, Cerasoli has put together a list of 140 such city entities, including such curiosities as the Delgado-Albania Plantation Commission. His inspectors found records of a New Orleans Planetarium Commission, created in 1986, but couldn't confirm whether it still exists, or ever did.

"One main goal has just been to simply identify the entity that is the city of New Orleans,” Cerasoli said. "Nobody can give you an organizational chart."

Leonard C. Odom (pictured) has been appointed to serve as interim inspector general, just hours after Cerasoli announced he is resigning. Before coming to New Orleans, Odom served as the assistant in charge of investigations in the Inspector General's Office of Washington, D.C.

He has served as president of the National Association of Inspectors General for the past two years.

Cerasoli resigns ...

2009-02-08T01:01:00.003-05:00

Some of the material in this article is extracted from stories by the Times-Picayune, Cerasoli resigns and temporary replacement named:

One more force for good has been beaten by the corrupt New Orleans governmental system. Last week we profiled Bob Cerasoli, the city’s first inspector general. We were excited that there was finally someone looking at questionable practices, employee incompetence and opportunities for abusing the trust of the New Orleans citizenry.

Cerasoli, the veteran Massachusetts investigator who navigated a maze of bureaucracy and politics to found the office, has resigned, ostensibly to reunite with his family and prepare for surgery to remove potentially dangerous growths. While these are certainly valid reasons for leaving, there is still the feeling that, even though he felt me was making a difference, the obstacles erected by the Ray Nagin (pictured) administration were too much to overcome.

For the city, the loss of Cerasoli will set back the arduous task of establishing an independent watchdog over City Hall. His hiring 17 months ago, and a subsequent City Charter change that solidified permanent financing for the office, were coups for a city long impervious to reform. Cerasoli agonized over the pressure to meet the lofty expectations of corruption-weary New Orleanians.

"I keep feeling this vicious guilt,” he said. "I've never given up on anything before in my life."

"It's just so hard, you know, the pressure,” he said, wiping away tears. "It's enormous. It's onerous. I get that all the time, people walking up to me on the street. . . . It's wonderful, seeing the rising expectations of the people here. But the last thing I want to be is the next 'last, best hope for New Orleans.'

"It's not about me. It's about building the office,” he said, repeating what has become a mantra even as he has become an unlikely celebrity in a job that in many places would be held by an anonymous functionary.

The Inspector General of New Orleans …

2009-02-01T01:01:00.004-05:00

Since we went to press, Robert Cerasoli has resigned. We'll have more about this next week.

This article was adapted from an entry by Kevin Allman on bestofneworleans.com:

Robert A. Cerasoli (pictured) has just released his first report, 15 months after he became New Orleans' first-ever inspector general, "Interim Report on the Management of the Administrative Vehicle Fleet."

City ordinances limit the number of take-home vehicles to 60 (50 for the mayor's office, 10 for the fire department), but Cerasoli's investigators found 273 vehicles. The mayor's office alone accounts for 73 of them; mayor Nagin himself has both a 2005 Lincoln Continental (insured value: $37,500) and a 2007 Ford Expedition ($33,042.25). The list details a fleet valued at more than $4 million, and the mayor's 2009 budget includes another $2 million for a "vehicle replacement program."

Nagin told WWL-TV that the 60-car limit was an "outdated ordinance." By Thursday, as the City Council attempted to finalize the 2009 budget, Nagin had backed down a bit. In a written statement to the council, he promised to respond in writing to Cerasoli's report by Jan. 30, "and not to purchase any administrative vehicles this budget year." The council is expected to vote again on the car program this week.

When Cerasoli arrived from Boston to set up the Office of the Inspector General, he needed inventory tags — the little bar-code stickers that offices use to keep track of computers, monitors and other workplace valuables. He called City Hall to get some. It was one of his first, but not his last, surprises when it came to New Orleans city government.

"The city does not know all its assets," he says. "The city does not have a list of all its real property and all its movable property. They don't have inventories of anything. When we called people [at City Hall] to ask them where they get their inventory tags, they said they don't have any. They don't buy them.

"You can't steal what you don't own," he says wryly. "See what I mean?"

As Cerasoli walks down Baronne Street he passes a New Breed cab parked at the curb. "Hey!" says the driver, sticking his hand out the window for a shake. "Thank you," Cerasoli mutters, shyly but sincerely. The scenario repeats itself six times in four blocks: a pedestrian stops in his tracks and exclaims, "Great work!"; a motorist stops in the intersection at Perdido Street and waves him through enthusiastically.

"To me, coming from Boston, it seems so decadent," he says softly "seeing all these people, doing all the things that they're doing."

Another visit to the homeland …

2009-01-25T01:01:00.000-05:00

Since we have been living in Cincinnati, about the last year and a half, we still manage a few visits to New Orleans, our putative home, each year. We are in one of those visits now. (Pictured is a piece of outdoor art from a current exhibit in N.O., Prospect.1)

Our time in N.O. is not so seriously about the city, more about visiting our long-term friends. We have made some good friends in Cincinnati, but there is something special about seeing people you have known for 30 years or more.

We had planned to stay in a Ramada in Metairie, in the heart of the suburban action. Susan arrived five days before me, and the Ramada so depressed her that she moved in with my BFF Harold and wife Sue until I arrived. She said the room she checked into was dark, sterile, and not homey enough. She should join hotels.com as a reviewer.

Susan picked me up at the airport as fully packed as I was, and we moved into our home away from home, with my brother Alan and his wife Mona, in Kenner. We are very comfortable here, but fear we may have imposed to the limit. We were here for a week in November, and as I recall, twice earlier in the year.

On my first full day here I had lunch with Harold. We call our get-togethers “sessions” because we tell all and it feels like therapy. Lunch was at Bozo’s, a popular seafood establishment in Metairie.

The next day we went to the North Shore to meet some friends of 30 years, Dava and Carole. From there we went to La Provence, a classy restaurant in the country. The food was outstanding as usual. For an added treat we chatted with Ronnie Kole, an accomplished local pianist, and he played a few of our requests.

On day three I visited with another dear friend of 40 years, Jerry N., at a nearby coffee shop. We talked for two-and-a-half hours without a pause. On day four I visited with another friend of 45 years, Jerry K.

Then Susan got sick and we canceled a few things. I’ll spare you the details of the last three days here, but wanted to characterize what a visit to N.O. is like.

Louisiana last in population growth ...

2009-01-18T01:01:00.001-05:00

Excerpted from an article by Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Writer:

Louisiana is leading the nation in loss of population, supplanting North Dakota in percentage of population decline, new U.S. Census data shows.

If the trend continues, Louisiana could rank last in population growth when the 2010 Census is completed.

Between 2000 and 2008, Louisiana's population - estimated at 4.4 million in 2000 - fell by about 58,000, or 1.3 percent, the Census' annual survey updates show. The only other state to lose people over that same period, North Dakota, saw a drop of 0.1 percent.

The new figures - interim to the formal Census in 2010 - indicate Louisiana is facing serious problems with outmigration, especially among younger and better educated people, demographers who track such trends in the state say. A string of monster hurricanes - Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike - exacerbated the slide.

"Louisiana leads the nation in outmigration," said Elliott Stonecipher, a Shreveport-based demographic analyst. "Going on 30 years, we've had a steady flow of people out the door."

One root cause is the oil bust of the mid-1980s, which sucked jobs and employers out of the state's oil and natural gas dominated economy. Since then, population gains have been mostly flat and now downward.

"This is something we've been barking about for a long time," said Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans-based demographer.

Louisiana has not been able to keep pace with other Southern states since 1960. Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina exceeded national growth rates while Louisiana fell well short, according to an analysis done by Rigamer.

"It's kind of ironic, (Louisianans) weren't going far: They were going to Dallas, Houston, Atlanta," said Charles Tolbert, a demographer and sociologist at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. "So it's not the South. They perceived better opportunity elsewhere than Louisiana."

Policy makers hope the downward trend will be turned around by a combination of events.

For one, the billions of dollars being spent by the federal government and insurance companies in the wake of the recent hurricanes is lifting the economy.

Another plus is Louisiana's relatively good economic outlook during the national recession. For example, Louisiana climbed from 45th to 17th in a new Forbes ranking on states' growth prospects.

Another positive sign is Gov. Bobby Jindal's vow to make the population dilemma a top agenda item. "I got into politics because I was tired of seeing so many people leave our state," Jindal (pictured) said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "We absolutely have to change this." The goal is to make Louisiana "the best place to raise a family, the best place to pursue careers," Jindal said.

Jindal said the solution is to expand the economy by encouraging new industries - such as nuclear energy, entertainment and alternative energy production - while keeping up the state's mainstays - including shipbuilding, fishing and public colleges.

Louisiana's 2008 ...

2009-01-11T01:01:00.004-05:00

John Maginnis (pictured) looks back at 2008 events that shaped Louisiana politics:

A historic year in national politics did not lack for precedents in Louisiana.

• Bobby Jindal's rocket ride. The last American politician before Jindal to attract as much national attention in his first year of statewide office will be sworn in as president in three weeks. Jindal's "new day for Louisiana" quickly turned into a new world for him when conservative commentators began touting him for vice president, which, we learn later, he declined to be considered for. Now he's traveling the country insisting he is not running for president in 2012.

• "Vulnerable" Landrieu victorious. Despite being targeted by Republicans as the most beatable Senate Democrat, Sen. Mary Landrieu ran strong on her post-storm record and growing seniority. She also waged a tougher campaign than Treasurer John Kennedy. In the words of columnist Clancy DuBos, she defined Kennedy before the former Democrat could redefine himself. She now is not only the state's senior statesman but also its undisputed connection to the Obama administration, in terms of projects and patronage.

• The pay-raise fiasco. For a legislative act that never took effect, the bill to raise state lawmakers' pay, like no other issue, ignited a firestorm that burned careers and singed the governor's sky-high popularity. New legislators learned quickly that tighter ethics laws and the biggest-ever personal tax cut counted for squat in face of their self-serving salary over-reach. The controversy also demonstrated how fast and hot a public cause can grow when fanned by the Internet and other forms of new media.

• Jefferson family values. Although he lost on nearly every pre-trial motion, indicted U.S. Rep. William Jefferson managed to keep winning elections, until he lost the one few thought he could.

• The improbable Mr. Cao. The most compelling political human interest story of the year belongs to Anh "Joseph" Cao of New Orleans, the former war refugee who is the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress, beating Jefferson in a huge upset. Starting with a small band of Republicans who believed in him and aided by the hurricane-delayed election schedule, the Cao campaign crossed party lines to become a civic movement. In a majority black district, his electoral future is uncertain but not untenable. He already has made history.

John Maginnis is an independent journalist and author on Louisiana politics. He wrote The Last Hayride and Cross to Bear, and oversees LAPolitics.com. EMail John at news@theadvertiser.com

"Post-Racial" America?

2009-01-04T01:01:00.005-05:00

Pam Spaulding reports on a shocking situation at Algiers Point. Her story is excerpted from an A.C. Thompson article in "The Nation." Is this true, or a spoof? You be the judge:

Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply "didn't belong."

...Fellow militia member Wayne Janak, 60, a carpenter and contractor, is more forthcoming with me. "Three people got shot in just one day!" he tells me, laughing. We're sitting in his home, a boxy beige-and-pink structure on a corner about five blocks from Daigle's Grocery. "Three of them got hit right here in this intersection with a riot gun," he says, motioning toward the streets outside his home. Janak tells me he assumed the shooting victims, who were African-American, were looters because they were carrying sneakers and baseball caps with them. He guessed that the property had been stolen from a nearby shopping mall. According to Janak, a neighbor "unloaded a riot gun"--a shotgun--"on them. We chased them down."

He's equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hour long documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

... Some of the gunmen prowling Algiers Point were out to wage a race war, says one woman whose uncle and two cousins joined the cause. A former New Orleanian, this source spoke to me anonymously because she fears her relatives could be prosecuted for their crimes. "My uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all--white against black--that he could participate in," says the woman. "For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy."

"They didn't want any of the 'ghetto n…...s' coming over" from the east side of the river, she says, adding that her relatives viewed African-Americans who wandered into Algiers Point as "fair game." One of her cousins, a young man in his 20s, sent an e-mail to her and several other family members describing his adventures with the militia. He had attached a photo in which he posed next to an African-American man who'd been fatally shot. The tone of the e-mail, she says, was "gleeful"--her cousin was happy that "they were shooting n…..s."

Color of Change has launched a campaign to ask Gov. Bobby Jindal to take action.

In the weeks following Hurricane Katrina, White vigilantes hunted down Black men who entered Algiers Point and even tried to expel their Black neighbors. Louisiana's broken law enforcement agencies have refused to investigate these crimes.

Pelican State Attorneys Thrive ...

2008-12-28T01:01:00.003-05:00

From Trial Lawyers Inc., December 2008:

The troubled state of Louisiana has lost 200,000 residents in the years since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. But the state had been having a hard time attracting workers and others, as well as holding on to those it had, even before the hurricane struck. While the national trend in population growth in the previous five years was 4.6 percent, Louisiana grew by only 0.6 percent in that period. Even so, one segment of the population—trial lawyers—is finding the state to be an excellent place to hang out and do business. Long a lawsuit-friendly jurisdiction, Louisiana has become a magnet for mass tort lawyers squeezed by comprehensive tort reform in neighboring states such as Texas and Mississippi.

That plaintiffs' lawyers would find the Bayou State a good place to sue is unsurprising. In a 2008 survey conducted by Harris Interactive for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, corporate litigators ranked the fairness of Louisiana's judicial system next-to-last among the fifty states. The state ranked among the bottom three in every category surveyed, and Louisiana was deemed the worst state in the nation in its treatment of scientific and technical evidence, its timeliness in granting or denying summary judgment or dismissal, its discovery process, and its judges' competence. Orleans Parish, encompassing the city of New Orleans, has regularly been dubbed a "judicial hellhole" by the American Tort Reform Association, and it was ranked the ninth-worst local jurisdiction in the country.

Louisiana's hospitability to litigation is an impediment to its economic recovery: 64 percent of business leaders around the country surveyed by Harris said that a state's litigation climate would affect their decision on where to locate a business. If Louisiana's leaders want to resuscitate their state's fortunes, then cleaning up its system of civil justice would be a good place to start.

A UNIQUE LEGAL SYSTEM

Owing to its pre-1803 history as a French colony, Louisiana—alone among the fifty states—has a French-derived "civil law" tradition rather than a British-derived system of "common law." Consequently, all causes of action in Louisiana are based in the Louisiana Civil Code; in theory, at least, Louisiana's judges do not make law. Unfortunately, Louisiana's exceptionality does not extend to European-style constraints on litigation, such as "loser pays" fee-shifting rules and prohibitions against contingent fees and class actions.

In contrast to judges in common-law states, who typically show substantial deference to previous court decisions, Louisiana's judges are supposed to work from a "direct interpretation" of the code. While such a legal approach would seem to support legislative supremacy and judicial restraint, open-ended or ambiguous statutes have invited a wider scope of judicial interpretation and disregard for judicial predecessors' rulings.

Which state is more crooked?

2008-12-21T01:01:00.002-05:00

We decided to re-visit the political corruption issue that was opened last week. Today's discussion is from a different perspective and uses different sources, so you may see some discrepancies in the statistics. This is excerpted from an article by Jacob Weisberg for Slate Magazine

With the unmasking of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (see illustration) as a kleptocrat of Paraguayan proportion, Illinois now has a real chance—its first in more than a generation—to defeat Louisiana in the NCAA finals of American political corruption.

Illinois boasts some impressive stats. According to data collected by Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois, more than 1,000 public officials and business people from Illinois have been convicted in federal corruption cases since 1971. Of those, an astonishing 30 were Chicago aldermen; that's around 20 percent of those elected to the City Council during that period.

If Blagojevich ultimately goes to prison, he will become the fourth out of the last eight governors to wear stripes, joining predecessors George Ryan (racketeering, conspiracy, obstruction), Dan Walker (bank fraud), and Otto Kerner (straight-up bribery). If he gets assigned to the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Blagojevich could become the first governor to share a cell with a predecessor he defeated at the polls.

But don't count Louisiana out. According to statistics compiled by the Corporate Crime Reporter, it was No. 1 for the period between 1997 and 2006, with 326 federal corruption convictions. That's a rate of 7.67 per 100,000 residents. Illinois had 524convictions in the same period, but with a larger population, its rate was only 4.68, which puts it an embarrassing sixth.

And Louisiana can boast some impressive streaks. In 2001 Jim Brown became the third consecutive insurance commissioner to be convicted. New Orleans Rep. William Jefferson, who was just defeated for re-election, liked cold, hard cash so much he kept the bundles of bills supplied by a FBI sting operation in his freezer. His brother, sister, and niece recently joined him under indictment.

Wayne Parent, a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, explains that with the discovery of oil and gas around 1912, politicians in the dirt-poor state suddenly controlled a gold mine in tax revenues. "They could spend this money virtually unsupervised," he says, "as long as they threw enough crumbs to the masses to satisfy them—direct, tangible goods like free textbooks and paved roads." This was the formula of populist governors Huey Long, his brother Earl Long, and Edwin Edwards. Louisiana politicians have always liked big bribes for big projects better than crooked little schemes. Edwards, for instance, is serving time for collecting a $400,000 gratuity in exchange for a casino license.

Louisiana's culture of corruption, by contrast, is flamboyant and shameless. Earl Long once said that Louisiana voters "don't want good government, they want good entertainment." He spent part of his last term in a mental hospital, where his wife had him committed after he took up with stripper Blaze Starr. When Sen. Allen Ellender died in office in 1972, Gov. Edwards didn't try to auction of his seat. He appointed his wife, Elaine, possibly to get her out of town.

When Edwards ran for governor in 1983, he said of the incumbent, "If we don't get Dave Treen out of office, there won't be anything left to steal." (He also memorably said Treen was so slow it took him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.) Raised among figures like these, Louisianans tend to accept corruption as inevitable, to be somewhat proud of it, and to forgive it easily.

It's going to be a close contest again this year, but I'm betting on the Fighting Illini to claim the national championship.

And the most corrupt state is …

2008-12-14T01:01:00.003-05:00

From an article by John Fritze, USA TODAY:

Its largest city is legendary for machine-style politics and its elected leaders have been under investigation for years, but by one measure, Illinois is not even close to the nation's most-corrupt state.

North Dakota, it turns out, may hold that distinction instead.

Federal authorities recently arrested Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (pictured) after a wiretap allegedly recorded him scheming to make money on his appointment to fill the U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama. Blagojevich, a Democrat, ran for election in part on cleaning up after his predecessor, Republican George Ryan, who was convicted in 2006 of racketeering, bribery and extortion.

"If it isn't the most corrupt state in the United States it's certainly one hell of a competitor," Robert Grant, head of the FBI's Chicago office, said Tuesday.

On a per-capita basis, however, Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Department of Justice statistics.

Louisiana (only third!), Alaska and North Dakota all fared worse than the Land of Lincoln in that analysis.

Alaska narrowly ousted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens in the election in November after he was convicted of not reporting gifts from wealthy friends. In Louisiana, Democratic Rep. William Jefferson was indicted in 2007 on racketeering and bribery charges after the FBI said it found $90,000 in marked bills in his freezer. Jefferson, who has maintained his innocence and will soon go to trial, lost his seat to a Republican this year.

But North Dakota?

Don Morrison, executive director of the non-partisan North Dakota Center for the Public Good, said it may be that North Dakotans are better at rooting out corruption when it occurs.

"Being a sparsely populated state, people know each other," he said. "We know our elected officials and so certainly to do what the governor of Illinois did is much more difficult here."

Morrison said the state has encouraged bad government practices in some cases by weakening disclosure laws. North Dakota does not require legislative or statewide candidates to disclose their campaign expenses.

The analysis does not include corruption cases handled by state law enforcement and it considers only convictions. Corruption may run more rampant in some states but go undetected.

Michael Johnston is a political science professor at Colgate University in New York, which is ranked just after Illinois for corruption convictions. Johnston, who has studied political corruption for 30 years, said places such as Illinois gain a bad reputation that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Expectations build up … and you replicate those expectations when you get to the top of the ladder," Johnston said. "It gets repeated."

You Tube and New Orleans ...

2008-12-07T01:01:00.003-05:00

I wasn't aware of how many videos on YouTube are by New Orleanians, and by others celebrating New Orleans, until an old college friend of mine suggested I take a look at a 1940's travelogue of the city. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyf0K28r8So.

While there I found some other historical videos, on topics such as:

Mardi Gras 1941, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppTjgLiWi0s&feature=related.

Spring Fiesta 1944, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXcOwwMkma0&feature=related.

Mardi Gras 1954, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmTmcyRZPLQ&feature=related.

New Orleans in the 70’s, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agVkrc6Y-_I&feature=related.

Old New Orleans, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTh9zANZ5gg&feature=related and, with the same title http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mJLIeYwte8&feature=related.

View at your own risk.

Thanksgiving Around the World

2008-11-30T01:01:00.000-05:00

Just after our own Thanksgiving let us look at how other regions of the world celebrate the harvest season. We are using information from Wikipedia and The Holiday Spot.

Thanksgiving (Canada):

Thanksgiving in Canada occurs on the second Monday in October and Canadians give thanks at the close of the harvest season. Although some people thank God for this bounty, the holiday is mainly considered secular.

Chusok:

In Korea, the harvest festival is called Chusok or Chuseok. Chuseok is a major three-day holiday in Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar Korean calendar. In modern South Korea, on Chuseok there is a mass exodus of Koreans returning to their ancestral hometowns to pay respects to the spirits of one's ancestors providing them with rice and fruits and sharing a feast of Korean traditional food.

Succoth:

In Israel, the harvest festival is called Succoth or Sukkot. The celebration lasts for seven days. Succoth is a Biblical pilgrimage festival that occurs in autumn on the 15th day of the month of Tishri (late September to late October). The festival is also known as the Feast of Booths or Feast of Tabernacles, as Jewish families build outdoor booths in the tradition of the ancient Hebrews wandering in the wilderness. During Succoth, a special ceremony is held each day to remember Hebrew ancestors and to thank God for the harvest.

