This beauty of a paddywagon was found hiding on City Park Avenue, right next door to the Municipal Training Academy, also where the Parking Division’s Administrative Hearing Center NO LONGER EXISTS (would someone please inform the City of No’s stationers?)
Microsoft’s ‘dirty tricks’ archive turns into hot Torrent
The material needs to find a home in a academic institution, which has the time to curate it, check for completeness, and put the material in context. And ideally this should be in a region beyond US jurisdiction – if there are any such places this side of Jupiter. (Perhaps the Gates Foundation can recommend somewhere) … For now, however, Bittorrent appears to be doing the job for which it was designed.
Mark pointed the NOLA bloggers to da po blog’s take on Andrés Duany’s article on New Orleans in BusinessWeek. (Feel free to read the article and the post/comments before checking back in here). Here are some of Duany’s statements that da po’ boy emphasized:
I realized at that instant that New Orleans is not really an American city, but rather a Caribbean one … then I thought that if New Orleans were to be governed as efficiently as, say, Minneapolis, it would be a different place—and not one that I could care for …
… One way to leisure time is to have a low financial carry. With a little work, a little help from the government, and a little help from family and friends, life could be good! This is a typically Caribbean social contract: not one to be understood as laziness or poverty—but as a way of life.
It is a lifestyle choice, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it.
My first thought on reading this: Tell this to the families of murder victims whose killers walk the streets due to inefficient government, the parents who work two or three jobs and save to keep their kids out of NOPS and the accident victim whose ambulance is delayed by potholes, uncoordinated lights and drivers who don’t have the common bloody courtesy to pull over for an emergency vehicle.
Understand that Duany wrote this article to justify alternatives to current American building standards – “drawings, permitting, contractors, inspections” – that put up blockades to affordable housing, and not the dangerously fine social line between a laissez-faire joie de vivre and abject apathy. His is not an excuse for the high high highs and low low lows that characterize this city. Let’s not confuse cultural accomplishment to date with an effective society, especially when we host a murder a day and some banana republics have it more together than us. If culture were my only criterion for an American city, New Orleans would win hands down, but as (for just one example) my own recent goat rodeo with the City Of No’s parking division* attests, we have miles and miles to go before we rest on any laurels, folks.
Like it or not, we are still the 18th state of the Union and would do better to abide by the standards of infrastructure and effectiveness of other states (no, not the federal government, which couldn’t find its way out of a wet manila envelope) to meet our own state’s motto of union, justice and confidence. As I commented at da po blog, we can have the best of all, it is not an either-or proposition. It’s not America vs. New Orleans or bust. For as another commenter astutely observed, “Culture is how you lay out the roads in your city, infrastructure is how many potholes exist in those roads … I’ve also heard that an ambulance will show up in Minneapolis 4 minutes after you call in an emergency, anywhere in the city. You can have that same sort of response in New Orleans, too. It has nothing to do with culture.”
Res ipsa loquitur. Why can I not have both the most breathtaking amount of festivity and bonhomie and preeminent levels of service, response and conscience on the part of my government and fellow citizens? And I mean all citizens, not just the same ones I read about and meet over and over again in recovery circles. If we put the same amount of soul and determination into rebuilding and demanding the best of this city as we do a Mardi Gras costume, Jazzfest art and a school band, we would then be world class. And don’t ever tell me one person cannot chill when required and then step to it when the occasion demands. Never state that the free spirits that fill this city with its art, music, soul and culture don’t have the gumption and can-do attitude to accomplish things logistical and lasting. Work hard, play hard, demand the best!
Do we have it in ALL of us, each and every one of us from the Iberville projects to the mansions on St. Charles Avenue and beyond? That’s what is required. Or we’re done.
–
* to be explained in an upcoming post – until then, hold your goats
Looks like Ms. Betty was an Allstate customer. Today’s nola.com reports that many homeowners are surprised that Allstate cancelled their policies although their flooded homes are fixed or being repaired, or in some cases didn’t flood at all.
The article sums up the problem nicely and includes the names of insurance companies that are following in Allstate’s footsteps. The insurance companies aren’t the only ones to blame. The red tape and roadblocks generated by insurance reimbursement, FEMA (SBA) and Road Home are as culpable in this process. Is Jim Donelon going to do anything about this miscarriage of justice? Louisiana is listening.
Here is something particularly heinous that underscores the tangled web our society has woven itself.
