WSJ: All the King's Men Cannot Save New Orleans - Feds can't make the Crescent City great.

opinionjournal.com ^ | September 23, 2005 | Daniel Henninger

[OESY]

...What is New Orleans today? It is the impoverished, lawless product of Huey Long's anti-capitalist populism, cross-fertilized with every poverty program Washington produced the past 60 years. The currently popular notion that "the country" somehow failed to notice that much of New Orleans had become a social and economic basket case is false. Every college student knows the basic storyline of "All the King's Men" if not that of former Governor Edwin Edwards (1992-96), now serving 10 years for extorting businessmen.

Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a native of Louisiana, believes a "culture of fatalism" about corruption exists that makes the possibility of reform hard. "Corruption isn't quite normal in most places," he says, "but none of that's true in Louisiana." Like other fans of the state and its famous city, he sees the period ahead as Louisiana's last best chance for joining the rest of the rising New South economy. With characteristic mischievousness, Mr. Smith also notes that it is an open question whether Louisiana would meet the economic freedom and just-rule criteria of President Bush's Millennium Challenge grants for developing countries.

There is no hope for New Orleans unless what comes next is the opposite of the status quo before Katrina. It has happened elsewhere; Dublin, once moribund, is thriving.... New Orleans needs an exemption from the politics and policies of the past 40 years. In a disaster equal to the hurricane's devastation of New Orleans, the federal welfare system eroded the life of the city's poorest families at the same time the schools were failing to educate them. Why should the poorest people of New Orleans have to return to their catastrophic schools? Where is the morality in a system that would do that?...

[Brilliant]

"Crescent City..."




Not a good name since Sept. 11.

[F16Fighter]

What is New Orleans today?

It is the impoverished, lawless product of Huey Long's anti-capitalist populism, cross-fertilized with every poverty program Washington produced the past 60 years. The currently popular notion that "the country" somehow failed to notice that much of New Orleans had become a social and economic basket case is false....

New Orleans combined the worst of all worlds down to its very core -- it was both a plantation and corrupt feudal system; And a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah.

Billions of dollars will pour in to New Orleans without even changing anything but the cosmetics.

[libstripper]

I suspect the rebuilding will involve one of the greatest, most gridlocked, environmental/political battles of this century. NYC can't even figure out what to do about the Twin Towers and the accompanying memorial. The NO mess is far greater with far more opportunities for graft and environmental obstruction. Most of the inundated residential areas are presently unfit for human habitation and the buidlings there will have to be bulldozed before any rebuilding can even be contemplated. There will even be a huge battle over how to dispose of the buildings' remains (burning or--???). Then the question will come of who will rebuild, with what, according to what zoning/environmental rules, and how. All of this is guaranteed to produce a gigantic Second Battle of New Orleans that will make the first look like a grade school play.

[battlegearboat]

Move it to Las Vegas and start towing some icebergs into the Gulf Of Mexico.

[libstripper]

My own view is a bit less apocalyptic. NO is at a commercially vital location and has a perverse culture that appeals to many. Aside from that, there's not much and, before Katrina, the other parts that were there made it a rotting social pustule. That makes the solution pretty clear. Rebuild the commercial facilities to the extent appropriate for NO to perform its commercial function. Reconstruct and protect the French Quarter and other tourist-attractive parts of the city essentially as a North American version of Venice, Italy. Then allow private enterprise to create residences, in areas where they can be healthfully constructed, sufficient to provide housing for the people employed in new NO and others with sufficient private funds who want to move there and live there. Stop at that point and do not create any new public housing or Federally subsidized housing. If that's done, NO will be a smaller, cleaner, less corrupt, commercially bustling, and prosperous city.