Baisakhi:

Vaisakhi, also known as Baisakhi, is a long established harvest festival in Northern India and has religious significance for both Sikhs and Hindus. It falls on the first day of the Vaisakh month in the solar Nanakshahi calendar, which corresponds to April 13 in the Gregorian calendar, except every thirty-sixth year when it falls on April 14.

Pongal:

Pongal is a popular harvest festival in South India. It is also known as the “Rice Harvest Festival”. Families take this time to thank all those who have contributed to a successful harvest -- including the gods, the sun and the cattle. Named after a sweet rice dish, Pongal starts on January 14 of each year. The celebration lasts for three days.

Yam:

The Yam Festival is usually held in the beginning of August at the end of the rainy season. A popular holiday in Ghana and Nigeria, the Yam Festival is named after the most common food that goes by the same name in many African countries.

Moon Festival:

In the Far East, Thanksgiving comes a bit earlier. The Moon Festival also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival, is a popular East Asian celebration of abundance and togetherness, dating back over 3,000 years to China's Zhou Dynasty. It is named after the mooncake, made of a sweet bean-paste filling with golden brown flaky skin.

In Malaysia and Singapore, it is also sometimes referred to as the Lantern Festival or "Mooncake Festival." The Festival falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month of the Chinese calendar (usually around mid- or late-September in the Gregorian calendar), a date that parallels the Autumn Equinox of the solar calendar.

The Alaska Adventure, Part 2 …

2008-11-23T01:01:00.000-05:00

Our last stop heading northwest was Seward. This stop offered a side trip to Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, but we did not partake.

Our morning excursion was a visit to Ididaride, word play on the Iditarod trail sled dog race. The grueling race covers over 1,150 miles of extreme and beautiful terrain: across mountain ranges, frozen rivers, dense forests, desolate tundra and windswept coastline.

Ididaride shows many sled dogs, in various stages of development. We were going on a sled ride, and the chained dogs were yelping for the privilege of being called for the team to pull us. You needed a little imagination, because we were basically in a golf cart over gravel trails with snow nowhere in sight.

On the way back south east, we stopped in Haines. There we went to a wilderness park run by Steve (pictured, with a friend), a guy called the Dr. Doolittle of Alaska. He takes in wounded and abandoned animals and all the ones we saw were healthy and active. We saw, among others, a grizzly cub, moose, caribou, and various forms of weasel. Once they are raised in captivity they don’t have the skills to return to the wild. Steve funds the operation by creating video clips of the wilderness and one or more of the animals to order for movie and tv shows.

Our last expedition was a ride on a crab-fishing boat. The work of catching seafood is harder than we imagined, and dangerous.

Meals on the ship were outstanding. There was a nice fitness room on the ship, which we used frequently. We enjoyed the company of our friends and met some nice people on the ship and on excursions.

Overall the trip was great, though some things were not so great. Nobody told us that Alaska is chilly and rainy all the time. We had a few too many days at sea. On-board entertainment was mediocre.

Still, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and are glad that we made the trip.

The Alaska Adventure, Part 1 …

2008-11-16T01:01:00.003-05:00

The embarkation point for our cruise to Alaska was Vancouver. We met there with some good friends from Florida, Steve and Janice, and enjoyed a couple of days there before boarding the ship. One of the highlights of Vancouver was the Anthropology Museum; pictured is one of their pieces by Bill Reid, a favored artist in the area. On the news, the big story was John Edwards admitting to an affair.

After a day at sea, we visited Ketchikan. We took a best (?) of Ketchikan tour through a totem park and an old cannery. The show on board that evening was a comedic musician, who specializes in banjo but played other “instruments” such as a saw and a turkey baster.

The next day we visited Juneau, the state capitol. Sarah Palin had not yet been announced as McCain’s running mate or we might have tried to visit her.

Our excursion off the ship that day was a whale-watching expedition, soon to be dubbed the “Whale Encounter.” A pod of whales encircled our small boat and one even bumped it. We exchanged pictures by email with the group on board and some of them are on my MySpace page.

We also did some salmon-watching that day. Male salmon begin dying when they go from salt water to fresh water, where they spawn. By the time they spawn they have lost all color and look like barely more then carcasses. They die immediately after the spawn.

Next cruise stop was Skagway. We had a beautifully scenic ride an antique train. Back on bord the evening’s show was a comedian, who did a good job.

This was followed by two days of cruising. The first was in Glacier Bay, and the scenery was gorgeous. We also spotted a group of seals resting on a buoy.

The second day we toured the College Fjords area. Each fjord is named after a college, but I don’t know why. We also did a 5k walk for the Susan Komen Foundation.

More to come …

Ohio Congressional District 2 ...

2008-11-09T01:01:00.005-05:00

News flash! Obama wins the presidential race. I suspect you have access to enough news on that topic, so we’ll move on to a more local race.

From WKRC-TV, Cincinnati:

Jean Schmidt Reclaims Ohio 2nd Congressional Seat

Video clip: Election 2008:
Schmidt Holds On To Ohio Congressional Seat

The first part of the clip is about the race; feel free to skip the local news thereafter.

From “Roll Call:”

Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) bears the distinction of winning her seat with the lowest percentage. The occasionally controversial Congresswoman took 45 percent, although it should be noted that Schmidt faced conservative businessman David Krikorian, who ran as an Independent, as well as physician Victoria Wulsin (D, pictured) on Tuesday. Wulsin took 37 percent in the race while Krikorian garnered 18 percent. Last cycle, Schmidt beat Wulsin by a single point in a district President Bush carried with 64 percent in 2004.

Personal Observations:

Several times I drove Dr. “Vic” Wulsin to various events on the campaign trail. She is terrific as a “retail” campaigner, at stops that the campaign called “shake hands, kiss babies,” she won over just about every person to whom she spoke.

As her driver I got to know her fairly well. I was most taken with Vic’s character, love of family and commitment to public service. She leaves soon for Kenya to minister to people who have little access to medical care. On top of it all she is great company, with high energy and a charming wit.

On Election Day, we drove to visit at least one polling place in every county in her district. The district spans much of southern Ohio, from urban Cincinnati to Appalachia. This took 12+ hours, but she kept her cool throughout.

It was a great experience volunteering for Vic. She is easily of congressional caliber, and I am still puzzled over her loss. She came so close in 2006, and “Mean Jean” has not distinguished herself in office since. Vic did everything one can expect as a campaigner.

I think I’ll sit out political volunteering for a while.

How the Saints saved New Orleans ...

2008-11-02T01:01:00.002-04:00

From an article by Martin Fletcher, timesonline.

After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, help for the people of New Orleans came from a surprising source: the city's football team.

Slender young cheerleaders skimpily dressed in black and gold are dancing on the sidelines. A man revs up a Harley-Davidson before leading the New Orleans Saints on to the field through clouds of dry ice. The noise from the huge crowd in the Superdome is deafening. Amid the bedlam, three middle-aged nuns stand serenely in their long white habits singing the praises of their beloved football team.

“You can't imagine their devotion to this city,” beams Sister Joan Marie. Sister Mary George enthuses: “Each player goes out into the community and does good things.” Sister Mary Andrew declares: “They couldn't be more appropriately named.”

The Saints have worked a minor miracle. They have contributed as much to the recovery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as any political leader, government agency or corporate entity. The way they came marching home 13 months after Katrina wreaked such destruction brought hope and inspiration where there was only misery and despair.

“They saved the city, big time,” says Humble Levar, 31, a limousine driver. Keith Joiner, 46, a paramedic, agrees: “That's what brought the city back to life, the Saints coming home. They gave everyone hope.” Mary Beth Romig, of the New Orleans convention and visitors bureau, says: “The Saints saved the city - emotionally, spiritually and, to an extent, economically.”

“For me and other guys who came here we saw it as an opportunity to help to rebuild. I felt truly like it was a calling,” says quarterback Drew Brees, a staunch Christian who bought a storm-damaged New Orleans house as a gesture of solidarity. “No question it was an attraction to help rebuild the city and start something from the ground up. A lot of people thought I was crazy,” says Scott Fujita, a linebacker who joined from the Dallas Cowboys.

Since June of last year Brees, 29, has raised $1.6 million for a dozen such projects to help schools and children. About $500,000 of that money has come from marketing and sponsorship fees he has donated. He has made gifts from his own pocket, such as $50,000 he gave to Lusher School when told that its fledgling football team had no weights room. He also spends time at the schools chatting to or playing with the children. “He's been inspirational to the students and the teachers. He's a hero,” says Kathy Reidlinger, who runs the Lusher school.

“I do it because I care about the city,” says Brees, who has a $60 million six-year contract with the Saints. “I am very blessed. I feel I've been put in this position for a reason.”

Other Saints players are giving freely of their time and money to help the city. A dozen have set up charitable foundations. They go out as a team to rebuild people's homes; organize charity golf tournaments; buy a bus for the city's Children's Hospital and bikes for hundreds of needy children and take them out on fishing trips. Reggie Bush, the star running back, gave $86,000 to resurface a high school football stadium. Payton, the coach, organized a fundraising dinner at the Superdome for 1,000 guests this month.

All this is good PR, of course, and the NFL encourages every American football player to help the sport's image by doing work in their communities. But the things that the Saints have done more privately suggest that it is sincere.

Notes on DC ...

2008-10-26T01:01:00.001-04:00

We are on the road, leaving DC today for Williamsburg, so today’s entry will be a short one.

The only variations from our pre-trip report are that we also took in the Spy Museum. I would recommend it only if you have time to spare. The Newseum and Holocaust Museum (pictured)are another story. I would put them in the must-see category.

The Newseum is basically a history museum from the viewpoint of the media. It is beautifully laid out and full of interesting stories and artifacts.

The Holocaust Museum tells the story of the Holocaust, from the rise of Hitler to the liberation of the concentration camps. We have seen the “Topology of Terror” museum in Berlin, the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, and two concentration camps, but are still moved every time the story is told.

The World War II monument is impressive and gave our brains a rest. It is all to be seen with no descriptions of any events in the struggle. It is worth seeing. Also we plan to see the Pentagon memorial as we leave town.

These get us up to date on all the Washington museums and other attractions too new for us to have seen before. We also visited some friends for dinner in Old Town Arlington. We got around on the comfortable and convenient Metro. The only difficulty was figuring out the fare card machine.

DC and Virginia …

2008-10-19T01:01:00.000-04:00

I know we still owe you the description of our Alaska trip, and we’ll probably start that next week. I feel we owe it to you, but maybe some you would just as soon forgive that debt.

But this week’s topic is the trip on which we are now embarked. We flew to DC. We had considered driving but it would have stretched the trip by two days in each direction. Also, Susan does not behave well on driving trips. By air to DC it was an hour and a half.

This is being written before leaving home and published during the trip. Therefore there are a lot of events that are described as though they have already happened. So, I suppose, this represents what would have happened if all had gone according to plan. If there are serious deviations we will let you know sometime soon.

We arrived in DC on Tuesday the 14th at 10 a.m. We settled into our hotel, then went to the Newseum, a museum centered on the media and politics, topics that interest Susan and me.

On the 15th we toured the Holocaust Museum, very intense but thoroughly gripping. With a little spare time, we also went to the Spy Museum, a mere trifle but a fair amount of fun. That night we visited some old friends in nearby Virginia, and had a great time getting caught up on what has happened since our last visit.

The 16th was spent just taking in the sights of the City. We saw the World War II memorial for the first time, wandered through the Smithsonian for a bit and stoked up our already intense patriotism. DC is an exciting place.

On the 17th we rented a car for the trip to Williamsburg VA, a trip back in history. We stayed in a hotel on the Colonial Williamsburg grounds and enjoyed a colonial era dinner. We also stayed there the next day to see more of the attractions.

On the 19th we headed for Charlottesville VA, home of Monticello and the University of Virginia. We also had dinner with Susan’s niece, and the next night with an old and dear friend of Susan. Both are affiliated with UVa.

After spending some time in Charlottesville, we returned to good old Cincinnati on the 21st.

Katrina Group Convenes in Cincinnati ...

2008-10-12T01:01:00.000-04:00

We have organized a group called “Displaced by Katrina.” It is for Cincinnati-area residents who lived in New Orleans before Katrina, and moved for various reasons related to the storm.

We started the group through the Meetup organization. We got terrific publicity in the Enquirer, the area’s daily newspaper, not to be confused with the National Enquirer.

The Enquirer put our first meeting in their community calendar, ran two nice stories about the organization and us. The timing of the publicity was perfect, just before our second meeting. They then wrote a story after the meeting which was quite complimentary.

Our story also got covered by two television stations, though I think the second interview landed on the cutting room floor. We recorded the first interview when it ran on TV, and will be glad to show it to you when you visit.

Through the group we have met some very nice people, and their stories are all interesting. Several friends have seen the publicity and congratulated (or teased us) over lt. A few strangers that saw the publicity have introduced themselves on the street, the gym, and a doctor’s office. We have also gotten a couple of calls by people wanting to join the group.

The group is now up to 12 people, and met for dinner last Friday at DeeFelice Restaurant. Here is some information from DeeFelice’s web site:

Jazz, swing, New Orleans decor and great cajun food, right in the heart of Covington's Main Strasse Village! (That’s Covington KY, just across the River from Cincinnati.

DeeFelice Foods offers a selection of cajun and creole sauces, seasonings, and spices at their online store and retail outlets.

“DeeFelice is your home for New Orleans Cajun and Creole style food and entertainment. If you're in the Cincinnati area, stop by our restaurant.”

Altogether the experience has been a kick.

N.O.’s fountain of youth ...

2008-10-05T01:01:00.006-04:00

From CityBusiness, by Deon Roberts. Disclosure: the last paragraph contains a quote by my wife, and she is now retired from the University of New Orleans; we are living in Cincinnati:

New Orleans became a magnet to young people from across of America after Hurricane Katrina. Young adults flocked here eager to rebuild the city, and some have settled and found permanent work.

But how does New Orleans retain these young professionals over the long term?

According to an August 2007 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 18 percent of young adults (those ages 18-34) said they are planning on, or seriously considering, moving from the greater New Orleans area, a statistic Kaiser called “a finding of potential concern.” Among adults 35 and older, only 8 percent said they were planning on, or seriously considering, moving out the area.

Some are trying to prevent young, talented adults from leaving New Orleans. The Idea Village has launched a project it calls “504ward” to link young people with jobs and networking opportunities.

“What drives economic growth is talent,” Tim Williamson, Idea Village president, said in a CityBusiness story this week. “By engaging the business community to provide the connections or relationships, the ultimate beneficiaries will be the companies.”

According to the CityBusiness story, some young people have trouble making connections in New Orleans.

“New Orleans is a provincial place. It can be inscrutable to someone who’s just moved here,” said Jeffery Schwartz, a 26-year-old Ben Franklin High School graduate who has an urban planning degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Being new to the New Orleans area also plays a large role in young people’s decision to move from New Orleans, the Kaiser study said.

“A young resident who is new to the area has a predicted probability of planning to move that is four times that of an older resident who lived in New Orleans before Katrina,” Kaiser said.

An Aug. 21 article on philanthropy.com reports on the influx of young people to New Orleans since Katrina.

“Despite efforts to keep young nonprofit workers in the city, some people who moved to New Orleans after Katrina are starting to think about leaving — or have already gone,” the article said.

Since Katrina, the media seem confused about whether New Orleans is attracting or losing young people. For example, the philanthropy.com story highlights the influx of young people. But The Associated Press reported this in a grim story Dec. 15, 2006:

"New Orleans is losing an alarming number of young professionals in Katrina’s aftermath. Many doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers and other highly educated people are gone. Some left during the storm and never came back. Others came back, but soon gave up and moved out altogether."

Whether a full-blown brain drain is under way is unclear. But some suspect so, and fear the exodus will only get worse.

“They don’t see the career opportunities here that they see elsewhere,” said University of New Orleans political science professor Susan Howell.

Coming Back, Part 2

2008-09-28T01:01:00.000-04:00

Continuing from a previous article:

Last year, tourism was at 70 percent of the pre-Katrina level that generated $5 billion a year. But the city began this year with four major events -- college football's Sugar Bowl and national championship game, Mardi Gras, and the NBA All-Star Game Weekend -- plus major conventions. The momentum continued with the French Quarter and Jazz festivals, and more than 16 festivals are scheduled through the end of the year, including Tales of the Cocktail mixing it up this week and the new Prospect 1 -- "the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States," planners say -- scheduled to start Nov. 1.

There's also a new attraction, the Audubon Insectarium, which opened last month on Canal Street, near the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, an Imax theater, and the Audubon Zoo.
Still, some would-be tourists are staying away out of a sense of respect for everything the city's been through, says Sandra Shilstone, head of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corp. Those people should remember the city's unofficial motto, the Jazz Festival's Quint Davis says: "We dance when we die."

This year's official slogan is "Come out and play," and that's what people were doing the weekend I was there. Bourbon Street was a little sleepy on Thursday and Friday afternoons, but it sprang to life on Friday and Saturday nights. A continuous stream of visitors of all ages strolled along the pedestrian-only street, many toting plastic "go cups," since open containers of alcohol are permitted.

High school students in gowns and tuxedos dined at some of the fancier restaurants, bachelor and bachelorette parties club-hopped, and families rode horse-drawn carriages through the Quarter and along Jackson Square.

Since the disaster, there have been some surprises in the city's regrowth, Shilstone says.
"There's been a cultural renaissance. Neighborhoods putting on arts festivals and cultural events," she says. "People lost art and are buying again."

As she shows us the sections of the city hit hardest by the flooding -- West End, Lakeview, Gentilly, New Orleans East, St. Bernard, and the Ninth Ward -- Stauder stresses that she doesn't care why people come, just that they come.

Of Youth March and Polo ... (Monday Edition)

2008-09-22T15:22:00.005-04:00

City Cathedral Announces 2nd Annual 180 Youth March and 180 Turn It Around Youth Conference

City Cathedral Church announces its plans for a second annual 180 Youth March to be held Saturday, September 27, 2008. Last year, at the organizers’ first march, over 1,000 youth marched for righteousness, peace and joy in our city. This year’s march through the streets of New Orleans is a demonstration of what godly counsel imparted to our youth will produce: young people where the combination of the words “youth” and “streets” doesn’t equate to violence! This 180 Youth March and Conference will encourage youth in our city to turn their lives around!

“The alarming rates of murder and violence among our youth, and skyrocketing numbers in cases of drug addiction, of unemployment and of homelessness are all indicators that people need hope. The Lord is the answer. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us! God is hope!” said Owen McManus, Jr., Pastor of City Cathedral church and organizer of the event. “In any other circumstance, if that many youth were gathered together in the streets, it would mean trouble,” he continued. “We’re excited about what God is doing in the youth of this city. They are the key to our future.”

Organizers are expecting an even larger event this year and are extending an invitation to other ministries to join them in the march and in the youth conference that will take place that same weekend (September 26-28, 2008). Keynote speakers at the 180 Turn It Around Youth Conference will be Pastor Joel Stockstill, Pastor of Bethany World Prayer Center in Baton Rouge, LA; Keith Barnes, Elder and Youth Pastor at City Cathedral; and Pastor McManus, who will deliver the final message of the conference on Sunday, September 7, 2008.

The City Cathedral Ministry team began marching throughout the city in February of 2007. Since they began, over 2,000 men, women and children have made decisions to serve the Lord.

Ministries and youth interested in participating should contact:

City Cathedral Church
ATTN: Wendy Trosclair
8801 Chef Menteur Highway
New Orleans, LA 70127
(504) 246-5121
http://www.180fire.com/

Email: ptrosclair@citycathedral.org

12th Annual Harvest Cup Polo Classic Raises Money For Junior League Community Projects

Please mark your calendars for Sunday October 26, 2008 from 12 Noon – 5 PM

The Junior League of Greater Covington will sponsor the 12th Annual Harvest Cup Polo Classic on October 26, 2008 from 12 Noon – 5 PM at John Melton’s Folsom Equestrian Center on Highway 40 in Folsom.

Funds raised from the 12th Harvest Cup Polo Classic will benefit the Junior League of Greater Covington’s Community projects in St.Tammany Parish including Hope House Child Advocacy Program, Habitat for Humanity, New Heights Equestrian Center, and Southeast Hospital Adolescent Unit as well as serving the community through their own signature projects including Children’s Museum of St. Tammany, Career Corner, and The Museum Without Walls.

Watch two exciting polo matches, dine on great food and beverages from over 50 local restaurants and bars, be entertained by Four Unplugged, watch football games on a large screen in the catered, air conditioned Polo Pub Tent, browse through the Silent Auction Tent sponsored by Omni Bank which has over 150 items up for bid, and take a chance on purchasing a $20 raffle ticket for a $2500 gift certificate to be used toward the purchase of an Omega watch at Lee Michael's Fine Jewelers Lakeside Shopping Center.

Ticket prices are $75.00 per person prior to event or $100.00 at the gate.

For more information please call the Junior League Cottage at 985.892-5258 or check the JL website @ http://www.jlgc.net, where you can purchase tickets online.

The Junior League of Greater Covington is an organization of women committed to promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women and improving the community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. Its purpose is exclusively educational and charitable.

Thoughts on another visit to New Orleans …

2008-09-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

From our Cincinnati base we visit New Orleans 5 or 6 times a year, generally staying a week or so. Our latest visit was an unscheduled one, when my mother had a heart attack. She is just fine as of this writing.

One big difference on our latest visit is that we spent much of our time with Mom, and were not looking at real estate. The previous three visits were totally dominated by looking at houses that we might live in, or lots on which we might build when we move back to New Orleans. One visit was dedicated to looking at lots where we might build a version of a model home that we particularly liked.

We are still talking to the builder of the model home, Donny Natal. He has a couple of lots available in Lakeview, our current choice of neighborhood. We have previously also looked at houses in uptown New Orleans, and in Metairie.

Somehow we have never gotten sufficiently enthused to purchase any property. Our real estate agent, Eileen Wallen, has been absolutely wonderful. She did so much homework, knew our preferences, scheduled appointments, and accompanied us on just about every viewing. Use her if you need a realtor; call her at (504) 250-5656. This may assuage some of our guilt about working her so hard when we apparently could not make a move.

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm is toward whether we really want to return to New Orleans. We have some wonderful lifetime friends there, but our life in Cincinnati is very good. We are making some good friends, and are pleasantly busy.