[Ray Broussard's] agent counseled him to go to City Hall and get a building permit, but Broussard said he wouldn’t qualify for a renovation permit because the house was already demolished … he didn’t want to lie about a construction contract to keep his insurance.
“My agent told me to go to one of those kiosks and get a repair permit. I said, ‘Wouldn’t that be insurance fraud?’ I wasn’t willing to do that because it’s not the truth,” said Broussard, who has been an Allstate customer for 10 years.
His penalty for being honest: a cancellation notice that arrived last Saturday telling him that he’ll be booted March 21.
The whole thing is disgusting and, as it unfolds so close to home, exponentially increases my distrust of the marriage of big government and big corporation.
I’d like to think that the mayor’s call to run Road Home out of New Orleans will speed things up and increase accountability, but, as our own Eye On City Hall reports, abject transparency is not his strong suit.
Scarecrows don’t talk!
Severe storm warnings issued for New Orleans Metropolitan area
… there is moderate risk of severe weather beginning Saturday afternoon and ending Sunday night for our region. The local National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) office and severe weather outlook team are concerned that this group of thunderstorms could produce large hail, damaging winds and tornado activity that rivals what we witnessed on February 13th, 2007.
Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got? Courage!
Update: D tells me not to worry as the storm is going to travel to the north of us.
“We Americans want it all: endless and secure energy supplies; low prices; no pollution; less global warming; no new power plants (or oil and gas drilling, either) near people or pristine places. This is a wonderful wish list, whose only shortcoming is the minor inconvenience of massive inconsistency.” — Robert Samuelson
Conan O’Brien’s Meet The Press For Dummies.
The proposed XM-Sirius merger concerns the Chairman of the FCC.
New York-based Sirius and XM of the District are lining up some of the best-known and highest-paid lawyers and lobbyists, while competitors and consumer groups vow to fight back. The biggest potential roadblock for the merger is a 1997 Federal Communications Commission declaration that a single owner may not control the subscriber-only satellite radio business.
Proponents of the merger argue from an economic standpoint, i.e. the death of satellite radio if the companies continue to operate independently.
Neither company is making money right now, and the prospects of either one of them being able to turn a profit as an independent company given the immense operating costs that they have to deal with is pretty slim. Satellite radio is still, and will likely remain for a long time, a niche technology.
As an XM and Sirius subscriber, I have a different argument against the merger, i.e. the watering-down of the formats. XM plays great and eclectic music, while Sirius excels at talk radio. Traditionally, such mergers haven’t yielded a greater product, but a watered-down compromise of the individual parts. This, I fear, will doom the XMSiriusMegacombo far more than if they stay independent of one another.
In other words, they will pry Fred, Ethel and Lucy from my cold, dead fingers. Say no to mediAcrity!
In today’s post, Loki says,
We exist in a place where Katrina, the Federal Flood, and the ongoing trials infect every aspect of day to day life. Every interaction, every conversation, every walk down the block are tainted with the events of the past 18 months. In this sort of environment catharsis is essential … Every masker is able to leave behind the wreckage of their former home and cut loose in a collaborative satirization of the pain we are steeped in. This is how we heal.
This afternoon, I walked out of a meeting to see a usually cheerful co-worker, Ms. Betty, in a deep funk. She didn’t want to tell me what is going on, but I pried it out of her because no friend of mine is going to stew in misery (or joy) alone. Both of Betty’s homes in New Orleans East, one her dwelling and another a rental property, were flooded 18 months ago. For six months, Betty’s job took her away from New Orleans, while her husband and family scrambled to find funding (waiting on insurance!), estimates and reliable repairpeople for these homes. Eighteen months after the flood, Ms. Betty had the rental property fully gutted and the roof replaced, and decided to fix up and remodel her own house before continuing to work on the rental property.
Last night, she got a notice from her insurance company, Allstate, announcing that coverage on the rental property will be dropped as of next month because the house is now considered “abandoned.” Imagine a grown woman crying in your arms because her house on which she paid insurance for 36 years will be booted off an insurance company’s roster without as much as a Thank You.
“Thirty six years I did the right thing, I paid in on time, never a day behind on the bill. And what do I get in return? It makes me feel so bad. All I want to do now is give those houses to my church and never return to Louisiana.”
CBSNews.com: Bloggers Celebrate Mardi Gras
They mean bloggers outside NOLA, and one in. The rest of us were busy catching beads from Payton, Fujita and Payton. We don’t just celebrate Fat Tuesday but, like Adrastos said, blitz the parade route. The corner of St. Mary and St. Charles was pwn3d this year.