One of our New Orleans friends keeps asking us to assess a probability, in percent, that we might move back to the area. When our real estate search started, we were quoting 80%. Now we are hopelessly stuck on 50%. We have a lot of soul-searching to do.

Women Doing Good (Saturday Edition)

2008-09-20T01:01:00.003-04:00

This item was contributed by Lesley Estep of SELF Magazine in New York City:

(Pictured is Kimberly Kelleher, SELF’s Vice President and Publisher; a photo of Dian Ross was not available at press time).

I am writing to introduce our “Women Doing Good” event that will be recognizing the work of Dian Ross. Dian single-handedly delivered 30,000 books to children of low income families and those devastated by Hurricane Katrina, offering them an opportunity to improve their lives through the gift of reading. Maybelline New York is honored to acknowledge her remarkable contributions through their Beauty of Education initiative.

SELF Magazine created the Women Doing Good initiative in 2008 to honor women who enrich their communities and the world by working to empower and enhance the lives of others. Dian will be receiving a national award and a $10,000 donation to help continue her work in her charity, First Book.

Dian is currently living in Diamondhead, Mississippi, and will be traveling to New York to receive her award on September 24, 2008. The Women Doing Good event will take place at Top of the Rock in New York City.

Hoda Kotb will be the ceremony’s special guest host. Kotb, co-host of NBC’s Today Show and four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist is also a breast cancer survivor and activist for prevention and treatment for all women.

New Orleans is worth rebuilding ...

2008-09-14T01:01:00.014-04:00

Last Sunday's blog on whether New Orleans is worth rebuilding aroused a lot of comment. Here is a stronger case for rebuilding offered by our good friends, Janice and Steve Shull:

Beyond the intangible sense of place of New Orleans is the historical fact of an old city, born of the French, nurtured by the Spanish, and playing a major role in American history. Its culture and vitality have been studied, romanticized, and mimicked, but never reproduced. Strands of many other places, other languages, other stories are woven into New Orleans' singular fabric.

But there has always been an ugly underbelly to life in N.O. and Katrina exposed it all. Unfortunately, opportunities for a true revitalization of an impoverished city have been missed or cynically dismissed. Still, New Orleans survives and its resilience must inspire hope to anyone who suffers a disaster. Just as the World Trade Center site has become a sacred place, New Orleans' symbolic meaning is powerful.

The historic heart of town is on high ground, but other parts of the city are so damaged that they should not be rebuilt. Only a small fraction of properties have been rehabilitated in the Lower 9th Ward, and the west end of Lakeview and New Orleans East remain terribly vulnerable to another Katrina-type storm.

New Orleans will never be the power-house city that it aspired to be in the 1970s-1980s. With astronomical insurance rates, exorbitant building costs, rents that are 50% higher than in 2005, and a job market offering primarily low-paying wages, there isn't much to attract people to live and work there. Perhaps the answer lies in accepting New Orleans' destiny as a tourist mecca on the order of Savannah or Key West. It doesn't have to be a DisneyWorld or Williamsburg!

Mark Abkowitz, a professor of Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University, has stated that only a long-term, systematic and strategic approach to hurricane protection will reduce the risk in the Gulf Coast. The patchwork, reactionary response to each and every hurricane is doomed to failure at some point.

Hurricane-strength building codes must be strictly enforced, and this scattershot rebuilding throughout greater New Orleans should be stopped. But you know well that the political implications often outweigh common sense.

Remember, too, that it was not Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, but rather a failure of government on all levels to provide the levee protection that had been promised and guaranteed at Level 3 and then to coordinate a disaster plan effectively to ensure public safety after the storm. The hard lessons of Katrina are paying off in better emergency management all over the U.S., whether from floods, tornadoes, earthquakes or what have you. The cost, while heavy (much less than Iraq, however!), does benefit taxpayers. One academic source computed the cost at $98 a year in additional taxes per person to achieve the stronger hurricane protection needed. This opinion piece in the L.A. Times argues that it is the right thing to do: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-barry23apr23,0,5522292.story

We have visited the city many times since Katrina and it continues to be a hard place to live. You just can't imagine what people have gone through in the last three years to keep the city alive. Hard, hard work and great personal sacrifice are the words that describe life in New Orleans.

Janice Shull retired as a law librarian from the Supreme Court of Louisiana, and now works as a volunteer at the Venice Archives and Area Historical Collection. Steve Shull is an emeritus professor of Political Science with the University of New Orleans. His specialty is the presidency, and he has written several books on the subject. The Shulls miss New Orleans but have learned to appreciate small-town life in Venice FL.

Clarifications by Dr. Cigler (Monday Edition)

2008-09-08T06:49:00.003-04:00

Beverly Cigler, a public policy professor at Penn State University, took issue with our editing of Sundays blog.

She referred to her quote "My own personal opinion is that you shouldn't rebuild in areas unless you can make them safe," she said. "And nobody's had the willingness to confront these kinds of issues."Her clarification: ""Areas" refers to the most low lying, unsafe areas and I suggested making them safe before rebuilding. Much of what I told the interviewer (Lara Jakes Jordan) about "these kinds of issues" was omitted. Specifically, I discussed trade-offs among and between economic development, private property rights, and wise environmental and land use policies (vs. solely structural solutions such as levees.)"

Professor Cigler clarified another point from her interview with Lara:

"Lara--I...Some people think I said things I didn't say or infer, such as New Orleans across the board should not be rebuilt. That's likely because of the title of the article and the way that interviewee comments were ordered.

"Readers aren't aware of my explanation of the pro's and con's of structural (levees) vs. non-structural (land use, etc.) options, concluding that the levees will be be fully strengthened across 350 miles of levees for the next 3 years. They miss the fact that parts of the city are at different elevations and that the tough decisions regarding areas of lowest elevation have not been well addressed. My comments on wetlands, building codes, and other land use measures were to say that structural options aren't the only concern; instead, a mix is needed in rebuilding and rebuilding in particular areas should not be done unless the areas are safe.

"People are interpreting my comments to say simply that NOLA should not be rebuilt because it is a soup bowl. It is a soup bowl, but I made all kinds of comments regarding how to make it safe. My comments to you were focused on explaining the difficult trade-offs among and between economics, property rights, wise planning, and other choices for the areas of lowest elevation.My sending the material to you on Congressional appropriations vs. how much has been spent was to further the argument that there's a long way to go to say that NOLA is safe.

"I never said or implied that NOLA wasn't worth rebuilding. If anything, I've argued for a faster and more competent pace of rebuilding. I remember mentioning that 75 million people live in coastal areas in the U.S. I wouldn't suggest that they be moved or not allowed to live there, akin to arguing that NOLA shouldn't be rebuilt....I think it's time for a report on the tough decisions that need to be made along our coasts, along California's canyons, etc.”

Is New Orleans Worth Rebuilding?

2008-09-07T01:01:00.001-04:00

Hurricane Gustav has revived the question in our title for the first time since Katrina. The following discussion is adapted from an article by Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press Writer:

Those who love New Orleans say Hurricane Gustav is proof that the billions of dollars spent to protect the city and bring it back to life after the devastating 2005 storm season was worth it.

Despite fizzling out shortly after it made landfall Monday, Gustav spurred the government into action, probably costing millions of dollars, and put a nation angered by the bungled response to Katrina three years ago back on alert. Would it be worth the cost to rebuild New Orleans again if the storm had been worse?

Since Katrina ripped through New Orleans three years ago, the federal government has devoted at least $133 billion in emergency funds and tax credits for Gulf Coast disaster relief. Much of it went to rebuilding and better protecting New Orleans from future storms. How much more will be needed after Gustav — or Hurricane Hanna, as that storm creeps up Florida's eastern coast — is unclear.

Former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., infuriated Louisiana lawmakers when he suggested in 2005 that a lot of New Orleans "could be bulldozed" after Katrina and questioned the wisdom of rebuilding it. More dispassionate observers note that no matter how much is spent, New Orleans will continue to swallow federal dollars with each gulp of the Gulf or Lake Pontchartrain.

To die-hard residents and other devotees of the Big Easy, the money poured into the Gulf Coast to continue oil production, preserve local culture and, most importantly, strengthen levees showed that New Orleans could withstand another battering by Mother Nature.

Some observers aren't so sure.

"It's a soup bowl and it's not safe," said Beverly Cigler, a public policy professor at Penn State University, referring to the city's geography. "My own personal opinion is that you shouldn't rebuild in areas unless you can make them safe," she said. "And nobody's had the willingness to confront these kinds of issues."

Yet abandoning New Orleans hardly seems an option either.

The Gulf Coast is home to nearly half the nation's refining capacity, 25 percent of offshore domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output. Tens of thousands of construction workers, hoteliers, nurses and other service employees who flocked to New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath have helped keep local unemployment low. Not to mention that giving up would, essentially, mean spending all those billions of dollars for naught.

"It's clear that a lot of the money was spent well — even if it's far too early to declare victory," said Don Kettl, University of Pennsylvania public policy professor and co-editor of "On Risk and Disaster: Lessons From Hurricane Katrina." "If you walk away, you are condemning the city to tremendous suffering," Kettl said. "As serious as the suffering was the last time, it didn't completely destroy the city. The real challenge is deciding what kind of city you want."

Levees and YouTube (Thursday Edition)

2008-09-04T10:58:00.003-04:00

Levees.org is an organization that is calling for a thorough investigation of the causes of Hurricane Katrina. Founder Sandy Rosenthal insists that it was not a natural disaster, as normally depicted, but an engineering disaster. They claim that their mailing list contains over 21,000 subscribers.

Their current video is called "The Katrina Myth," and it is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wln_iq5bc8k). Producer Ken McCarthy speaks of the success of the video: “The good news is that we successfully made the leap from top rated News Video of the day to top rated News Video of the week. That's a good thing because otherwise the video's high visibility would have evaporated from YouTube today.”

Sandy was tracking Hurricane Gustav and sent a “before the power goes out here” email, primarily made up of Ken’s suggestions. If you are tired of Katrina stories then skip it, but the video is compelling.

Apparently the organization has found that the video has been a powerful way to state their case to a wide audience. I continue to be amazed at the power of YouTube.

Here are some excerpts from Ken’s suggestions:

It is visits and people who rate and comment on the video that are keeping our message in the public eye. YouTube is a ferociously competitive environment and it's very easy to disappear. So, as always, we need more traffic...

Simple ways to help

1. Write friends, family, colleagues, anyone in your circle, and let them know about the video.

2. If you have a blog, please post the link straight through to the YouTube page so that people can rate, comment on, favorite and forward the video to others. All this helps the video's ratings.

3. Even better than posting to your own blog is considerately posting info about the video and its link to other blogs, especially high traffic ones. Read the blog, find a thread where a comment is relevant, and post there.

4. Write directly to news outlets, people with high traffic blogs, and anyone else you think may have a significant mailing list and ask them to view and then spread the word about the video.
"The Katrina Myth" does the job of clearing up the flood of misinformation, puts people on the side of New Orleans, and directs them to join levees.org.

Coming Back, Part 1 ...

2008-08-31T01:01:00.003-04:00

From a story by Bill Reed of the Philadelphia Inquirer:

NEW ORLEANS -- When Carol Stauder started giving Hurricane Katrina tours, she couldn't get through them without crying. Seeing the devastation caused by the flooding four months earlier -- friends' homes destroyed and neighborhood after neighborhood abandoned -- was too painful.

Almost three years later, most of those homes are still broken and deserted, but what saddens Stauder even more are the empty lots sprinkled among them. The houses have been razed, the debris removed, and all that's left are rectangular patches of grass or weeds.

"They're not coming back," Stauder says somberly of the families who have left for good.
The 63-year-old guide wants her city and its neighborhoods back. And she wants the 10.1 million tourists who visited the year before Katrina to return, too, because they're as much a part of the city's festive scene as the cool jazz and Cajun cuisine.

The truth is that tourism in the Big Easy -- its No. 1 industry -- is bouncing back, big time. This year's Mardi Gras Carnival season drew about 850,000 revelers, approaching the 1.1 million who partied months before Katrina. The 39th Jazz & Heritage Festival "went marvelously well," in spite of torrential rains, organizer Quint Davis says, as about 400,000 people flocked to see the Neville Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Jimmy Buffett and 570 bands perform.

When the seven-day festival wrapped up at 7 each night, all those people needed food, entertainment and lodging. About 130 restaurants have opened since Katrina, joining such icons as Antoine's, Brennan's and Arnaud's, to restore the city as a culinary destination.

Davis says he counts at least 103 clubs in the French Quarter and in clusters around the city, showing that the musicians are back. It was front-page news when favorite son Aaron Neville decided to return, and on a rainy Friday night, I couldn't get a ticket to see jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis -- father of Wynton and Branford -- play at Snug Harbor on Frenchmen Street.

And hotels are up to 33,498 rooms -- 87.6 percent of the pre-Katrina number.

If I Were President, Part 3 …

2008-08-24T01:01:00.004-04:00

Vote for me based on the following plank in my platform:

Domestic Affairs

We covered an important component of our domestic program when we earlier discussed energy policy. Let’s now discuss other domestic issues.

“It’s the economy, stupid” was the mantra in Bill Clinton’s first and successful run for the presidency. I think James Carville was the one who coined the phrase.

It’s that time again. I will meet with specialists on tax policy and develop a consensus of what is an appropriate and fair tax program. My sense is that the new system should bring in more revenues than the current tangle of regulations, many of them favoring special interest groups, many favoring groups that no longer need the favor (farmers, oil companies). I have probably now lost the farm belt and oil patch votes.

Still, the new code must not be anti-business in any way. The U.S. got to be the dominant economy in the world by encouraging investment and allowing handsome rewards to the successful. Perhaps more of these rewards can be taxed in some way, but that is for the experts to discuss.

Then there’s that pesky foreclosure problem. Current congressional proposals for addressing the problem are strictly election-year politics, ways to strengthen the images of incumbents, particularly those in seriously contested races. These proposals reward irresponsible lenders and irresponsible borrowers.

And we need to do something about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their profits go to shareholders while losses are picked up by the Feds (meaning us). This is almost un-American! Let the investors take their lumps in a down market like the rest of us have to.

Why do government supports, subsidies, and other goodies go exclusively to the rich? I am not suggesting re-distribution of wealth, simply fair play and common sense.

That’s where I stand. Are we in good hands?

North to Alaska ...

2008-08-17T01:01:00.001-04:00

We are on an Alaskan cruise.

Frommer shares his view of Alaska (slightly edited):

(Nothing compares to) when you see a chunk of ice the size of a building fall from a glacier and send up a huge splash and a wave surging outward, or when you feel a wave lift your sea kayak from the fall of a breaching humpback whale.

Or when you hike to stand on top of a mountain, and from there see more mountaintops, layered off as far as the horizon, in unnamed, seemingly infinite multiplicity.

Or you may come across another mountain range, the sun still hanging high in what should be night, and storm systems arranged across the landscape before you.

Or standing on an Arctic Ocean beach, as you look around at the sea of empty tundra behind you, the sea of green water before you, and your own place on what seems to be the edge of the world.

If I Were President, Part 2 …

2008-08-10T01:01:00.000-04:00

Vote for me, based on the following plank in my platform:

Foreign Affairs

For more then a half-century the U.S. has been the greatest power, military and economic, in the world. This has made the U.S. the source of a great deal of largesse, from sending aid and sending troops, for various reasons, to many of the world’s trouble sites.

It is time that we recognize that times have changed. Why should a nation trillions of dollars in debt and running deficits in the hundreds of billions be expected to take on obligations outside our country? It will be tough many of Americans, but we have a short term financial problem, and have to tighten our budget.

Foreign aid has been given to many countries for various reasons, some good some bad. The types of aid include everything from AIDS vaccines to Africa (good) to propping up the militaries of several countries, including Egypt and Israel (bad).

It is time to stop all forms of foreign aid. We can have a staged withdrawal, perhaps 25% a year for my four years in office. Then each case can be treated on its own merits, if we even care to return to cash giveaways to other countries.

Even while we remain the world’s only remaining superpower, wars have changed from conflicts between countries to “retail” wars of counterinsurgency. Nuclear weapons are proliferating; countries that are on the verge of having nuclear capability include even members of the “axis of evil.”

My proposal is that, for my first term, all military intervention is suspended. This requires a rapid withdrawal of troops for Iraq, and allows for strengthening our force in Afghanistan. Exceptional situations may cause us to deviate from this policy, but only after careful consideration by the President and Congress.

In addition we are calling in all our military from South Korea and other countries that are manned for the former type of wars, and from NATO activities. We may need to keep some troops in Germany to maintain some European presence.

Is this too nationalistic? I suppose, but the world is better off with the financial stability of the United States, and we need a breather.

Family Emergency …

2008-08-03T01:01:00.003-04:00

There has been a slight change in plans. On Sunday we received word that my mother had suffered a heart attack. That kind of news is always disturbing, but in the case of my 90-year-old Mom, age really exacerbates the problem.

My brother called us in Cincinnati at about 7am, and the report was that there were several doctors standing around Mom, and that at one point she had stopped breathing. This really rattled us, and we were in a fog as we made plane reservations, rescheduled several appointments, and began to pack. A later report that she had stabilized was reassuring.

We arrived in New Orleans Monday, just in time for afternoon visiting hours, and went straight to the hospital. The biggest hold up was Dollar Rent-a-Car --- be sure not to ever use them. But I digress.

On our arrival we were very pleasantly surprised to see Mom sitting up, fully conscious. She had just had her breathing tube removed and had a lot of things to say to us that had been bottled up with the tube in.

Mostly she was glad to see her three sons and their wives all together and having a good time. One curious thing about her is that whenever she entertained, her pleasure was not in the event, but in seeing other people enjoying themselves.

Alan and I get along beautifully, but we both have a problem with Gary. Suffice it to say that he had made some questionable moves relating to my mother’s finances, and continues to take advantage of her in various ways.

Food is now an issue. She has always criticized any food cooked by anyone other than herself, and, well you know about hospital food.

As I write this, Mom is recovering very nicely, and has moved from ICU to a regular room. She will be doing cardiac rehab, but otherwise is near full recovery. She was a hardy 90, but I expect she might come out of this a bit frail. I will keep you posted.

If I Were President, Part 1 …

2008-07-27T01:01:00.002-04:00

Vote for me, based on the following plank in my platform:

Energy Policy

Like it or not, despite all the projections of how much alternative energy we will be using over various time periods, our need for oil will be here for decades. There are those who say that today’s projects will not produce a drop of oil for 7-10 years. Well, if we had undertaken these projects 7-10 years ago we would be selling oil to the Middle East by now. If not, 7-10 years from now we will be having the same argument.

I consider myself an environmentalist, though some might disagree. Sure, this proposal might retard development of renewable energy, but we can level that out with tax subsidies to the alternative fuel developers while phasing out subsidies to the oil industry.

This approach might extend our dependence on oil, but at least it won’t be foreign oil. Still, attempts to make alternative energy economically feasible will go on, and when they succeed, the marketplace will show its preference for the “greener” source of energy.

Costs and risks involved, and problems of handling resulting waste will prevent any new nuclear power plants being built. Conservation will reduce some of our dependence on oil, but as an old mentor of mine said he’ll believe in the seriousness of the movement when the parking lot of a Sierra Club meeting is full of only bicycles.

This all may sound cynical, but it is realistic. Starting the process of producing more oil is sound from a national security standpoint, and from an economic standpoint.

I am from Louisiana so I have seen oil rigs from the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. Newer techniques vastly reduce the unattractiveness of these rigs. Some of these techniques also remove the requirement that a rig be directly over the source of the oil.

So let’s produce a balanced approach to producing the oil where it is most plentiful. Even ANWR should be on the table.

Wait! I have one more major plank. Oh well, maybe next time.

Jindal steps up again ...

2008-07-20T01:01:00.003-04:00

The TP reports that "Jindal hacks budget earmarks," in a story by Jan Moller:

BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal (pictured) used his line-item veto authority to cut more than $16 million in proposed state spending Monday, killing hundreds of earmarks added by legislators for projects in their districts and signaling a new aggressiveness in dealing with the state budget.

The 258 vetoes in House Bill 1, the state's nearly $30 billion operating budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year, is more than double the combined number of line-item vetoes in the past 12 years. Coupled with Jindal's veto of $9.3 million in spending from a previous budget bill, they suggest the new governor is serious about curbing a cherished legislative tradition of sprinkling the budget with items for constituents, often with little or no oversight.

While critics have long derided such earmarks as pork-barrel spending, defenders say they pay for critical needs that otherwise wouldn't be financed. Gone is money targeted for museums, church groups, festivals, youth programs, nonprofit groups and economic development initiatives, including millions of dollars for the New Orleans area.

"For too long, state government has spent and spent, with little regard for taxpayers' money," Jindal said. ". . . We are striving for an efficient state government that operates transparently, and wisely invests taxpayer money in state priorities."

But the vetoes could also serve to deepen the wound that Jindal opened when he killed a pay raise for legislators last month after promising lawmakers he would stay out of the matter.

More by Jan Moller:

Jindal's vetoes breeding 'distrust.' Lawmakers mull first override session

BATON ROUGE -- As lawmakers stewed over Gov. Bobby Jindal's budget vetoes and mulled whether to return for an unprecedented override session, several agreed Tuesday that the new administration must work hard to repair its relations with the Legislature.

Jindal used his line-item veto authority to chop about 250 legislative earmarks from the state budget this week. "Many of them who serve (in the Legislature), they serve for this very reason," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Michot, R-Lafayette. "They serve to be able to bring money back to their districts."

Sen. Edwin Murray, D-New Orleans, who lost financing for a community center in the Treme area that has been in operation since 1976, said he thinks it is time for lawmakers to assert themselves and hold a veto override session. "I don't understand why it was cut," Murray said. "It serves the only hot meal some people get every day."

Jindal has said that although some of the projects were "worthy," they did not meet his criteria to be included in the state budget.

The 1970s-era state Constitution provides for an automatic five-day veto-override session each year, but it has never been held because lawmakers always vote to cancel it. If one is held this year, it would be scheduled from Aug. 2-6. It takes a two-thirds vote of each chamber to override a veto and a simple majority of just one chamber to cancel the veto session.

Should an override session be held, lawmakers could debate more than 260 cuts Jindal made to three budget bills, as well as the 23 bills Jindal has vetoed since lawmakers went home. Ballots on the session will go out today and must be returned by July 28 at midnight, House Clerk Alfred "Butch" Speer said.

"Dollar Bill" Jefferson ...

2008-07-13T01:01:00.000-04:00

Since being listed in the Congresspedia blogroll, we intend to report more often on the fall congressional campaign in Louisiana, primarily the 2nd district. Following is a profile of the incumbent, adapted from Wikipedia:

William Jennings Jefferson (pictured), born March 14, 1947, represents Louisiana's 2nd congressional district, which includes much of the greater New Orleans area. A Democrat, Jefferson has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1991. He is Louisiana's first black Congressman since the end of Reconstruction.

In May 2006 Jefferson’s Congressional offices were raided, but he was re-elected later that year. On June 4, 2007, a federal grand jury indicted Jefferson on 16 charges related to corruption.

The corruption investigation began in mid-2005, after an investor alleged $400,000 in bribes were paid through a company maintained in the name of his spouse and children. The money came from a tech company named iGate, Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky, and in return, it is alleged, Jefferson would help iGate's business.

On 30 July 2005, Jefferson was videotaped by the FBI receiving $100,000 worth of $100 bills in a leather briefcase at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Jefferson told an investor, Lori Mody, who was wearing a wire, that he would need to give Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar $500,000 "as a motivating factor" to make sure they obtained contracts for iGate and Mody's company in Nigeria.

A few days later, on 3 August 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and, as noted in an 83-page affidavit filed to support a subsequent raid on his Congressional office, "found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers." Serial numbers found on the currency in the freezer matched serial numbers of funds given by the FBI to their informant.

In January 2006, Brett M. Pfeffer, a former aide to Jefferson, implicated him in a corruption scheme involving an Internet company being set up in Nigeria. Pfeffer was president of an investment company in McLean, Virginia. In return for political support for the deal, Jefferson had legal work directed toward his family's operations. It was also said that a daughter of his was put on retainer of the Virginia investment company to the tune of $5,000 a month. Jefferson also is said to have arranged for his family a 5% to 7% ownership stake in the Nigerian Internet company. Pfeffer pled guilty to charges of aiding and abetting bribery of a public official and conspiracy on 11 January 2006 in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. On May 26, he was sentenced to eight years, but was "cooperating in an ongoing probe and may be eligible for a sentence reduction afterward", according to a prosecutor.

Jindal does the right thing ...

2008-07-06T01:01:00.003-04:00

We are in New Orleans this week, so we’ll simply report some news and tell you about the visit next time. Pictured is the New Orleans symbol, the fleur de lis, wrapped in the hope ribbon.

AP, via The New Orleans Examiner, reports that:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has vetoed a bill that would have doubled salaries for the state's lawmakers.

The Republican had previously said he would not veto the bill even though he didn't agree with the raise. The veto came after several election recall petitions were filed against Jindal and other state legislators.

The pay raise has been sharply criticized by bloggers and talk-radio hosts.

The bill would have paid lawmakers $37,500 a year. The National Conference of State Legislatures says it would have made Louisiana legislators the highest-paid in the South and the 14th highest-paid in the country.

Jindal has been mentioned as a possible running mate for presidential candidate John McCain.
Meanwhile WAFB.com discussed some legislator responses:

Some Louisiana legislators are miffed about Governor Bobby Jindal's veto of their proposed pay raises. The governor says that from the beginning, he thought the raises were “excessive” and “unreasonable.” Now, some legislators say that's not true.

56 House members and 20 senators voted in favor of more than doubling their own pay. They put their reputations, and some say, their political futures, on the line for this vote, only to have Governor Jindal change his position and veto it in the final days. "I clearly made a mistake by telling the legislature that I would allow them to handle their own internal affairs and that I would stay out of this page," the governor says.

Senator Danny Martiny of Metairie says Jindal never stayed out of the legislature's business. He says the governor even told him on more than one occasion that their final pay raise proposal was reasonable. "The governor can say whatever he wants -- he knows darn well what he told people (lawmakers)," he says. Martiny says he would not have voted for the raise if the governor had worked against it. Some other legislators say the same.

Of “Do Downtown” and Trailer Parks …

2008-06-29T01:01:00.000-04:00

We continue to try to take advantage of all the activities that Cincinnati has to offer.

A couple of weeks ago we went to “Homearama,” an annual showing of new upscale homes, generally in suburbia. The homes are obscene, approaching 10,000 square feet and fitted out to the max. Apparently, people who can afford $1M+ homes also like basements that approximate a sports bar. All had outdoor dining and BBQ pits to die for.

This past weekend we went to “Do Downtown,” (Cinci Skyline pictured) a good concept but poorly executed. For a fixed price of $20 per person one gets a small appetizer form each of ten downtown restaurants, all within easy walking distance. The poor execution was that the portions were so small, and not indicative of the restaurant’s fare; one was contained by a small cup, like the ones from which we take cough syrup. It was basically a miniature piece of watermelon.

We also went to an open house of downtown condos. Our interest in housing seems to create a source of many early summer outings. The condos were interesting, offering a wide array of layouts and pricing. Living downtown is attractive and seems to be undergoing a growth spurt. Perhaps it’s the high price of gasoline.

Our last activity of the weekend was the “Trailer Park Musical” at the Ensemble Theater downtown. It was a low-brow comedy with good music and an excellent cast.

The two series of plays we subscribed to have ended their seasons. In coming weeks we are attending a Billy Joel concert at Riverbend, and an amateur presentation of “Oliver.” Susan’s nephew is one of the rowdies in “Oliver.”

The first week of July we are visiting New Orleans, renewing friendships and enjoying the town. In August we cruise to Alaska.

I continue to enjoy my volunteer activities. They range from business counseling to assisting an arts organization to politics.

There she goes again ...

2008-06-22T01:01:00.000-04:00

This is extracted from an article I wrote about the race for the House of Representatives in Ohio District 2. I hope you don't mind this double dip:

Being from Louisiana, I know about political incompetence, bad judgment, and corruption. Our congressional delegation includes two stars of the genre, "Dollar Bill" Jefferson and David "caught with his pants down" Vitter.

Disclosure: I volunteered and voted for Republican Vitter because I thought he was an effective senator when he ran on a family values platform. I also thought his good example might combat the perception of Louisiana politicians as corrupt. Ha!

Apparently Cincinnati area voters have their own embarrassment in Jean Schmidt. I knew about the Murtha gaffe even before coming here, but now that I vote in her district I have gotten the pleasure of seeing her up close.

On the Ohio Daily Blog, commenter “Jeff” got a bit overheated as he brought us up to date on Schmidt. Jeff's comment, with minor editing, follows:

Amazing Rep. "Mean Jean" Schmidt (R-Loveland) is on an absolute tear of outrageous fabrications, and the latest one is on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

We all know Schmidt's history of playing fast and loose with the truth -- for example, lying about meeting Tom Noe, lying on her resume, claiming endorsements she didn't have, and plagiarizing an op-ed piece from a colleague's letter to constituents. Recently Schmidt sent out a fund-raising letter falsely asserting that Dr. Victoria Wulsin "participated in grotesque medical experiments," although Schmidt's press person later tried to lie away the lie by saying that she "wasn't suggesting Wulsin participated in the experiments."

Here comes another big one. On June 5th, the truth-challenged Schmidt took her misspeaking skills to the floor of the House, denouncing federal limitations on drilling for oil by declaring that China is currently drilling off the Florida coast.

This very day there is indeed drilling activity off of our country's coast. Not by our U.S. companies. That would be illegal. Instead, the Chinese are drilling off the coast of Florida with their new energy partner, Cuba.

The only problem with Schmidt's unequivocal assertion is that -- you guessed it --- it is false. Western diplomats in Havana tell McClatchy that to the best of their knowledge, there is no Chinese drilling in or around Cuba.

Jindal is blackmailed ...

2008-06-15T01:01:00.006-04:00

I thought Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana would be different. Here are some comments on the mammoth pay raise that the legislature is giving itself, and Jindal's failure to put a stop to it:

From the Louisiana Action Council:

"We are extremely disappointed that the Louisiana House of Representatives chose to pass a pay increase that resisted the ultimate will of the people. Despite the fact that the House members reduced the pay raise from 300% to 200%, there is still no exception for disregarding the thousands of phone calls, letters and emails from residents all over the state pleading for legislators to stand up against this self serving increase in their annual salary."

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From LANewsLink.com:

“Maybe it was just too good to be true. A hugely popular governor getting pretty much everything he and the voters asked for in the way of ethics reform. A move which has put a new face on Louisiana, sweeping behind decades of corruption, greed, and backroom deals.

Governor Jindal says he doesn't like the pay raise. It's overboard, but he says he will not veto this outrageous affront to the voters.

Legislators asked us to give them their jobs fully knowing what the pay was. Everyone whose fingerprints are now on this awful legislation should hang their heads in shame and turn in their political badges. Many of our people are struggling with wages they can barely get by on.

Our legislators should be ashamed of themselves. We urge Governor Jindal to veto SB 672. It's the right thing to do.”

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From Baton Rouge’s WBRZ Channel 2 and the Advocate, Comments (158):

"Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he would let a bill that would triple legislators’ pay become law rather than use his veto pen. Jindal said he did not want to give legislators a reason to sidetrack the bills he wants passed.

Asked if he had been threatened by lawmakers, Jindal said he would not discuss private conversations with legislators.

House speaker Jim Tucker, R-Terrytown, said he has urged Jindal to stay on the sidelines. “I have never threatened the governor,” Tucker told House colleagues Wednesday after a political Web site said he had threatened Jindal with a “government shutdown.”

SB672 would increase legislators annual compensation package to about $70,000 and top legislative leaders to the $100,000 mark. The pay raise would cost taxpayers $5.34 million more annually when it goes into effect July 1.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Mike Michot, R-Lafayette, said there is no money in the budget for the pay raise. The legislation would tie state legislators’ pay to a percentage of that of U.S. congressmen, which is $169,300 today. It would give lawmakers a boost now and guarantee them an increase every time congressmen hike their pay.

The base pay of a legislator would increase from $16,800 to $50,790 — 30 percent of congressional pay. The Senate president and House speaker’s base pay would hit $76,185 under the plan — 45 percent of congressional pay.

Legislators would also continue to get $6,000 in annual unvouchered expense allowance, which is considered income by the federal Internal Revenue Service, as well as per diem payments that sit at $143 for each day they are in legislative session, attending non-session committee meetings or other transacting other legislative business.

The combination translates into a $70,000 a year pay package for rank-and-file lawmakers. The average, full-time state employee’s pay in Louisiana is $36,104 annually. The average Louisiana worker’s pay is $37,946, based on the 2006 census data.

Louisiana legislators’ base pay would be the eighth highest in the nation with the change, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.”

Busy, Busy ...

2008-06-08T01:01:00.001-04:00

I use to say that I was unsuccessfully retired, but I have changed my tune. My retirement is now stimulating, largely because I am busy.

It's amazing how much one's services are in demand when you give them away for free. I now have three agencies for which I volunteer.

In SCORE I do free business counseling (we are the counseling arm of the SBA). I also write and revise short business reports (called "briefs"), and, next Tuesday will team teach a seminar on "Web Site Fundamentals."

For the Fine Arts Fund I am assisting a client ("Catacoustic Consort"), primarily applying for grants. This is a fascinating organization, specializing in putting together concerts of "early music." As I understand it, early means before about the year 1800.

The director is Annalisa Pappano and she plays several of the early instruments. As you might expect, money for such a specialized form of music is tight, and we hope the grants we receive will allow CC to be on sounder footing.

I am also a political volunteer for Victoria Wultsin, who is running for Congress. She is trying to trying to oust 2nd district Representative Jean Schmidt (R-OH). I have done office work, assembled signs, driven the candidate around, did some phone-banking, and last week helped clean up the office.

Wultsin is a terrific candidate who lost to Schmidt in 2006 by a whisker. This time she is out there earlier, better organized and funded, and doing a lot more "retail" politics.

"Vic," as she is called, is at every fair and festival in Greater Cincinnati. We are asked to go also and "show the colors." Last week the major event was "Taste of Cincinnati" where you can get a sample dish from many of the area's finest restaurants, and some not so fine.

So I am busy (maybe too busy) and feeling productive. I guess that can be called a successful retirement.

Of “Jersey Boys” and Hurricanes ...

2008-06-01T06:16:00.003-04:00

Today we are going to the Aronoff Center to see “Jersey Boys.” This is the last play of our “Broadway across America” series, and for the most part it has been very enjoyable. It started off schmaltzy, with “My Fair Lady” and “Camelot,” and picked up some steam with “Wicked” and “The Color Purple.” “The Drowsy Chaperone” was a dud, and “Sweeney Todd” was disappointing.

On another subject, today begins hurricane season, and Susan will be on high alert through November. Below are excerpts from a couple of articles on the subject:

Tropical Storm Arthur, by the Associated Press.

Tropical Storm Arthur, the first storm of the 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season, is producing heavy rain as it moves west across Mexico's southern Yucatan Peninsula.
The National Hurricane Center says the storm is producing heavy rains early Sunday morning. But it's disorganized and is expected to be downgraded to a tropical depression later in the day.

A tropical storm warning is in effect for the eastern coast of the peninsula from Cabo Catoche, Mexico, south through Belize. Forecasters say the storm could drop 5 to 10 inches of rain and cause flash floods and mud slides.

Get a "Gameplan" to Prepare for Hurricane Season, by Laila Morcos of New Orleans' ABC 26.

The latest Mason-Dixon poll shows that 56 % of those surveyed wouldn't be prepared if a hurricane comes our way.

Governor Jindal says, "Let's not wait till you're watching on TV and seeing that it's two days off the coast because it will be so much more difficult to find the supplies to gather the medicines, the food the water the batteries. I guarantee you that stores will run out of those supplies."

He also says with high gas prices, an evacuation plan is especially important. "We actually do now have contracts in place for public transportation, but I don't want people to become dependent or complacent with that as their first line of defense."

Of Taste and Levees ...

2008-05-25T06:47:00.002-04:00

One of the pleasures of living in Cincinnati is being able to get together with Susan’s brother Harley and his wife Jascia. The major discussion topic was politics, lately the source for a lot of laughs.

They visited with us last night for a going away party for Matt, who is going back to the University of New Orleans (UNO) for his senior year. Matt has been staying with us for a few months and leaves Thursday for UNO. He will get to experience dorm life for the first time.

Later today we are going to the “Taste of Cincinnati.” At Fountain Square, we get to taste samples of food from some of Cinci’s finest restaurants. We will then do some campaigning for Dr. Victoria Wulsin, Democratic candidate for Congress, handing out campaign literature at the “Taste.”

Meanwhile, on the New Orleans front, fears are being fanned on the flood protection front. Below are excerpts from an article by Cain Burdeau,of the Associated Press:

Leaky New Orleans levee alarms experts

NEW ORLEANS — Despite more than $22 million in repairs, a levee that broke with catastrophic effect during Hurricane Katrina is leaking again because of the mushy ground on which New Orleans was built, raising serious questions about the reliability of the city's flood defenses.

Outside engineering experts who have studied the project told The Associated Press the type of seepage spotted at the 17th Street Canal in the Lakeview neighborhood also afflicts other New Orleans levees and could cause some of them to collapse during a storm.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent about $4 billion so far of the $14 billion set aside by Congress to repair and upgrade the metropolitan area's hundreds of miles of levees by 2011. Some outside experts said the leak could mean billions more will be needed and some of the work already completed may need to be redone.

"It is all based on a 30-year-old defunct model of thinking, and it means that when they wake up to this one — really — our cost is going to increase significantly," said Bob Bea, a civil engineer at the University of California at Berkeley.

The Army Corps of Engineers disputed the experts' dire assessment. The agency said it is taking the risk of seepage into account and rebuilding the levees with an adequate margin of safety.

Of Bratwursts and Beer ...

2008-05-18T07:40:00.002-04:00

Susan was in New Orleans this past week, at a seminar for a national organization for public opinion research. As part of her visit she spent a little time with our real estate agent, looking at houses in the uptown area. She was not impressed.

She went to only one session at the convention, on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, of all things. A lot of her friends were there and a major subject of conversation was whether we were going to return to New Orleans anytime soon. She and I have declared a moratorium on discussions on the subject until June 1, so she had no answer to give. Susan returns tonight.

Susan’s countdown to the end of her teaching career is down to three weeks. We thought the part-time job would be a good way to phase down to retirement, but she has gotten impatient to be done with teaching. I think it will be tough for her to quickly put together a satisfying retirement experience; like me, she has no real hobbies and it takes a little time to put together a rewarding volunteer schedule.

I continue to enjoy my retirement in Cincinnati. My volunteer work has been more pleasurable than expected. I am doing some writing on business matters, and preparing to team-teach an upcoming seminar for my professional volunteer organization. Today is spring cleaning day at campaign headquarters of my political volunteer organization.

Cincinnati has a strong German tradition, and yesterday I went to Maifest, just across the river in Covington, KY. I guess this is for people who are having trouble waiting for Oktoberfest. My dinner was bratwurst and sauerkraut, washed down by some good German beer.

Hillary Clinton was going to address the group a bit later in the evening. As I followed the crowd walking from the parking area to the Fest I struck up a conversation with a gentleman who is a clinical psychologist. It was his professional opinion that the Clintons are narcissists, and had no business in government.

Of Homestead and Seminars ...

2008-05-11T01:01:00.001-04:00

In response to a Metairie friend’s inquiry as to whether we are returning to the area:

“You ask a tough question. We have been discussing this for months without a decision. We lean toward coming back, and have looked at properties on two recent visits. Unfortunately Susan has this visceral fear of hurricanes that sidetracks us each time.

We are getting ‘plugged in’ in Cincinnati, and it has its charms. Still we miss our friends back home, at least if N.O./Metairie is still home.

Our lease forces us to make a decision by the end of August. We are spending much of August on an Alaskan cruise and I suspect it will be a major topic of discussion on the trip.“

On another subject, I have been working on a “Web Site Fundamentals” seminar which SCORE offers periodically. It is a half-day seminar where I teach the first hour. Yesterday I was working on adding links to example web sites for the presentation.

One topic we discuss is making purchases on the web and I thought eBay might make a good example. I wandered around the site looking for a good page to illustrate the shopping cart and checkout process and decided that none of them was quite illustrative enough. I found a better example on an auto parts site.

Soon I got an email telling me that I had “won” a Toyota Prius. Further down the email I discovered that in exploring the eBay site I had bought a car! Of course I replied that the purchase was an accident, and asked the eBay folks to notify the dealer.

Working on the seminar has been very enjoyable. After each presentation we refine it based on feedback from attendees, and it has morphed from “Internet Marketing” to the current title which is more reflective of seminar content. The seminar is next scheduled for June 10.

Of Louisiana Ethics ...

2008-05-04T05:47:00.003-04:00

An article from AP via the Seattle Times:

New ethics rules touted by Gov. Bobby Jindal as a hallmark of his young administration actually make it harder to prove violations, a government watchdog group said Wednesday.

Lawmakers approved Jindal's legislation during the first of two special sessions he called soon after taking office in January. Jindal repeatedly decried Louisiana's corrupt image during his election campaign.

The problem, according to the nonpartisan Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana, is in the wording of one bill: While existing law requires "reliable and substantial" evidence of wrongdoing in an ethics case, the bill that takes effect Aug. 15 requires a higher, "clear and convincing" standard in ethics cases.

The change will require the gathering of more evidence and could require the re-evaluation of cases now being investigated, the council said.

"It is clear is that this change will slow the prosecution of ethics cases already in the works, likely create a backlog of investigations and discourage violators from admitting guilt when they think the evidence of their offense is slim," the council said.

Critics of the administration have raised questions about the new language in recent weeks. Jindal, asked about the criticism Wednesday before the report's release, said he was not convinced there was a problem.

"I'm not an attorney," he told reporters. "My understanding is there is some disagreement between the ethics board and some of those members and our attorneys about what the appropriate standards should be."

Jindal said those concerned about the issue should make their case to legislators, who are now meeting in regular session. But, he said, he would veto anything that he believes weakens the new ethical standards.

The new ethics legislation included a host of lobbying restrictions, income-reporting requirements for public officials and bans on officials' contracts with government.

Louisiana is only 49th …

2008-04-27T14:49:00.005-04:00

At least we finished ahead of West Virginia:

Louisiana’s legal climate is ranked as the second worst in the country, according to Lawsuit Climate 2008: Ranking the States, the annual assessment of state liability systems conducted by Harris Interactive, a leading national market research firm, and released today by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR).

Louisiana ranked 49th out of 50 states in the study, down one spot from the previous year. In addition, New Orleans/Orleans Parish was named among the ten least fair and reasonable court systems in the country.

Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said the state needs to “take a comprehensive look at fixing the broken lawsuit system,” pointing out that Louisiana has languished near the bottom of the legal climate rankings since ILR and Harris began conducting the state liability system study seven years ago.

A separate survey of Louisiana business owners found 89 percent believe frivolous lawsuits are a serious problem, 58 percent think the number of unfair lawsuits against businesses in Louisiana will increase over the next five years, and 69 percent want the Louisiana Legislature to enact new laws to help protect business from unfair and frivolous suits.

“The best thing Louisiana can do to attract business is to have a balanced legal system,” Donohue said. “An unfair legal system sucks the life out of a state’s economy. It slows business expansion, it kills jobs and it takes money out of consumers’ pockets.”

Donohue noted that the Louisiana Legislature is considering several reform measures, including junk science and asbestos litigation reforms.

Harris asked 957 senior attorneys to evaluate up to five states in which they were “very” or “somewhat familiar” with that state’s litigation environment. Survey respondents assigned each state a letter grade for each of 12 different factors affecting the states’ tort liability system, ranging from the overall treatment of tort and contract litigation to judges’ competence and impartiality. Harris computed an overall score for each state based on these evaluations, then compiled the scores into a ranking of the states.

The survey of 255 Louisiana business owners, 86 percent of them small businesses with fewer than 20 employees, was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies earlier this month. It has a margin of error of +/- 7 percent.

Katrina Victims and Psychological Distress ...

2008-04-20T06:07:00.003-04:00

This could help explain our feeling of displacement and our slightly nutty behavior. Excerpted from the New Orleans Sun:

Researchers have found New Orleanians who lost their homes in Hurricane Katrina were over five times as likely to experience serious psychological distress a year after the disaster than others.

Narayan Sastry of the University of Michigan and Mark VanLandingham of Tulane University examined the mental health status of pre-Katrina residents of New Orleans in the fall of 2006, one year after the hurricane hit the city. The researchers analyzed disparities in mental health by race, education and income.

Of the 144 persons who participated in the pilot study, many were those who moved away from the area after the disaster and had not returned a year later.

Sastry revealed that about 60 per cent of study participants had no psychological distress at the time of the interview, about 20 per cent had mild-to-moderate mental illness, and another 20 per cent had serious mental illness.

Over 50 per cent of the participants were black, nearly two-thirds had a high school diploma or less education, and nearly 60 per cent were unmarried. Nearly three-fourths were employed in the month before the hurricane hit.

They found Blacks reporting substantially higher rates of serious psychological distress than whites, with almost one-third of blacks having a high degree of distress as compared to just six percent of whites.

While people with higher incomes and more education were much less likely to experience serious psychological distress, those born in Louisiana were much more likely to have serious distress.

When the researchers looked at how the extent of housing damage was related to psychological distress a year after the disaster, they found that people who lost their homes were five times more likely than those who did not to have serious psychological distress.

About 66 per cent of the respondents reported that their homes were badly damaged or unlivable.

"Our findings suggest that severe damage to one's home is a particularly important factor behind socioeconomic disparities in psychological distress, and possibly behind the levels of psychological distress. These effects may be partly economic, because, for most families who own their home, home equity is the largest element of household wealth," Sastry said.

"Apart from the financial losses, severely damaged or destroyed housing may prevent people who want to return to New Orleans from doing so because they lack a place to live. This affects their social ties, their employment, and many other factors. The magnitude and permanence of a housing loss suggests that for many people, the psychological consequences of this experience could be profound and lasting," Sastry added.

French Quarter artists cannot sell prints of their work …

2008-04-13T08:01:00.001-04:00

Edited from an article by Bruce Eggler in the Times-Picayune:

Printmakers may have lost a round in their struggle for display space on Jackson Square's fence and sidewalks, but the battle is likely to continue, with the outcome very much in doubt. Rejecting the suggestion of U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle, the New Orleans City Council last week refused to change the law that says only original artworks can be sold on the coveted French Quarter turf, an al fresco gallery strolled by millions of tourists a year.

Artist Holly Sarre, who also sells her works on the Internet and at a local art gallery, filed a suit in federal court in March 2005 challenging the ordinance that allows sales only of works that "have been accomplished essentially by hand" and bans "any mechanical or duplicative process in whole or part."

Artist Marrus (see her art at www.marrusart.com) tells the following story:

I was set up on Jackson Square, with my art, which includes both original paintings and prints of my work. There has been a small, vocal, older group that has a problem with artists selling prints, and they incorporated a few years back, said that they represented everybody, and have been getting money donated in the name of the "Jackson Square Artists," which they then use to harass the rest of us.

That harassment took the form today of a cop, flanked by two court administrators, going around checking everyone's licenses. I'm fine with that, and all my papers are in order, but then they commented that I wasn't supposed to be selling prints. I'm one of at least six artists who got whacked with this, and now we're all in a weird limbo.

So, the next time I went out on the Square …

I set up, sat down, and actually sold a few prints of my work. I was getting into my rhythm, talking art and spirit and passion with wonderful people from everywhere when a long blue shadow fell over the Square.

I looked a few sidewalk sections down to see at least four cops and a half dozen people with clipboards fanning out. I jumped up, not sure what to do, but it was too late. I was surrounded by police and court officials. My vendor number was taken, and my driver’s license information as well. One officer told me to go right on selling my prints, that he’d be back to either subpoena me or write me a ticket.

I don’t know what to do. I’m so frustrated. I moved to New Orleans, in large part, because I thought I could make a living as an artist here. Many of the artists are having their livelihood threatened by this ridiculous ordinance. I can see no valid reason that an artist shouldn’t be allowed to sell prints of her own work.

Why is it so easy for copper thieves and murderers, but so difficult for the good guys to survive?

Big Plans ...

2008-04-06T07:14:00.003-04:00

From an article by Adam Nossiter for the New York Times:

In March 2007, city officials finally unveiled their plan to redevelop New Orleans and begin to move out of the post-Hurricane Katrina morass. It was billed as the plan to end all plans, with Paris-like streetscape renderings and promises of parks, playgrounds and “cranes on the skyline” within months.

But a year after a celebratory City Hall kickoff, there have been no cranes and no Parisian boulevards. A modest paved walking path behind a derelict old market building is held up as a marquee accomplishment of the yet-to-be-realized plan.

There has been nothing to signal a transformation in the sea of blight and abandonment that still defines much of the city. Weary and bewildered residents, forced to bring back the hard-hit city on their own, have searched the plan’s 17 “target recovery zones” for any sign that the city’s promises should not be consigned to the municipal filing cabinet, along with their predecessors. On their one-year anniversary, the designated “zones” have hardly budged.

The city official in charge of the recovery effort, Edward J. Blakely, said the public’s frustration was understandable, but he suggested that bureaucratic hurdles had made moving faster impossible. Mr. Blakely said crucial federal money had only recently become available, the process of designing reconstruction projects within the 17 zones was time-consuming, and ethics constraints on free spending were acute, given a local history of corruption.

Mr. Blakely has been given broad authority — a staff of more than 200 and jurisdiction over eight agencies — in a municipal hierarchy where the mayor, C. Ray Nagin, has adopted a hands-off role. Criticized last year for frequent trips to Australia, where he holds a university post, Mr. Blakely said he had not been there for some months.

The growing frustration points up what has been a recurring theme in New Orleans’s sketchy, on-again, off-again recovery from Hurricane Katrina: grandiose official promises, apparently made to lift the public’s morale, that soon prove unrealistic.

Mayor Nagin remains an elusive figure, occasionally surfacing to take strong issue with local news media portrayals of him, but otherwise delegating much responsibility for the recovery to Mr. Blakely.

There have been some uniquely New Orleans hang-ups as well, said the recovery director; “lot of tensions in the staff,” revolving around race. “Black people have a hard time taking instruction from white people,” said Mr. Blakely, who is black. There is resentment “if a white person asks them to do something. It’s really bad. I’ve never encountered anything like this.”

Visiting New Orleans ...

2008-03-30T10:19:00.002-04:00

We are in New Orleans for our third visit in just over five months. One of the visits was for my mother's 90th birthday. The others were just to visit family and friends, and included trying some of the new restaurants cropping up around town.

The current visit got off to a bad start. We waited over an hour to get a rental car --- the PGA golf tournament was in New Orleans this week and local car rental agencies were overwhelmed. Then, on the way to lunch, I got a speeding ticket (31 in a 20 mph zone). Things smoothed out a bit after that.

We also spent some time researching the current real estate market in New Orleans and nearby Metairie. Our commitment to Cincinnati remains, but we feel that we should continue to monitor the recovery as it affects the areas in which we might be interested if we were to move back.

When Hurricane Katrina hit we had begun a house in the Lakeview section of New Orleans. We had finalized the plans, driven pilings and had built the forms for the slab to be poured. After the storm we lost our interest in completing the project and, in the process, lost a substantial deposit to an unscrupulous builder.

We spent one day looking at houses per sale within our preferred areas, square footage, and price range, and another looking at potential rentals with the same criteria. Rentals were a disaster --- the shortage of rental properties has allowed landlords to ask up to $2,000 a month for properties well below our standards.

Properties for sale, on the other hand, are affected by market factors and there are bargains to be had. The option of building a new house is unattractive, due to high commodity prices and a shortage of qualified labor.

Among the houses we visited was a new one in Lakeview that was particularly attractive and affordable. We visited it three times, the third with our interior designer (my sister-in-law). Across the street there is a row of derelict houses that are remindful of how much further the recovery from Hurricane Katrina has to go.

We could not bring ourselves to make an offer on the house, deciding that we prefer to stay in Cincinnati. The choice was not arrived at easily.

Politics and Population ...

2008-03-23T10:58:00.001-04:00

Want to express your opinions and feelings about the candidates in the 2008 Primaries? Take a survey at the following address:

http://www.psychsurveys.org/brietruesdell/2008primaries

On a subject closer to home here is Russell McCulley's take for Reuters on the New Orleans population dispute:

New Orleans officials said on Thursday they will challenge a U.S. Census Bureau estimate that puts the city's population at 239,000 -- just over half the number before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

They said other counts have found as many as 300,000 residents in the still-recovering city.

Mayor Ray Nagin told a press conference that a lower number would shrink federal aid, discourage Katrina refugees from returning and harm efforts to rebuild the tourism industry.

"Perception is the first reason our citizens returned and more new people are moving into our community," he said. "It is important, very important, that the world continues to know the truth about New Orleans, and the fact that we are still a major city and we are recovering and the recovery grows every day."

The Census Bureau said on Thursday it estimated that 239,124 people lived in Orleans Parish as of July 2007. That number was up from 210,198 in 2006, but down sharply from 452,170 in July 2005.

It also said that Orleans Parish, which encompasses New Orleans, and neighboring St. Bernard Parish were the nation's fastest-growing counties last year, with growth rates of 13.8 percent and 42.9 percent, respectively.

Katrina struck on August 29, 2005, flooded more than 80 percent of the city and forced a near total evacuation. The storm killed more than 1,400 people and uprooted 500,000 along the Gulf Coast.

Recent studies by local demographers have said as many as 302,000 people live in New Orleans.

City officials said Census Bureau methods do not take into account many poor people who do not file federal tax returns or the influx of migrants who have poured into New Orleans to do rebuilding work.

They said they would present their own data to the bureau for review.

Greg Harper, a Census Bureau demographer who worked on the study, said the city's data would be studied.

"We review every challenge we get on a case-by-case basis," he told Reuters. "It's possible that they could be revised."

Attract Entrepreneurs to New Orleans ...

2008-03-16T07:11:00.004-04:00

From CentreDaily.com:

Start Up New Orleans Joins Push to Establish New Orleans As the City of Choice for Innovators and Entrepreneurs

As the momentum of recovery continues to build in the city of New Orleans, a major force has emerged as a key driver of this recovery: entrepreneurs.

Due to the "clean slate" afforded by a city rebuilding itself, this nascent movement is comprised of unconventional, out-of-the-box thinkers who have distinguished themselves in successful careers, and who have sought a city that is cultivating an entrepreneurial culture.

To attract more of these types of individuals, Start Up New Orleans has been established by four of the city's young business leaders. A resource for entrepreneurs seeking information and connections to other entrepreneurs, Start Up New Orleans is designed to leverage the city's unique qualities (rich culture, low costs, economic incentives, talent pool), which distinguish it from anywhere else in the United States.

According to Sean Cummings, a local developer and co-founder of Start Up New Orleans, "New Orleans has always been a beacon for people with imagination, daring, and alternative approaches to solving problems. Our mission is to attract these types of people to New Orleans, and provide them with the information and resources they need to start their businesses here."

"Silicon Valley became the nerve center for technology in the U.S. because of the investment businesses in the region made in attracting and retaining technology people," said Nic Perkin, also a co-founder of Start Up New Orleans and president of the New Orleans Exchange, a new technology start-up. "The same can be said for New York City with financial people. What we're doing here in New Orleans is making this the city of choice for entrepreneurs. If you're smart, motivated and have a track record of success, we want you here."

Offering a mosaic of case studies of success and profiles of innovators whose ideas are changing the Greater New Orleans region for the better, the Start Up New Orleans website, www.startupneworleans.com, is the portal through which entrepreneurs can access information about establishing operations here.

With information also relating to New Orleans leaders in the arts, politics, real estate, economics, cuisine and other areas that are foundational to the identity of the city, Start Up New Orleans is committed to ensuring that entrepreneurs seeking a home for their businesses see New Orleans as the prime location in which to build their futures.

Dr. Wulsin wins Dem primary ...

2008-03-09T07:09:00.000-04:00

The candidate for whom I volunteered, Victoria Wulsin, won the Democratic primary on March 4th. This was the first political race in Ohio in which I have volunteered and it was a fun experience. I did office work, assembled yard signs, and once drove "Vic" to a forum. I worked a polling place on election day in the miserable cold and rain.

The victory party was at Arnold's, oldest bar in Cincinnati. Music was by students from the jazz program at Xavier University. Other than being off-key on "Hey Jude" they did a good job. The Cincinnati Enquirer reported thusly:

"With her win in the Democratic primary Victoria Wulsin won a second chance Tuesday to face off against Republican incumbent Jean Schmidt in Ohio's 2nd Congressional District, beating Steve Black by a decisive margin in the Democratic primary.

Wulsin, 54, a public health physician who lives in Indian Hill, had 58 percent of the vote to Black's 30 percent. William Smith, a truck driver from Waverly who was rarely visible in the campaign, drew 12 percent.

"Tomorrow the work begins to unseat Jean Schmidt," Wulsin said as she claimed victory before supporters at Arnold's Bar & Grill downtown.

Jean Schmidt, the Republican incumbent, also won her primary comfortably. Again to the Enquirer:

"Schmidt said facing Wulsin again will be easier than in 2006.

'Republicans didn't show up. They weren't happy,' she said. 'The dynamics have changed for 2008.' Schmidt noted that, including primaries, this is the fifth election she has won in the 2nd District since 2005.

Wulsin faced off against Schmidt in 2006, and lost by less than 1 percent. This year, she said, an earlier start and more aggressive campaign gave her confidence she can win in November.

'What's the difference this year?' Wulsin said. 'I'm better known. The issues I talked about two years ago are even more important now, like bringing home the troops and becoming more energy-efficient.'"

With the general election eight months away campaigning slows down considerably for a while. I will let you know how Vic does in November.

UN Experts Criticize New Orleans Housing ...

2008-03-02T13:42:00.004-05:00

From an article by John Moreno Gonzales, Associated Press Writer:

UN Experts Chide New Orleans Move to Demolish Public Housing Projects, Saying It Hurts Blacks

Two human rights experts for the United Nations on Thursday criticized a federal plan to raze public housing projects in New Orleans, saying it will force the predominantly black residents into homelessness.

New Orleans advocates clamoring to save 4,500 public housing units claimed a victory. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which wants to replace the decades-old housing projects with mixed-income, mixed-use development, called the U.N. experts "misinformed."

The statement issued out of Geneva was not a U.N. finding, but only the individual views of Miloon Kothari, a special investigator on housing matters for the U.N. Human Rights Council, and Gay McDougall, a lawyer who is an expert on minority and rights issues.

They charged that demolition would harm thousands of people by denying them a place to live in a city where housing already is scarce since Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005.

"The authorities claim that the demolition of public housing is not intentionally discriminatory," Kothari and McDougall said, but the "predominantly African-American residents" will be denied their "internationally recognized human rights" to a home.

They commented a day before a U.N. racism panel planned to discuss Katrina recovery efforts and public housing in New Orleans and also was expected to comment on allegations of racial discrimination in the United States. Neither expert was involved with that committee's hearings.

Local officials said the U.N. experts were too detached from the complexities of the post-Katrina city to claim razing of the buildings was racist.

"The past model of public housing in New Orleans has been a failed one -- years of neglect and mismanagement left our public housing developments in ruin," the city council said in a statement issued Thursday. "These are critical times in our city's history -- we can choose to continue on the path of progress and positive change or we can choose to maintain the status quo."

Council members unanimously supported the demolition plan in December, in a meeting marred by violence when some protesters tried to force their way into the packed chambers. The protesters have said they were denied their legal right to enter.

The demolition of the housing projects appears all but assured. Early stages have begun at some developments, while others are waiting only for demolition permits.

Momentum Makes a Comeback ...

2008-02-24T18:49:00.003-05:00

CINCINNATI - Here in Ohio, next week's primary is considered pivotal. Here is Slate Magazine's take on the current state of the Democratic race:

It’s been more than a year since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced their exploratory committees. Ever since, Democrats across the country have been dragged through 19 debates, $200 million-plus in fundraising, and 40 primaries and caucuses. After tens of thousands of handshakes, thousands of stump speeches, and hundreds of meet-and-greets, Democrats are tired. They want one candidate—and that candidate is going to be Barack Obama.

We don’t have to look any further than Texas and Ohio to see the exhaustion firsthand. Rasmussen polls had him down by 16 points in Texas eight days ago (post-Potomac, pre-Wisconsin). Now he trails by only three points. The newest Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that Texans like Clinton more than Obama on the issues that matter most—health care and the economy. Yet he’s in a statistical tie with her overall. Why? Because 47 percent of the state’s Democrats believe he has the best chance of getting elected president in November—thirty-six percent say that’s the case for Clinton. In Ohio, there’s an even larger disparity between whom Ohioans favor—Clinton—and whom they think can win in November, Obama.

For all of the talk about the primary fight going all the way to the election, it was probably never possible—especially not once a Republican nominee was selected. The two electorates originally treated the candidates as they would shiny toys—with wide-eyed attention, which then faded to boredom. But once the Republicans decided on their favorite (not so new) toy, the Democrats realized playtime was over.

Electability was bound to rule the decision-making once the GOP forced the Dems’ hand, and Obama effectively spun his head-to-head poll numbers into momentum. Remember momentum? It used to be that useless, easily derided metric because it was so unreliable while both races were unsettled. Now it’s likely to decide the nomination.

Which brings us to today—on the verge of Texas and Ohio. At this point, Obama’s momentum leads to Clinton supporters’ resignation. Texas and Ohio Democrats could prolong this battle, but they’re tired of not knowing who the nominee will be. The Democrats want what the Republicans already have—a candidate they can call their own. If that means some Democrats have to go to bed with their second-best, then so be it.

Can-do spirit revives Big Easy ...

2008-02-17T07:30:00.003-05:00

From an article by Robert Novak in the Chicago Sun-Times:

The imposing presence of Robert A. Cerasoli as the city's first inspector general is the clearest sign that changes wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were not limited to physical devastation. By declaring war on municipal corruption, Cerasoli has signaled that life in the Big Easy no longer will be so easy.

I spent two days here with Donald E. Powell, federal coordinator for Gulf Coast rebuilding. Physical reconstruction is slow, and the city never will regain its former size or appearance. But civic leaders I met agreed that law enforcement, criminal justice, education and health are better than before Katrina.

Louisiana politicians grumble that the flow of about $120 billion from Washington is insufficient, and they mourn for about 180,000 New Orleanians who have left the area. But that does not worry the rebuilders. ''We don't want to rebuild an old New Orleans,'' insurance executive and civic leader John Casbon told me. School reformer Sarah Usdin said improvement in schools "never would have happened'' save for the storm.

At the heart of the Katrina-inspired revival is a transformed mind-set in a city traditionally more interested in good times than good government. For the first time, New Orleans elites are concentrating on something other than Mardi Gras.

A sign of change that transcends federal dollars was the arrival last August of Cerasoli, the nation's foremost inspector general, who served 10 years as Massachusetts inspector general. ''I was amazed when I arrived to find that just about everybody I met had been the victim of a holdup,'' Cerasoli said. He wondered why crime was much more rampant in New Orleans than in Atlanta, a larger city with a smaller police force.

Cerasoli is working closely with U.S. Attorney Jim Letten to crack down on corruption. In a city whose good-time image belies the high murder rates and violent crime that preceded Katrina, the new local district attorney, Keva Landrum-Johnson, and police chief Warren Riley are bringing reform to the law enforcement system. As founder of the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, Casbon has led business community pressure for reform in the district attorney's office.

This spirit of reform seems to have eluded re-elected Mayor Ray Nagin. He is not tarred with corruption in a city where his former possible successor, Councilman Oliver Thomas, last year pleaded guilty to taking bribes and 85 other officials have been convicted or indicted recently. But neither is Nagin considered a reformer at city hall. There, the new spirit is typified by City Council President Arnie Fielkow, elected in 2006 after running the New Orleans Saints' front office.

Of Monroe, Sleep, and SCORE ...

2008-02-10T13:11:00.000-05:00

Recently we visited our son Matt in Monroe MI, which is just a bit north of Toledo OH. The four-hour drive from Cincinnati was rather effortless though we stretched it out a bit since Susan is only good for about an hour’s driving at a time.

Matt is very gainfully employed as a database administrator for a steel company. He enjoys the work considerably, and has achieved some recognition for his efforts.

The time spent with Matt was very enjoyable. We made a trip to a very nice mall in Toledo to purchase some items to bolster Matt’s professional wardrobe. Other than that we had lively conversations over dinner the three nights we were there.

Monroe’s restaurant scene left much to be desired, but we made the best of it. If you visit Monroe be sure to try the Michigan Bar and Grill. Be sure not to stay at the Del Rio on Elm Street.

Monroe is of some interest with an old town, a couple of museums and a statue of the town’s favorite son, General Custer. As I recall, he was not one of history’s great generals.

On another topic, I took a sleep test a couple of weeks ago which revealed that I have a mild case of sleep apnea. I get very little REM sleep, and wake up seven times an hour. In a follow-up test, with a mask and humidifier apparatus I slept much better.

I now have the apparatus, called a CPAP, at home. I must not have the hang of it because I seem to be sleeping less with it on than I was before.

In my other activities I have gotten a little busier than I intended to in retirement. My activities with SCORE, a business counseling agency, have become far more demanding than I expected. In addition I will be a speaker at an Internet Marketing seminar later this month and the preparation has been intense.

Of Mardi Gras and Super Tuesday ...

2008-02-03T10:31:00.000-05:00

We will miss Mardi Gras this year, not that we participated much when we lived in New Orleans. Susan usually went skiing in Colorado. I could usually find a party that did not require that I battle the crowds. Call us Scrooges, but I have more or less participated in 60 or so Mardi Gras and they begin to look the same after about 30 times.

This year we are in Cincinnati, interested more in “Super Tuesday” than the festivities in New Orleans. The presidential race this year is a bit more interesting than in recent years, though I can’t stand one more debate.

Today’s related story comes from AP, via KATC-3 in Lafayette:

That happy, sing-song sound heard on Bourbon Street is trickle-down economics at its best as hundreds of thousands of Carnival season visitors spend themselves silly before Fat Tuesday.

The city's tourism industry, getting back on its feet after Hurricane Katrina, is counting on a big weekend crowd to fill restaurants and hotels leading up to Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) on Feb. 5.

The payday may be big for the hotels and restaurants _ hundreds of millions of dollars in a typical Carnival _ but for rank-and-file workers it's a chance to fatten the purse with the payoff from a healthy helping of hospitality.

At Rick's Cabaret in the French Quarter, income from tips could rise 30 percent over a typical weekend for Phoebe, who snaps up tips for her dances from a largely male crowd that wanders in to eat, drink and behold the charms of scantily clad women.

"You get a lot of people who ride in the parades who will come in, party, get loose, getting ready for their rides," said Phoebe, who for privacy reasons would only identify herself by her first name. "They're happy, in good spirits and income does go up."

Weather, Here and There ...

2008-01-27T07:33:00.000-05:00

Cincinnati weather has been what the weather forecasters call “bitterly” cold, though it is beginning to moderate. Otherwise the Cincinnati experience is going quite well.

We saw the play “Wicked” last weekend. It was very good but not quite up the hype it received. Last week I also began two adult education courses, “In the News,” and “The Gift.” The former is about current events; the teacher functions more like a moderator, presenting an issue and then encouraging comments from the audience. The latter is about improving self-knowledge, and I can use more of that.

Much of my time last week was spent on preparation for a workshop for SCORE. The subject is Internet marketing and I am conducting the first of three sections. I modified the Power Point slides used in a previous presentation to more suit my style, and did a good job if I must say so myself.

Following is today’s New Orleans story, from AP via Yahoo:

NEW ORLEANS - A lively and sometimes scrappy debate on whether global warming is fueling bigger and nastier hurricanes like Katrina is adding an edge to a gathering of forecasters here.

The venue for the 88th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society could not have been more conducive to the discussion: The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center is where thousands of people waited for days during the storm to be evacuated from a city drowning in water and misery.

Although weather experts generally agree that the planet is warming, they hardly express consensus on what that may mean for future hurricanes. Debate has simmered in hallway chats and panel discussions.

A study released Wednesday by government scientists was the latest point of contention.

The study by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Miami Lab and the University of Miami postulated that global warming may actually decrease the number of hurricanes that strike the United States. Warming waters may increase vertical wind speed, or wind shear, cutting into a hurricane's strength.

The study focused on observations rather than computer models, which often form the backbone of global warming studies, and on the records of hurricanes over the past century, researchers said.

New Frontier ...

2008-01-20T07:31:00.000-05:00

A friend and regular reader tells me that I paint a pretty bleak picture of N.O. His point is well taken. In my defense, I scan national sources to bring you articles you may not have seen and these are generally negative. Following is an upbeat story by Korina Lopez from USA TODAY:

Despite all its problems, New Orleans is attracting new residents.

David Eisner, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, says a growing trend, dubbed "the brain-gain phenomenon," is getting traction in New Orleans. "Katrina offers a new frontier for people who care about social change," he says.

After two years of volunteering in AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps), Ashley Sloan, Greg Loushine and Jackie Smith decided to start their own non-profit group, Live St. Bernard.

"There were so many volunteers and not enough skilled workers," Sloan says. "So volunteers are often left standing around, waiting to be shown what to do. We wanted to start a program designed to attract and retain skilled laborers to the area."

Nathan Rothstein, executive director of NOLA YURP Initiative (New Orleans, La., Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals), moved to New Orleans after he spent his senior-year spring break volunteering in the area. Katrina "is our generation's civil rights movement," says Rothstein, 23. "People come from all over to make an impact, to have a part in history." He estimates 5,000 people have settled in the area.

And Richard Campanella, a geographer with Tulane University's Center for Bioenvironmental Research, estimates that 2,000 to 3,000 working professionals have moved in.

Zack Rosenburg, a Washington, D.C., criminal defense attorney, and his wife, Liz, who worked in the non-profit sector, were so deeply affected that they started the non-profit St. Bernard Project, which helps find money, supplies and labor to assist residents in moving back into their homes. With the help of volunteers, the St. Bernard Project has rebuilt 88 homes in the past 16 months.

"Many volunteers stay because they bond with and identify with residents," he says. "It's hard for the volunteers to leave and continue with their lives after bonding with the residents." The couple have decided to make New Orleans their permanent home.

"New Orleans represents the great optimism of America," Eisner says. "We've seen people turn their experience in long-term volunteering to inform their career paths. We've seen people move to change their lives of success to lives of significance."

Class War?

2008-01-13T07:10:00.000-05:00

The following does not necessarily represent the position of this blog but I felt it would be interesting to add some diversity to the opinions presented in this space. The following is from the Louisiana Weekly (January 7, 2008), excerpted from a guest column by Robert N. Taylor:

Last month's scenes from New Orleans caught on video and posted on the Internet were racially horrifying: Police using electric tasers and tear gas to suppress protesters who were trying to enter a City Council meeting to block a federal plan to demolish thousands of homes in low-income housing projects. There was a SWAT team standing between the protesters and the City Council members who pretended not to notice as people were tasered, gassed, handcuffed and arrested.

People were screaming amid the chaos and disturbing unity of city officials and predatory capitalists hell bent on permanently ridding the Hurricane Katrina devastated city of as many of its low income Black residents as possible.

And make no mistake about it. Despite the reassuring words of some City Council members to build a new and better city for everybody, the true purpose of demolishing what is left of those low-income housing projects was to rid the city of low-income Blacks. The demolition plan is an act of class war supported by both Black and white middle class members of the City Council who have united with predatory capitalists determined to remake New Orleans into a whiter and wealthier city.

There was talk of how crime ridden the housing projects had been. But there was no pledge to build other housing for the poor. At best, the poor would be scattered to other low-income areas and at worst they would be permanently driven from the city.

And who supported the demolition plan? First, there was the Bush administration whose housing department devised the fiendish plan because it wants Blacks scattered and not concentrated for political power. Second, middle class Black and white city officials who want to rid the city of as much of its poor as possible. Third, there is the unseen hand of predatory capitalists who have long seen nothing but profit from driving out the poor and building upscale housing and business developments.

Murder Capitol?

2008-01-06T06:34:00.000-05:00

From AP via Fox News

The bloodiest city in the country in 2006, reeling from crime in its struggle to recover from Hurricane Katrina, got even worse in 2007.

New Orleans registered 209 homicides last year, a nearly 30 percent increase from the 161 recorded in 2006.

The FBI's rankings for 2007 will not be out until much later in the year, but New Orleans' population is thought to be 295,450, which would mean a rate of about 71 homicides per 100,000 people.

Even the most generous population estimate in 2006 put the number of people in the city that year at 255,000. That meant a real homicide rate of 63.5 per 100,000 residents. To compare that number with some other notoriously bloody cities, the rate for Gary, Ind., was 48.3 and Detroit's was 47.1.

The killings are drug-related or retaliatory for the most part, police have said. The upswing comes despite continued patrols by the National Guard and state police and the addition of two new classes of police recruits in the past year.

But beefed-up policing efforts can only do so much, said Rafael Goyeneche, executive director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of Greater New Orleans.

"The police and the criminal justice system is expected to clean up the mess, but they didn't create the mess," Goyeneche said. "They aren't responsible for the social problems of the city, the failure of the school system, the degeneration of the family unit. And until the city does something to rectify those problems, crime and murder will continue to be a problem."

There are hopeful signs, however, Goyeneche said, pointing to improved schools in the city since the 2005 storm, grass-roots efforts to tackle crime, and a growing effort to upgrade city life.

"This city is beginning to do some things that I've been waiting 25 years to see," Goyeneche said. "I think there is a renewed sense of purpose; people are focused and demanding more than what was in play before Katrina hit."

New York's and Chicago's 2007 homicide totals were the lowest in more than 40 years, and in Philadelphia, slayings dipped slightly after reaching a nine-year high in 2006. But in several other big cities, homicides increased, including in Atlanta, Miami, Dallas and Baltimore.

Of Barracks and Mixed-Income ...

2007-12-30T15:39:00.000-05:00

Cox.net reports that:

(New Orleans, LA) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is asking HUD officials to provide assurances over the holidays they will meet the terms of the ordinance passed by the New Orleans City Council last week. Nagin says he wants to make sure the transition is smooth from older barracks style public housing projects to homes for the poor in mixed income neighborhoods.

He is specifically asking that "every public housing resident has the right to return to better housing will be upheld and that they indeed will have a "voice" in the redevelopment processes." This comes as the feds prepare to demolish four of the city's big housing projects. Nagin had said he would only issue the demolition permits when he is satisfied everyone who qualifies for public housing will have it as they tear down the old and build the new.

This is the first time I have seen the term “barracks style” applied to the housing projects, and I think it is critical to the decision to tear them down. “Civilians” are not meant to live in barracks, and the vast majority of residents are law-abiding but terrorized by the violent few.

HUD’s approach to replacing the demolished housing depends heavily on mixed-income neighborhoods. But does mixed-income housing work?

Paul C. Brophy, in a 1997 report for HUD titled “Mixed-Income Housing: Factors for Success,” suggests that:

Mixed-income housing works best where there are sufficient units aimed at the higher income renters to create a critical mass of market units and where there are no differences in the nature and quality of the units being offered that are due to the income of the renters. If upward mobility of the low-income residents is a goal, it is necessary to have activities that are specifically aimed at creating opportunities for them; income mixing alone is not sufficient. Perhaps the biggest challenge is income integration in neighborhood settings where property management is not able to set behavioral norms.

News Roundup for 12-23-07 ...

2007-12-23T07:58:00.000-05:00

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Protests against a City Council plan to tear down low-income New Orleans housing turned ugly Thursday, with police using pepper spray and stun guns to clear a crowd angry they weren't allowed into City Hall for the vote.

The City Council voted unanimously to greenlight the demolition of the city's four largest public housing developments, saying they are too damaged by Hurricane Katrina to allow residents back into them.

Aren’t the protesters and former residents romanticizing pre-Katrina life in these developments? BTW, HUD says that 400 apartments in New Orleans' public housing complexes remain available but unoccupied.

From our “Surprise!” department:

WASHINGTON, DC (AP) -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency has yet to shake its poor reputation, more than two years after its mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, a poll shows.

FEMA ranked at the bottom in a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll that measured the public's views of a dozen federal government agencies. FEMA came in last, and the Internal Revenue Service and Transportation Security Administration tied for next to last. The Postal Service was the clear favorite.

From our Corruption Watch department:

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (TP) -- The Justice Department on Thursday appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court for access to documents seized in the unprecedented 2006 search of Rep. William Jefferson's (pictured)congressional office.

Meanwhile, Jefferson, who was expected to have taken the witness stand Thursday at a pre-trial hearing in his bribery case, did not testify. His attorney spent so much time cross-examining an FBI agent about the August 2005 search of his New Orleans home that the hearing was delayed.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III postponed proceedings until Jan. 16, when Jefferson, a New Orleans Democrat, is expected to answer questions for the first time under oath about the sprawling public corruption case against him. Jefferson's trial is scheduled to begin six weeks later.

Are you as anxious for the Jefferson trial to begin as I am?

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (TP) -- Gambling debts, false statements under oath, bank fraud and secret gifts from lawyers form the heart of an extraordinary impeachment referral that was lodged Thursday against U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous Jr.

Happy 90th!

2007-12-16T09:39:00.000-05:00

We have been in New Orleans since Wednesday and leave Wednesday coming. This has been a long stay, but we don’t seem to have worn out our welcome yet. We are staying with my brother and sister-in-law who have been wonderful hosts. The accommodations have been first-class.

On Thursday night we took our hosts, Alan and Mona, to a restaurant they suggested in Kenner, Calas. It’s a find; try it if you get a chance. It’s a bit pricey but worth it.

Saturday I had a coffee break with my friend and confidant Harold. We call them “sessions” because they are more like therapy than merely discussions. I talked mostly about the pluses and minuses of the retirement life. Harold talked mostly about a couple of difficult business decisions facing him, with personal as well as business ramifications.

Saturday evening Alan and I sponsored a party for my mother’s 90th birthday. This was the main reason for our trip, and it went off beautifully. Mom is in excellent health (she takes less prescription medication for various ailments than I do). Attendees included her few remaining close relatives, and she thoroughly enjoyed being the center of attention.

We held the party in a private room at Timphony’s restaurant in Metairie. I don’t think I would recommend the place except for the party room. The cake was from Maurice’s Bakery, which I recommend highly. Is “doberge cake” known outside the N.O. area?

We will probably take a disaster tour of the area before leaving. It is interesting to watch the local news here which is still completely dominated by news of recovery from hurricane Katrina. A few crime stories also make the cut.

The other big story here is the transition to the state’s new governor, Bobby Jindal. He is the latest “reform governor,” and has made strengthened ethics laws a centerpiece of his legislative program. Good luck!

Need Some Feedback …

2007-12-09T10:41:00.000-05:00

Note: Today's link is to an article about us in a Cincinnati newspaper. The picture is of Susan from our first snow of the season.

Do I seem to be obsessed with weather? My major concerns about living in the north are how well I can tolerate the cold, and whether I can drive (safely) on icy streets.

The first measurable snowfall of the season was last Tuesday. I was surprised by how quickly the streets cleared up and how “Norman Rockwell” our neighborhood looked. Any enjoyment of the scene was spoiled, however, by the need to scrape car windows.

I was afraid that the streets would be icy on Wednesday morning, but the drive to a meeting a few miles north was sure-footed and uneventful. My car has front-wheel drive and I think that helps.

On Thursday we had some dear friends visit. They also lost a house and most of their earthly possessions in Katrina, evacuated to Columbus, OH and stayed for a couple of years. This stop was on their way to their new home in Venice, FL. After all this time, Katrina was still a major topic of conversation. We also talked about friends who moved to new cities, one who stayed in New Orleans and has been robbed twice, and places we considered moving to before making our current choices.

On Friday we went to dinner at Wild Bill’s in Lebanon, OH. They had a few Cajun dishes although their execution left much to be desired. We joined some good friends we met through my volunteer work.

On another topic I need your input. I am at a loss as to where we are going with this blog. Should I change the emphasis to New Orleans expatriates living in Cincinnati? Should I make it a digest of New Orleans news gathered from various sources? Should I continue to include full or paraphrased articles that I found particularly interesting, punctuated by the occasional diary-type entry? Is there some other form we should take?

Next week’s column may be a bit late because we will be in New Orleans from Wednesday through the following Wednesday.

I look forward to your feedback.

Not so Big, Anything but Easy ...

2007-12-02T07:31:00.000-05:00

Adapted from an article by Virginie Montet for Agence France Presse:

Two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still licking its wounds but efforts are being made to bring back the tourists that once made the Big Easy a major draw. New Orleans expects six million visitors in 2007, almost twice the number who came in 2006 but still well below the 10-million-a-year before the disaster.

More than two years on, much of the sultry city famed for its jazz and Creole cooking still lies abandoned after seas whipped up by the hurricane breached its levees on August 29, 2005. While parts of the city, such as the famous French Quarter, survived thanks to their slightly higher elevation, much has been left to rot.

Some 80 percent of the city was left uninhabitable by Katrina and thousands of Louisiana families are still living in cramped government-supplied trailers. Billions of dollars in federal aid remains wrapped up in bureaucratic red tape and blame is flying in all directions.

The musicians and artists who made the jazz mecca unlike any other place in the country are struggling with exorbitant rents, rising utilities costs, high insurance, spiking property taxes and violent crime.

A recent government study found that mental illness has doubled among Gulf Coast residents and there is a surge in the number of people considering suicide. New Orleans, which still has only 275,000 residents, has one of the highest per capita murder rates in the United States.

Some 1,600 people were killed in the hurricane and its aftermath, and almost half the city's residents who fled did not come back. On the facades of homes, writing in blood red paint by rescue workers remains as clear as the day it was written, including the date authorities passed by and the number of bodies they found.

St. Charles Streetcar is Back!

2007-11-25T06:55:00.000-05:00

Adapted from AP via katc.com:

Amid a Carnival-like atmosphere, streetcars began rolling past the historic mansions of this city's Garden District for the first time since Hurricane Katrina halted the St. Charles Avenue line more than two years ago.

Many see the return of the 1920s-era green cars as a sign of progress in the city's recovery and a morale booster. Six of the 13 miles the cars once ran are now open on the St. Charles line, and officials hope to restore full service through by spring.

It's been slow going in large part due to the cost and scope of the storm's damage to the line's power system, due for an upgrade before the August 2005 storm. Mark Major, general manager of the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority, praised federal highway officials for providing $14 million that he said was key to the resumption of the service.

Politicians and local officials were on hand, as they were in December when an initial loop of about 1.2 miles opened. But the feel was different, more festive.
On Saturday, a marching band led the streetcars down to the Lee Circle loop. Revelers dotted the oak-lined avenue - some waving or holding up drinks, others, carrying signs that read "No More Bus" or "Welcome Back," or offering riders Mardi Gras beads or high-fives.

Councilwoman Stacy Head called the streetcars part of the city's identity - "everything from the noise, the clanging down the avenue to the lights at night."
The St. Charles line was the oldest continuously operating line in the world before Katrina shut it down in August 2005. It began operation in September 1835.

"It's what makes New Orleans feel like home," she said. "It's as important as red beans and rice and Mardi Gras, and it's hard to explain to people who aren't part of this city how important this is as an icon and a real-life form of transportation."

Karen Miller grew up riding the streetcar and took it to work before Katrina. It's not just for tourists, and it's far more fun than riding a bus - especially when the windows are down, she said. A warm breeze blew through the car in which she was riding.

Transit officials expect to run about five cars on the St. Charles line. The fare is $1.25. Four or five streetcars also are running on the Canal Street line and two are available along the riverfront.

Population continues to rebound ...

2007-11-18T06:44:00.000-05:00

By Becky Bohrer, Associated Press Writer

Nearly two-thirds of the city's pre-Hurricane Katrina population has returned, a new report estimates.

But Greg Rigamer, the demographer who compiled the report, said Tuesday that he expects the growth seen since July 2006 to plateau within the next year as the sense of urgency to return lessens.

Rigamer, whose company, GCR & Associates, has been tracking demographics in post-Katrina New Orleans, said an estimated 288,000 people were living in New Orleans in October. In July 2005, the month before Katrina hit and flooded 80 percent of the city, the population was estimated at 455,000.

Between Oct. 1, 2006, and Oct. 1, 2007, New Orleans' population grew 19 percent. But that growth rate may not continue, Rigamer said.

"Given the state of the schools and the criminal justice system, it's hard to understand why the trend has been occurring so long, this long after" Katrina, he said.

Rigamer's report, released late Monday, was based on utility hookups. Last month, the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center used Postal Service data to estimate that New Orleans' population has reached 70 percent of its pre-Katrina level.
The rebound appears to be "a bunch of decisions made independently by people," Rigamer said, and not driven by a single event drawing people back.

The rate of repopulation appeared to increase during the past few months, possibly due to families returning for the school year or people finishing their rebuilt homes, GCR senior planner Rafe Rabalais said.

"There's a tangible difference, if you compare now to a year ago, in terms of commercial activity, traffic on the streets, people walking around, cultural events," he said.

But some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods have been slow to repopulate — recovering, in some cases, less than one-third of their pre-Katrina populations. In the Lower 9th Ward, only 8 percent, or 1,054 people, had returned by Oct. 1. Even in Lakeview, widely hailed as a symbol of personal initiative and progress in the city's rebuilding, only 38 percent were back.

Some New Orleans residents may be in the suburbs until they're able to rebuild in the city, Rabalais said. An estimated 86 percent of the metro area's population is back.

Violent crime, meanwhile, is up from a year ago; New Orleans has recorded at least 184 homicides this year. The district attorney, Eddie Jordan, resigned last week amid criticism that included questions about his office's effectiveness in prosecuting major cases.

Prostitute dishes on Vitter ...

2007-11-11T07:59:00.000-05:00

From wtol.com:

Sen. David Vitter has tried move on after his embarrassing hooker scandal, but Hustler magazine won't let him.

In a magazine interview hitting the racks soon, a woman who worked in New Orleans brothel has given a detailed, and at times explicit, interview about a 1999 affair with Vitter. The Louisiana Republican made a very public apology earlier this year about "sins" in his past, but he has not acknowledged any specific activities. Vitter's phone number also came up in the phone records of the D.C. Madame case.

The Crypt has received a scanned paper copy of the interview, but the pictures and some of the quotes are totally NSFW (not safe for work). Discerning Crypt readers can decide whether they want to check out Hustler's Web site or reach for the row of black plastic wrapped mags at your local book store or newstand.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune first revealed some of the details of the interview today. In the interview, ex-prostitute Wendy Ellis claims that Vitter was a regular customer at a French Quarter brothel, paid $300 per visit, and demanded that Ellis wear no lotions, perfumes or any other scents so that no smells would be left on him after his visit.

Hustler says Ellis, who used to go by the name Wendy Cortez, passed a lie detector test before giving her interview and posing for X-rated photos. Ellis, according to the Times-Picayune, has a criminal record, including credit card fraud, a point made by some of Vitter's supporters who dispute her story.

Vitter's office declined to comment about the details in the interview.

"Sen. Vitter is completely focused on issues critical to Louisiana like WRDA [the water resources bill] and immigration and has already addressed all of this," Vitter's office said in a statement Thursday.

On Weather and Friendships ...

2007-11-04T06:22:00.000-05:00

Winter has arrived in Cincinnati! It started in late October with the need to scrape ice off our car windows. In New Orleans, if you even have to scrape, this likely accompanies the coldest day of winter.

I know the calendar says fall. And everyone in Cinci says how mild the winters are. But this weather is the big chill to those of us with thin southern blood.

We posted a little early this week because we are spending the weekend in New Orleans. Expectations are for low temperatures in the mid-50s with highs in the mid-70s. Fall is probably the nicest season there, especially since it lasts through what passes for winter above the Mason-Dixon Line.

Our time in New Orleans is jam-packed with social activity. In three nights there we have dinner with a couple of friends on each. After one of these dinners we will have a late session with another couple for coffee and beignets.

On Saturday Susan and I separately visit dear friends. On Sunday we take my mother with us on a short “disaster tour” and to lunch. We then gather with my brothers and their wives for an early celebration of our birthdays (November 6th and 11th). On the agenda is planning for my mother’s 90th birthday celebration (December 15th). We will, of course, return for that.

One concern about this trip is that it may stir up some homesickness which is barely below the surface in Cincinnati. We do not miss New Orleans as much as we do the great friendships that we left behind.

Back in Cinci, we voted for our first time here, mostly based on recommendations of the newspaper, the Enquirer. We are late getting our Ohio drivers licenses; we have a booklet to study. We should also get Ohio license plates, but it’s cool to have Louisiana plates (I am not sure why). We still have our New Orleans numbers on our cell phones.

It seems like we are trying to maintain some ties to N.O. while committing to Cincinnati. Time will tell.

Come back now, you hear ...

2007-10-28T07:39:00.000-04:00

By Mark Hinson for the Tallahassee Democrat and Tallahassee.com:

This is the first time I've been back to New Orleans since the tropical-borne apocalypse of ’05. I did not know what I expected to find in the city that I called home in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

"So, what do you think?" everyone has been asking me as I make my way around the French Quarter, which was untouched by flooding and only lightly looted. I had no idea how to answer. The streets are cleaner than I've ever seen them and you can actually find parking. But there's a buzz — and I'm not talking about frozen drinks with silly names like Pit Bull on Crack — that's missing. There just are not as many people taking up as much space.

Down at Frankie and Johnny's, a funky restaurant near the Mississippi River, they've taken the signature crawfish pies off the menu. When I ask why, the waitress with the beautiful N'Awlins accent says: "Oh, dahlin', the cook who used to make the pies disappeared. He just left and never came back. We don't know where he is."

The merchants, jewelers, gallery-owners and bartenders who work along Royal Street in the Quarter are back, though, and ready to talk, baby. They practically hug us when my wife and I step into a store. They want to know what horror stories we've heard, why we're here, when we're coming back.

"Go home and tell everyone we're open and ready for business," jeweler Sylvia Weidert says.

"I can do that," I say.

My friends, who are both Big Easy exiles, have returned to New Orleans to get married on this beautiful fall night. They moved to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina and the levee collapses crushed the city's economy. Just like Louis Armstrong, they really do know what it means to miss New Orleans.

As the wedding Mass comes to a finale, the wedding party packs up to move the celebration into the heart of the French Quarter. The reception is being held atop the old Jackson Brewery building — which is now a mall of shops and offices — with a terrace-top view of the Mississippi River. The food and wine flows before the famed Rebirth Brass Band enters the banquet room blasting joyous jazz music. The guests instantly form a second line, the same sort of street dance that generations have danced after funerals in New Orleans.

This isn't the music of the dead, I think to myself as I join the second line; it's the music of the living.

Maybe this city is going to be OK after all.

Rolling by the River ...

2007-10-21T09:23:00.000-04:00

By Zora O'Neill for CNN.com/Travel:

My husband, Peter, and I were in New Orleans for the French Quarter Festival, but we wanted to do more than listen to big brass bands. Like many of the people slowly returning to the city, we had to pay our respects to the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

We weren't thrilled about taking one of the many new van tours that are popular with tourists, and it just didn't feel right to hail a cab and say, "Show us the worst of the Lower Ninth Ward!" Instead, we decided to bike around the two-square-mile district -- and it turned out to be the perfect way to explore.

At Bicycle Michael's, near the eastern edge of the French Quarter, we rented city hybrids with sturdy, fat tires (essential for navigating the potholed streets) for $20 each. From there, it was a 10-minute ride to the Bywater, a community of artists in the Upper Ninth Ward where flowering magnolia branches hang low over the sidewalks and colorful cottages still bear the spray-painted codes left by search-and-rescue teams.

On Dauphine Street, we browsed racks of vintage umbrellas at The Bargain Center; then we had the delicious praline bacon at Elizabeth's, a restaurant now run by insurance adjuster Jim Harp.

The Lower Nine is just over the Industrial Canal from the Bywater, which required us to carry our bikes up to the St. Claude Avenue Bridge. The contrast between the Bywater and the Lower Nine was stark. Above Claiborne Avenue is the breach in the canal, and the flood's path is still marked by a swath of rubble that fans out from the levee. "It's as if someone tipped over a Monopoly board," said Peter.

We biked south, following the dike along the Mississippi River. Aside from a few people who greeted us with polite nods, the streets were desolate as we pedaled past FEMA trailers on our way to City Park, its 1,300 acres brought back to order by volunteers who've dubbed themselves the Mow-Rons. On Hagan Avenue, the 85-year-old Parkway Bakery & Tavern also made a quick comeback, thanks to an electrician who needed his shrimp-and-oyster po'boy fix.

In Central City, we watched as a second-line parade organized by a neighborhood social club streamed by. The street was packed with trumpeters, dancers, and vendors pulling wheeled barbecues. It was an encouraging sign for a city that likely will be rebuilding for many years to come.

Summer in October …

2007-10-14T09:51:00.000-04:00

Last weekend included several activities within walking distance of our apartment, another advantage of life in Hyde Park. We dined with friends at Teller’s restaurant on Saturday. On Sunday we were back at Hyde Park Square for a brunch, hosted by our neighbors, and visited the Art Show. The Art Show was excellent, with exhibitors offering a variety of interesting and impressive pieces.

Sunday afternoon was the first performance in the “Broadway across America” series, of which we are subscribers. It was held at the Aronoff Center, a beautiful theater downtown. The play was “My Fair Lady,” perhaps a little too familiar, but the staging made it as fresh as ever.

Summer in Cincinnati has proven to be a long, hot and dry one. Even in early October we were still suffering through temperatures in the upper 80s with the occasional record-breaking 90. A bit more seasonable weather arrived last Tuesday and we hope it is here for its normal three-month stay. By the weekend I am dressed as if for skiing just to get the morning paper at the end of our sidewalk.

I am still working with my primary care doctor on my shortness-of-breath problem. A stress test, chest x-rays, and oxygen uptake and lung function tests were encouraging, even reaffirming my fitness. So I was sent to the specialists.

A visit to the cardiologist led to an angiogram. He said my heart muscle was fine, and that there were no blockages, not even the need for a stent. Next stop was the pulmonologist. He laid out a complex program including using inhalers, scaling back other medications, blood testing for thyroid problems and testing for sleep apnea.

Last week I also started a non-credit class in cultural literacy. The course is offered by the University of Cincinnati, and held at Temple Sholom. The first class focused on classical literature in fill-in-the-blanks form. I flopped miserably.

Our cultural extravaganza of the last week ended with dinner at “Porkopolis” on the way to see “Othello at the Playhouse. Both were delicious.

Short Subjects ...

2007-10-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

Austin firm tapped to help New Orleans plan on rebuilding business

From the Austin Business Journal:

AngelouEconomics has secured a $200,000 contract to complete a regional economic development strategy for the New Orleans metropolitan area.

Greater New Orleans Inc., a non-partisan group charged with bringing companies and jobs to that city, has tapped the Austin economic development consulting firm to develop a strategy looking at ways to improve the region's business climate over the next five years.

"The goal is to create a road map for economic development going forward," says Pam Meyer, director of regional business development for GNO Inc. "We brought in Angelou(Economics) because of their site selection and economic development expertise to come up with a plan that includes determining and marketing our most competitive assets and coming up with specific action items we can implement."

The plan slated for completion in December will focus on a 10-parish region of Southeast Louisiana. Meyers says part of it will include determining three specific sector niches where GNO Inc. should focus its recruitment efforts.

Half of the funding for the plan came from the Greater New Orleans Foundation, a nonprofit group that provides grants for causes from workforce development to education. The Louisiana Economic Development Department put up a matching grant to secure the contract.

Rooting Out New Orleans Corruption with Few Tools

by Carrie Kahn for NPR (go to the article for a link to audio of the show):

Robert Cerasoli is New Orleans' first inspector general; his job is to be a watchdog over local government and root out corruption and waste. But as of now, the newly hired Cerasoli doesn't have an office or car, and he makes calls from his personal cell phone.

To former mayor's brother: Pay your taxes!

2007-09-30T07:10:00.000-04:00

Brother of former New Orleans mayor Morial gets plea deal on tax charges

By Janet McConnaughey for AP, via SignOn San Diego:

The brother of a former New Orleans mayor has reached a plea deal on tax charges, more than three years after federal agents stormed his French Quarter home, his attorney and a prosecutor said Friday.

Jacques Morial, 46, was charged with failing to file income tax returns in 2000, 2001 and 2002, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said in a news release. The charges carry up to a year in prison, plus fines.

Morial, the brother of former Mayor Marc Morial, made a plea agreement with federal prosecutors and paid the taxes – about $26,000 for the three years, his attorney said.

“Mr. Morial intends to come in and acknowledge his responsibility for failing to file his tax returns in a timely fashion,” attorney Pat Fanning said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann later confirmed that a plea agreement had been reached but would not discuss details.

The Morial family blasted the federal government in 2004 for ramming open the door in a style of raid more often associated with a drug bust. A battering ram visibly damaged the historic home's door, leaving wood splinters on the sidewalk. Agents carried out boxes of documents.

Jacques Morial sued the FBI and IRS agents in February 2005, claiming the search was illegal. His lawsuit was dismissed in April 2006 because Morial, who was representing himself, failed to show up in court.

The charges against Jacques Morial come amid a long-standing federal investigation of the public school system and the City Hall administrations of former Mayor Marc Morial, who served two four-year terms ending in 2002.

A call to a number for Morial listed in court documents reached a recording saying it had been temporarily disconnected. He does not have another listed number.
Now head of the National Urban League, Marc Morial has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Move to Cincinnati: Quarterly Report …

2007-09-23T07:52:00.000-04:00

We have been in our apartment in Hyde Park for three months now. Our location is great, but the apartment has some serious maintenance problems. We can live with them for the year we expect to rent.

While we still miss the New Orleans area Cincinnati is all we expected it to be. We are taking advantage of the cultural opportunities and are meeting some terrific people in our other activities. I am a volunteer for SCORE and taking a class on “Cultural Literacy.” Susan is affiliated with the University of Cincinnati (UC), joined a newcomer’s club, and is studying German. We work out regularly at a nearby gym, and are beginning to dabble in local politics.

Less fun are the medical tests that we are going through. They are mostly routine for a proactive health program, and are overdue because of the shortcomings of the New Orleans health system over the last couple of years.

We spent a long weekend in Asheville NC, checking it out as another highly recommended retirement city. We are committed to Cincinnati, but keeping our options open.

After two days at home we left for a cruise to Canada and New England. The highlights were visits to friends in Bar Harbor and Boston. We also enjoyed a tour relating to the role of Halifax in recovery efforts in the Titanic tragedy. Freeport ME was also a fun stop.

After four more days at home Susan traveled to Chicago for the funeral of a dear uncle. We are beginning to suffer from the very high cost of flying out of CVG, the nation’s most expensive as I understand it.

Back in Cincinnati, we were guests of UC’s Entrepreneurship program for a night at a Reds game, watching from the Pilot House in center field. Lounge chairs, catered food, and a waitress make this the best way to watch baseball. The Reds won.

Stay tuned for periodic reports of our progress. Our next few reports will return to more news of the recovery process in New Orleans.

We are Portable …

2007-09-16T09:08:00.000-04:00

Kilgour Fountain in Hyde Park Square

With Susan’s decision to retire we realized that our retirement home could be anyplace in the world. We quickly limited it to the U.S.

On studying lists of the best places to retire we found that the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill area rated particularly high, so we visited it in the fall of 2006. We knew two couples there and met them for dinner. We also spent one day with a local real estate agent looking at condos and planned communities. While we felt that RDCH was a bit too scattered for our tastes the concept of the planned communities, with their “village” feel appealed greatly.

We visited good friends in Columbus and did a brief real estate tour. Columbus was in the running because of our friends there and Susan’s OSU opportunity. Still we were not enthused about Columbus, and decided to add one more stop to our search.

So Cincinnati entered the picture. Susan was born and raised in Cincinnati, frequently visited with her family in the area, but had not lived there in almost 40 years. She contacted a friend at the University of Cincinnati to see if there might be a part-time teaching opportunity, and was encouraged to visit the chairman of the Political Science department.

We visited in late 2006; Susan made her usual good impression, and received an attractive offer contingent on approval further up the organization. On our real estate tour there we found several attractive neighborhoods, and Cincy moved high in our consideration.

We were particularly impressed with the Hyde Park neighborhood, a planned community of a century ago. We decided that, if we moved to Cincinnati, we would rent initially while we got to know the area better and that Hyde Park was our preferred rental location.

Homing In …

Cincinnati soon became our first choice for a number of reasons. It is the largest metro area of the three locations we considered, but its system of neighborhoods makes it feel approachable. It is the most attractive area, downright mountainous for we flatlanders. Its cultural opportunities are numerous and varied. We attended a symphony event before our move, one since, and have subscribed to Playhouse in the Park and Broadway across America.

Once the choice was made, back in New Orleans, Susan began an online search for rental property in Hyde Park. We signed up for one, based on only a virtual tour, and prepared for our move.

A Shaky Return …

2007-09-02T07:50:00.000-04:00

Our return to New Orleans had a few bumps. The completion date for the house in Metairie shifted to mid-January. The FEMA trailer option would not be available in time. We needed to find a place to stay in the area for the end of December and January, and housing at that time was near impossible to find.

We went online to Craig’s List and extracted phone numbers for the few apartments that roughly met our minimal requirements. Among these requirements was that the place be furnished and the kitchen include dishes, etc. Our few possessions could still fit in our car.

We began to call the list with the strategy that we would take the first one available. It turned out to be a pool house in uptown NO. It would be available until the end of January after which it was committed to a long-term tenant. No problem.

Problem. The completion date for the Metairie house slipped to the end of February; it turned out to drag on until the first of April. We heard about a furnished place in the neighborhood, and negotiated a month-to-month agreement at an exorbitant rate.

We also had to buy a car to replace mine, which had drowned. We shopped for a car in Columbus, picked the model I wanted, and got a rough price. I then called a dealer in NO whose price was $2,000 higher than the same car would be in Columbus; he said the demand for cars in NO was so great that he had no reason to offer any discounts. The closest I could find a good price was Birmingham.

We bought some furniture for the Metairie house including a “killer” home theatre. We knew that this was only an interim arrangement so we did not hang any pictures or display any decorative items. It was rather sterile but it was the closest thing to home we had known in the seven months since Katrina.

Extra: Katrina + 2

2007-08-29T06:19:00.000-04:00

Check out an informative new site. From the home page:

"Hurricane Katrina 2007
Your Go-To Page
Everything you need and need to know is right here.

We present here the latest articles of note, and include a brief synopsis and quotes from each below its link, so you need not go any further unless you want to delve deeper about a particular subject. This is not a site not of outdated, archived news items. These pieces include breaking news, highlighting the ongoing debates, resources to better understand the hurricane—what we can do about both healing its wounds and preventing a future disaster—as well as resources for those still in need. Sadly, despite the fact that the storm's second anniversary is approaching on August 29, 2007, Hurricane Katrina's devastation is far from over.

Katrina made landfall just before dawn on August 29, 2005, seventy miles south of New Orleans. Largely because the wetlands that make up Louisiana’s coast had been eroded, the storm surge pushed unabated into southern Louisiana, breaching New Orleans' levees at multiple points, leaving 80 percent of the city submerged, tens of thousands of victims clinging to rooftops, and hundreds of thousands scattered to shelters around the country. Many have yet to return. The devastation to Mississippi and Louisiana by hurricanes Katrina and Rita has been called the greatest disaster in our nation's history.

The images of anguish and anger from Hurricane Katrina have been forever burned into the hearts and minds of all Americans. They must be the catalyst for change. Prevention of a future disaster of similar proportions is both possible and practical. But the United States must act now to restore the wetlands."

Link: http://www.hurricanekatrinanews.org

Also check out Josh's new book: "Heart Like Water" at http://www.heartlikewater.com

We Are Homeless ...

2007-08-26T11:10:00.000-04:00

The latest installment in a series begun on August 12:

Soon after the storm we were pretty certain that we had lost everything in our New Orleans East home. We also lost a car, and a rental house we owned in NOE. A mid-October visit to our house was a salvage operation, and between flooding damage and mold there was little that we could save. The most painful loss for Susan was that of our picture albums. Everything else was just “stuff.”

Before the storm we had started building a house in Lakeview, another neighborhood that was hit particularly hard by Katrina. Pilings had been driven, and the forms built for a slab. After the storm we jointly agreed with the builder to cancel the contract; we had no place to stay to participate in the process and he did not feel he could build the house for the price to which we had previously agreed. We are still trying to get our deposit back.

So, I the fall of 2005 we were renting an apartment in Columbus Ohio with hand-me-down furniture, about as near to homeless as one could be while living indoors. It did not seem to bother us much, probably because we were still rather traumatized by the whole process. We were sure that this was not a long-term arrangement but not so sure what to do next.

The pressure was on, with Susan having to return to work in early January. We had applied for a FEMA trailer, which we thought would be ready by then, but it wound up not being available until April.

Meanwhile, my mother’s house in Metairie was being repaired, with a projected completion date of mid-December. Her car drowned and she was not going to replace it. She also had some concerns about living in such a big house by herself.

How fortuitous! We suggested that we live with her, and she liked the idea. We told her that we expected to move in a year, though we had no idea where.

A Place to Roost ...

2007-08-19T09:39:00.000-04:00

Continuing from the "Road to Cincinnati:"

While the road trip had been fun, it was becoming obvious that it would be a while before we could return to NO. It was time to find a place where we could stay a while. We decided that the only place where we would feel (somewhat) at home was with Susan’s brother and family in Dillsboro Indiana, in the Cincinnati area.

The Robinsons were as gracious as they could be, creating an apartment for us in their basement. It was mid-September and we were beginning to realize that it would be months before we could return rather than weeks.

A call from our best friends, who had evacuated to Columbus Ohio, suggested we move there. An apartment complex was giving Katrina refugees a 70% discount on rent, and social service agencies were providing furniture and other necessities. In addition the Political Science department at Ohio State (alma mater of Susan and our friend Steve) was providing free office space and clerical support.

We moved to Columbus in late September. At the time we knew three other couples there, and they proved to be a significant support structure. Susan’s working at OSU allowed her to finish a book that she had been working on, and I was able to get an office in the OSU Business School. Being a part of the OSU community, where we could get back to our professional pursuits, was uplifting.

Fall foliage in Columbus was beautiful and the season began with very nice weather. We were only about a mile from OSU, and in an area where many of the necessities of life, and a few nice restaurants, were in walking distance.

But winter came early in 2005. The cold and snow were uncomfortable, but we were beginning to plan our return to New Orleans and that got us through.

More to come ...

Road to Cincinnati ...

2007-08-12T06:57:00.000-04:00

In explaining why me moved to Cincinnati we review the Katrina experience:

We like to tell Cincinnatians that we chose the city after a nationwide search for a place to retire. In addition to Cincinnati that search took us to Columbus Ohio and Chapel Hill North Carolina. These are not the typical places to retire and you may ask why there are no sites in Florida or Arizona. Well, here is how that list evolved, and it is a long story.

For New Orleans residents all topics are divided into pre-Katrina and post-Katrina. Post-Katrina discussions are frequently about where you stayed during the evacuation and where you are living now. The evacuation period generally began two days before the hurricane hit New Orleans (on Monday, August 29, 2005) with a wide variance on when people returned “home,” such as it was.

Road Trip

There are evacuations, and there are post-Katrina “odyssies.” Generally we leave town for a motel that is 50 to 100 miles away, stay a couple of days, then return when the hurricane has blown over. This was our expectation for the Katrina evacuation, so we threw a few things into the car and we left (Saturday, two days before the storm hit) to stay with friends in Slidell Louisiana.

Susan is very nervous about hurricanes and on Saturday watched the 5 a.m. position and projected path of the storm, and decided that it was time to go. She gave me an hour to back up my computer files and to pack the car. We had a hurricane “kit” that included our important papers, flashlights, and cans of food.

On Sunday morning we and our hosts decided that we needed to be further away than Slidell. We watched the hurricane and its early aftermath on CNN from Tuscaloosa Alabama, while staying at the home of friends of Susan’s from way back.

We then drove to the Birmingham airport and flew to Washington DC for Susan to attend a professional meeting. On our return we drove to Memphis for my niece’s wedding, which was moved there from New Orleans on very short notice.

Attendance at Loni’s wedding at the Peabody Hotel was almost as good as it would have been in NO. People flew and drove in from a variety of locations that would look like an airline route map. Conversation was largely about what happened to our houses, and where we were staying.

From Memphis we stayed a couple of days with Susan’s cousins in Huntsville.

More to come.

Health System Troubles ...

2007-08-05T06:38:00.000-04:00

By Janet Mcconnaughey for the Associated Press:

The five major hospitals and hospital systems in the area have hemorrhaged money since Hurricane Katrina as the cost of utilities, insurance and labor have all risen sharply, hospital officials said Wednesday.

"Combined, our hospitals are on the runway to lose $130 million or $135 million this year," Touro Infirmary Chief Operating Office Les Hirsch said in a telephone interview Wednesday, before testifying about the problems to a U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee in Washington.

Mayor Ray Nagin and executives from Tulane University Hospital and Clinic, East Jefferson General Hospital, West Jefferson Medical and Ochsner Medical Center, which bought and reopened several hospitals that closed after the storm, also testified.

Those five hospital systems have lost about $58 million in the first five months of this year, officials said. That compares to a $12 million profit for the same hospitals during the seven months before August 2005, when the hurricane hit.

"These losses are not sustainable. Each one of us, at some point in the future, is going to have to face some very difficult decisions if something does not change," said Dr. Mark Peters, CEO at East Jefferson General Hospital.

They can't say specifically what sorts of cutbacks or closures might be needed if they cannot get federal help, said Dr. Robert Lynch, who officially started Wednesday as CEO at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic. Not only would it be inadvisable for business reasons, but it could violate antitrust laws, he said.

The losses so far this year are in spite of federal infusions of nearly $140 million to hospitals during the state fiscal year that ended in June.

Peters said East Jefferson got $9.5 million in federal grants. "Things would be a whole lot worse if that wasn't there," he said. "But it still highlights the hole we're in."

Figures compiled by the Metropolitan Hospital Council of New Orleans show that utility costs were up 32 percent from before the storm.

Labor costs, from housekeepers to surgeons, rose from $304 million in January-May 2005 to $357 million in the same period this year at the five hospitals. And the money pays far fewer workers, Lynch said.

Tulane has almost one-third fewer employees but salaries are up 15.7 percent, he said.

Dr. John "Jack" Finn, president of the Metropolitan Hospital Council, said one hospital brought almost 200 people from outside the country to work as housekeepers. "When their contract was up almost all of them were hired away by our hotels," he said.

Finn estimated that one-quarter of all patients in the area are uninsured. "Even people who would have been insured prior to Katrina. A lot of businesses are not back, so people are in different occupations that may not provide insurance. Secondly, there are a lot of new companies that, to survive, just can't provide insurance," he said.

Close to home ...

2007-07-29T12:06:00.000-04:00

In the following story the pool house where the murder victim lived was where we had stayed on our return from Katrina exile.

By Susan Finch for the Times Picayune:

A 54-year-old Pineville engineer working as a construction inspector for the government at two federal buildings downtown was shot to death early Thursday in front of his temporary residence on a quiet block in the city's West Carrollton section.

Anthony "Tony" White had come home to the 8400 block of Panola Street after working his night shift when someone shot him once in the face at close range, then ran over him twice before fleeing in White's vehicle.

The motive behind the murder remains murky. After shooting White shortly before 3 a.m., the assailant took White's keys and fled in White's blue Jeep Liberty, with Louisiana license plate PFV402. Nothing else was stolen, police said.

Police spokesman Sgt. Joe Narcisse said Thursday it appeared the murder was a "random act of violence."

"We haven't noticed any patterns of crime in that neighborhood, certainly nothing that would have indicated we should be on the lookout for this," he said.

The assailant left behind White's expensive watch, wedding band and wallet, according to Brad Robinson, who had rented White the pool house behind his Panola Street residence since March.

"They shot him for nothing but his car keys. Isn't that insane?" Robinson said.

Robinson said he got a call Thursday between 2:30 and 3 a.m. from an elderly neighbor who told him there was someone lying in the street.

"I guess she saw the police," who apparently had been called by a passing motorist who had spotted the body, he said.

Robinson said he went out, knelt beside his friend and felt for a pulse. He detected none.

Employed by Jacobs Engineering, an international firm, White was a mild-mannered family man with grandchildren and was an enthusiastic portrait photographer, a person who never raised his voice, Robinson said.

Brad Barber, a Bernhard Mechanical Contractors project manager who worked on the Hale Boggs and U.S. District Court buildings White inspected, said the engineer was always in a good mood, very professional and very dedicated to his work.

"You could always count on him," Barber said.

Robinson believes that his friend's tendency to be a good Samaritan -- "He'd give you the shirt off his back" -- may have been what left him dead on the street with tire marks across his white shirt.

Robinson, a retired Army Special Forces officer who grew up in New Orleans, said he has seen lots of dead people but seeing his murdered tenant was a totally different experience: "It's the fact that it's in front of my residence. I've got a wife and two kids. It's just too close to home," he said.

It fell to Robinson on Thursday to break the news over the phone to White's wife at their home in Pineville, where the couple had moved from Colorado after the Jacobs firm posted White to Louisiana.

Robinson said that in the military, he counseled the families of soldiers killed in combat. But telling White's wife that her husband was dead, he said, "was the hardest thing I ever had to do."

Aching for Lost Friends ...

2007-07-21T09:18:00.000-04:00

By Susan Saulny for the New York Times and about our former neighborhood:

NEW ORLEANS — “Backwater.” Or “cypress swamp.” That is how antique maps of this city describe what eventually became its far eastern edge, an area that juts out from the rest of the old town, hugging Lake Pontchartrain, and home for centuries to little more than wildlife and trees.

This came as a surprise to me years ago, because by the time my family moved to eastern New Orleans in the early 1990s, it had long been drained and tamed and offered some of the most attractive undeveloped land anywhere in the city. More than anyone else, black middle-class families like mine flocked to it, architectural plans in hand, eager to escape the crime and congestion in the tight neighborhoods of older New Orleans. They wanted to build something new.

And they did, by the tens of thousands, creating the only major upscale black suburbs in the region, although a significant number of white and Vietnamese families lived there, too. If there was already a new New Orleans — in contrast to neighborhoods like the French Quarter — before Hurricane Katrina, then this was it: New Orleans East, as the locals call it, a collection of typically American suburbs for a most atypical American city, born sometime in the early 1970s.

About 20 minutes northeast of the French Quarter, in Lake Forest Estates, the house my family designed was bigger, better-built and higher than the one we left in our old neighborhood, so we thought we were safer, too.

We were wrong. During the storm, the Gulf of Mexico ended up in my parents’ living room. Deep water. Just poured right in to the first floor and stayed for a while.

Hurricane Katrina left most of New Orleans East in a shambles that way, although as a whole, it received less attention than needier black areas or equivalent white neighborhoods. In terms of size — both geographically and in population — it dwarfs the Lower Ninth Ward and Lakeview. It had close to 100,000 residents. As of May, about 30 percent of them were back.

Not everyone in the East was well off. And some areas did not flood. Just like the rest of the city, it had its ridges and natural defenses. But Hurricane Katrina still managed to shred the fabric of the black upper middle class living there, at a time when New Orleans desperately needs its black professionals to have a voice in the recovery process.

Some of our relatives and friends were too old and feeble to rebuild. They are gone from the city for good, and we ache for them. Others were too angry to stay, overcome by the levees’ unnecessary failures. We understand their need to move on.

Lake Forest Estates did not have power for five months after the storm. I remember the day the lights came on, though I was in New York City. My phone did not stop ringing with the kind of calls a person might expect from a third world country: “We got lights! We got electricity!”

Now things are moving, but slowly.

One of my parents’ favorite talk-over-the-fence neighbors, Michael Darnell, a lawyer, is not over the fence any more. (Not that there’s a fence any more, either.) Mr. Darnell has been unable to repair his house because of delays hampering the Road Home, the state grant program for people who lost their homes.

“From the perspective of African-American professionals, there’s still a question about where this city is going,” said Mr. Darnell, who is renting an apartment elsewhere in New Orleans. “I’m seeing a disintegration of what this community stood for, and people are still traumatized.”

The Currys, a warm, retired couple who lived two houses away, have moved to Baton Rouge. The minister who lives to our west has repaired his house and is back. The family to our east, who own a computer technology company, moved to Texas.

On a surface level, looking out across the street from my parents’ front door, it is hard to know that Hurricane Katrina ever visited. Every house in sight is redone, landscaped, pristine.

But the neighbors’ view of our house is not as nice, as my parents have put their energy since the storm into a new escape from southern Louisiana’s perils, a home in Forrest County, Miss., about two hours north. They do intend to reconstruct their New Orleans East house, perhaps by Thanksgiving.

People who knew New Orleans East only from the Interstate that cuts through it could easily miss its appeal. From the highway, one could not see the swampy beauty of its park space, or feel how the sky seemed bigger. And I still think some of the best crawfish in town is there, served in humble establishments along Haynes Boulevard.

But the giant Lake Forest Plaza, once a great mall, had badly deteriorated before the storm and was downright dangerous. Now it is mostly torn down, and there is not even a grocery store nearby. Increasingly, however, there is hope.

“All of my neighbors are back, and I see houses being started from the ground up,” said Carrie Phillips, a real estate agent in the area. “I’ve always thought, if New Orleans East can come back, then New Orleans is definitely coming back.”

Assimilating ...

2007-07-15T07:54:00.000-04:00

We have now been in Cincinnati for a month. Certainly the novelty has not worn off yet, but we are beginning to feel that we live here.

A couple of recent purchases have completed our furnishings. Our guiding principle in our purchases has been to buy either something we will use long-term, or something cheap enough to throw away when we move in a year.

We do plan to move in a year, but expect to remain in the Cincinnati area. There are some attractive condos on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River that have their advantages. We went to a cocktail party in one such condo development and enjoyed a beautiful view of the river and the Cincinnati skyline.

We really miss our friends in New Orleans. We try to stay in contact by phone but it is, of course, not the same or even close. We have done passably well at meeting people here, but it is hard to find people our age that are retired. “Retired” seems to be an important characteristic for compatibility. Our neighborhood seems to be mostly younger people, working hard and raising kids.

Otherwise our neighborhood has been a real positive. The other day we walked to our dentist, then lunched on Hyde Park square, and stopped at the library on the walk home. Our house is at a relatively high elevation, and walking the last block to our house is good exercise.

Our real exercise is done at the Cincinnati Sports Club. We are on a 3-times a week program, and on other days often ride the stationary bike at home.

We still keep up with New Orleans news via nola.com and a couple of Times-Picayune newsletters. Louisiana politics and government are so much more interesting than here. The Cincinnati area is so governmentally fragmented that everything seems like a neighborhood issue.

Some oil firms leave New Orleans ...

2007-07-08T06:48:00.000-04:00

By Bruce Nichols for Reuters via Yahoo News:

The boom in Gulf of Mexico oil exploration since the 1970s made New Orleans a hub of the U.S. energy industry, but the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 has led some oil companies to move out, a mini-exodus that could grow.

A recent survey by New Orleans CityBusiness magazine found that 12 of 23 publicly traded companies headquartered in New Orleans had left since Katrina, including four energy-related firms.

Tidewater Inc., the world's largest operator of oil industry service vessels, recently became the latest to say it is considering moving its headquarters to Houston, the U.S. capital of oil and gas.

Others are moving but staying closer. Chevron Corp. is leaving its downtown tower for offices in Covington, 26 miles north, across Lake Pontchartrain. Louisiana Offshore Oil Port also plans to relocate its offices to the north shore.

An important player, Shell Oil Co., is still downtown and insists it will stay. "We extended our lease ... for another 10 years, until 2017," spokesman Fred Palmer said.

Others departing are leaving some operations. Deepwater U.S. Gulf activity near New Orleans is, after all, increasing. "They keep whatever minimal stuff they need to keep here," said Eric Smith, an energy industry expert at Tulane University.

The exodus is not entirely a post-Katrina trend.

Mining employment, the relevant U.S. federally defined category, fell from 16,000 to 8,000 between 1990 and August 2005, before Katrina struck, said Janet Speyrer, associate dean of business research at the University of New Orleans.

It has held close to 8,000 since operations resumed after Katrina, she said. And oil refining in greater New Orleans, a different U.S. federal employment category, is expected to remain strong.

Still, "it's not a good thing for New Orleans" that top executives are leaving, Speyrer said. "They have a very big secondary impact because of who they are."

More non-energy firms than energy firms appear to be leaving, according to the CityBusiness survey. Energy companies are more accustomed to difficult environments and less dependent on local markets than restaurant chains or banks.

But among energy companies, Newpark Resources, a small exploration and production company, and McDermott International, an energy-oriented engineering and construction firm, also relocated, both to the Houston area.

Sandra Gunner, CEO of the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, said she tries to keep companies but is realistic.

"If you look at the aftermath of any storm, it's just a practical reality," she said. "That's not something you can fix overnight."

Tidewater, which has 8,000 employees worldwide and a total of 75 in New Orleans, has made no final decision, spokesman Joe Bennett said.

"We are still assessing the possibility of moving maybe five to eight people to Houston," he said.

Chevron spokeswoman Qiana Wilson said "some safety issues related to the next storm" drove that company's move to higher ground after Katrina, but Chevron had reasons to stay close.

"We just couldn't leave south Louisiana because of those great opportunities we have in deepwater operations," Wilson said.

A new life post-Katrina ...

2007-07-01T07:13:00.000-04:00

By Becky Bohrer, Associated Press, via the Philadelphia Inquirer:

For New Orleans families displaced by Hurricane Katrina, the streets are quieter 150 miles away, in Simmesport, La.

SIMMESPORT, La. - When her husband first told her about Canadaville, Dawn Charbonneau worried it might be a cult.

A place in the country, built by a Canadian industrialist, where hurricane-displaced families could live rent-free if they followed the rules. It sounded too good to be true.

Yet she was taken with Canadaville, a sprawling property where squirrels scurry in open fields and the songs of birds carry on the breeze. It was a curative tonic for the cramped FEMA trailer park where the Chabonneaus and their three children had lived after Hurricane Katrina.

The slower pace of life, uncrowded nearby schools, and corn-country peace have been good for the children, ages 5 to 13. "They can sleep at night without hearing gunshots," said Dawn Charbonneau, whose family fled both Katrina and the violence of New Orleans about 150 miles away.

Her initial reservations about Canadaville, she says, were long ago put to rest.

Canadaville, with its goats and chickens, gardens and fishing holes, is the brainchild of Frank Stronach, chairman of the Canadian auto-parts maker Magna International. After Katrina hit in August 2005, Magna sheltered hundreds of evacuees at its Palm Meadows thoroughbred-training center in Florida. But Stronach also wanted land in rural Louisiana, outside the hurricane zone, where families could start over.

"It's a hand up, not a handout," Magna spokesman Dan Donovan said.

Stronach bought 900 acres in September 2005, and Canadaville opened three months later. Total initial investment was estimated at $7.5 million.

Officially named Magnaville, the site was dubbed Canadaville as a nod to its benefactors. Canadian and U.S. flags fly side by side at the welcome center. "This is just neighbor helping neighbor," Magnaville president Dennis Mills said.

People can live at Canadaville rent-free for five years if they follow a "charter of conduct." Among other things, they must work or go to school, volunteer at least eight hours a week, participate in the community council, and stay away from drugs, project manager Shane Carmichael said.

There are after-school and tutoring programs for children, computer and job-training classes for adults, and plans to operate an organic farm. While Magna provides housing and other activities, residents do not receive cash payments.

Canadaville's population stands at about 210, mostly black and from New Orleans. More than half the original residents are still here.

Quiet, paved streets with names such as Pelican Place and Honey Bee Road wind past the 49 three-bedroom modular homes. It's a very different life for most of the former urban dwellers.

Eli Bryant sees Canadaville as a blessing, with the laid-back lifestyle and outdoors work he longed for.

For Barbara Stewart, it has been a culture shock: A Wal-Mart several towns away is the nearest major shopping venue.

The influx of Katrina evacuees also was culture shock for nearby Simmesport, a town of 2,200 where outsiders are easily spotted.

That was a big deal when plans for Canadaville were proposed, Carmichael said. Some Simmesport residents worried murderers and rapists would be coming to their town, he said, alluding to reports of violence in New Orleans after Katrina.

So Magna pledged to buy patrol cars for the Simmesport police, pay for three more police officers for five years, and build a sports complex and a recreation center that would double as an evacuation center.

Though there is still some friction between town and Canadaville, Carmichael said he hoped the relationship could mend.

Many in town have welcomed Canadaville residents, and the dollars they spend on groceries and at general stores. Some have hired the newcomers. Jackie Quebedeaux, a convenience-store manager, said it did not matter to her where the Canadaville residents came from, "as long as they're honest, and want to work."

New Orleans deaths up 47% ...

2007-06-24T07:36:00.000-04:00

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

Hurricane Katrina's tragic aftermath lingered for at least a year after the storm abated, boosting New Orleans' death rate last year by 47% compared with two years before the levees broke, researchers reported Thursday.

Doctors say the dramatic surge in deaths comes as no surprise in a city of 250,000 mostly poor and middle-class people who lost seven of 22 hospitals and half of the city's hospital beds. More than 4,486 doctors were displaced from three New Orleans parishes, creating a shortage that still hampers many hospitals, says a companion study released Thursday.

The indigent suffered the brunt of the health toll from the 2005 storm. The Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans, two hospitals that made up the city's safety net for the uninsured, were severely damaged. Charity Hospital, oldest and best known of the two, remains closed.

"We're facing a lot of health care challenges. I'm sure that has a significant impact on mortality," says Kevin Stephens, director of the New Orleans Health Department and lead author of the study, in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. The study on doctor relocation, led by Kusuma Madamala of the American Medical Association, is in the same journal.

Stephens' study contrasts with one carried out by the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, which found "only slight excesses" in deaths in New Orleans Parish.

That study, released in May, found a death rate of 14.3 per 1,000 people during the first three months of 2006, compared with 11.3 per 1,000 for three-month spans in 2002 and 2004.

But Stephens says the state's figure still tops the U.S. rate of 8.1 per 1,000. "We don't think that's a slight increase, we've think it's a tremendous increase in mortality," he says. He called the state's numbers "inaccurate and incomplete" because they don't count deaths of evacuees who left Louisiana.

Frederick Cerise, Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals, said it's "hard to track deaths that occurred out of state." He adds, "We saw a spike in the first quarter of 2006 that has not been sustained since then."

Stephens says that poor people who left the city had trouble getting health care wherever they landed.

"We can get hung up on the numbers, but the bottom line is that people are dying at a faster rate here post-Katrina," says Jullette Saussy, director of New Orleans EMS.

"The lack of primary care, of mental health care and of long waits in emergency rooms all have (worsened) people's normally controllable chronic diseases," she says. "Diabetes, respiratory disease and hypertension all are killers, especially when they're not dealt with."

The storm's impact on the state office that tracks vital statistics made those deaths difficult to measure. To get information, Stephens' team tracked death notices in the New Orleans Times-Picayune and compared the findings with the state's vital statistics. He said the study wasn't designed to determine what caused the excess deaths.

From January to June 2006, they found on average 1,317 death notices a month, for a mortality rate of about 91 per 100,000 people. In 2002 and 2004, the average was 924 notices a month, for a death rate of 62 per 100,000, 47% fewer than after the storm.

Setup in Cincinnati …

2007-06-17T09:02:00.000-04:00

Our furniture arrived in Cincinnati on Wednesday via Allied Van Lines. Don’t use them; our stuff was pretty banged-up.

The first crisis of the day was that our delivery truck, an 18-wheeler, got stuck on a narrow street approaching our house. Several neighbors moved their parked cars, and before long the driver, Steve, managed to maneuver the truck to the front of our house.

Maybe someday we will be able to laugh about the move, but not yet. We are in an old house, and the entryway has a very low ceiling which made every piece moved a challenge. Our sofa did not make it, and was sent to storage.

The stairway to our upper floor is even more restrictive, and a desk and a box spring intended for the upper floor joined our sofa in storage. We will have to get a split box spring to finish our guest room. I didn't know there was such a thing as a split box spring before this move.

Steve’s moving crew was drawn from Berger, a local Allied agent. Dave and Tony were very good workers, but generated some friction with Steve. Mostly he had lots of advice but didn’t care to do much heavy lifting. Things evened out when he got a bit more involved.

Thursday and Friday were unpacking days, though it seems the remaining boxes are multiplying. Susan is repacking some things that we will probably not need in our year in this apartment, already trying to reduce the trauma of our next move. We expect that the next move will be to elsewhere in the Cincinnati area, but who knows?

Other than still being buried in boxes, we are enjoying our neighborhood, Hyde Park. We went to a neighborhood association meeting (boring) where we met some neat neighbors. They have invited us to a dinner party this weekend.

On Friday night we explored Newport on the Levee, a dining and entertainment development in Kentucky that looks across the Ohio River at the Cincinnati skyline. On Saturday we joined a gym and met a few of our fellow exercisers.

I think this is going to be fun.

On the road again …

2007-06-10T08:56:00.000-04:00

Driving from N.O. to Cincy was rather uneventful. We got a late start on Tuesday because the movers were loading up until about 2:30 p.m. Still we got as far as Meridian, MS.

On the second day we reached Nashville just as some Country Music Association event had filled up the local lodging capacity. All we could find was a smoking room in a Comfort Inn. As we entered the room there was a faint smell of smoke, but we quickly adapted.

We reached our objective on Thursday, Susan’s brother’s place in Dillsboro, IN. We are staying here, forty miles from Cincinnati, until our furniture arrives. It is on Wilderness Lane, a private road to a beautiful spread that includes a private lake (pond?). Harley’s wife Jascia, is on a hammock at the pond, watching son Benjamin swim in the pond as we arrive.

Friday was dedicated to checking out our new apartment and beginning to set up a new household. Best we could tell, the landlady fixed the problems we had noted in our visit last month.

Yuppies that we are, our first priorities were to line up a maid and a decorator. Next was a visit to the neighborhood Ace hardware, followed by Barnes and Noble (city maps), Linen’s and Things, and Best Buy. On Saturday we visited Lowe’s and Radio Shack in the Dillsboro area.

This afternoon we are going to a Cincy Newcomers Club meeting. We plan to be active in social and civic groups to develop our sense of belonging.

Cultural opportunities here are impressive. We subscribed to the Playhouse in the Park series. We will attend at least a couple of the Broadway series, and may attend some of the Shakespeare company’s events. Later this month we will attend the Summer Pops concert.

In Transit …

2007-06-03T08:30:00.000-04:00

We are mostly packed and leave New Orleans on Tuesday for Cincinnati. We will take three or so days to drive there, our furniture will take a few more days than that, and the car we are transporting a few days more.

Moving is harder than I remembered. For having been being wiped out by Katrina, we sure have a lot of stuff to move.

For the last week or so we have had an intense “farewell tour,” from Susan’s retirement party to my family gathering. In between we have dined with different friends at Galatoire’s and Commander’s, Liuzza’s and Brocato’s among other places.

It was nice of Mayor Nagin to report the state of the city just before our leaving. He did not have anything to say that would cause us to re-think the move. Does this make us part of the “brain drain?”

Once we get settled at the other end, perhaps an “arrival tour” would be in order. We will need to find a guide to the finer restaurants in Cincinnati; we have already booked a few cultural attractions over the summer.

We will soon have to re-assess our commitment to the New Orleans Bulletin (NOBull for short). Can an expatriate have any insight to offer to those still in New Orleans? Some comparisons to Cincinnati could be interesting in the short term, but might quickly wear thin.

Susan and I have a combined 95 years of living in greater New Orleans. When asked where we are from it will be quite a while before we think of saying anything other than N.O. We expect to return several times a year to visit our relatives and friends.

Stay in touch.