Posted on 10/11/2005 6:21:27 AM PDT by drt1
NEW ORLEANS - On Bourbon Street, Red Cross workers are taking a break with a night out. There are firefighters, police officers, National Guard troops, construction workers and contractors of every stripe. But there aren't any tourists or conventioneers, the twin engines that make this city, home to just one Fortune 500 company, economically viable.
And many of the Hurricane Katrina rescue and relief workers are heading home. Bars and restaurants that were full a week ago are often close to empty. This is making local business owners wonder whether early stirrings of life in the French Quarter were real -- or a heartbreaking mirage.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The real face of NOLA (Pre-Katrina) revealed on TV. Not a pretty picture and certainly not one that would induce me to want to go there.
Gee, the insinuation seems to be that the TV is not painting a true picture of what it's like in NOLA.
How could that be?
Drunks always return to the seen of their projectile vomiting!
No, as for we and our friends, we are finished with N.O. We're dealing with enough of their thugs in the San Antonio, TX area. I've had it with those whiners and miscreants. MS and AL are STILL virtually off the screen, my money and support goes to THOSE folks. We are very careful and selective where our contributions go anymore, I wish we had more say-so over our tax money!
Not if they use federal funds to rebuild (which they are). They're getting enough of my money, already.
I'll go again. Love the music scene, and want to sit in Preservation Hall once more.
I went to New Orleans once befoe the storm hit, I wasnt impressed. However if you are a drunk, a libertine, a homosexual or a voyeur , I reccommend it.
Couldn't agree more. MSM only focus is on NO; and all they do is whine about race, and not enough being done. Mississippi had an entire city destroyed and nothing in the news about them, Alabama or Florida. I was channel surfing and ended up on CNN(barf)and their big story was finding people who felt the Levies were destroyed by gov to get rid of the poor blacks.
They can be given all the aid, material wealth, but if their selfish greed,criminal attitudes is still the same these people can't be helped.
I've been to NO many times, but will never return again...screw those people....
Translated "we are a tourist trap".
Would you go to Disneyland if most of the rides were closed?
Never focus on building a town for tourists, if you want a real town with a real culture and a real economy.
Build a town where people want to live, and work, and build lives, and you will have a place where tourists want to come, but you will also have a place that doesn't depend on them.
Tourist towns provide jobs for busboys and waiters, lawyers and real estate salesmen. Not much for folks in the middle.
What is the status of the D-Day museum?
Never been there myself; and never had a yearn to
go. My adult children visited there 2 years ago
for a horse owners' convention. They were totally
unimpressed with it and said they'd never go back.
Too much filth, drinking, gambling, sleezy night life.
IMO, rebuilding the port accomodations to benefit the
nation's southern imports and having the population involved in supporting that industry along with some fish canneries should be sufficient. Forget the Casinos. I doubt that business will survive since there are too many other sites available to people who like to cabaret-hop.
I have no idea how much reality we're getting from
the media, but I would hate seeing my tax dollars go
for construction of new buildings which like the Chicago
"projects" would in a few years be reduced again to slums.
The National D-Day Museum Committed to Reopen
Spirit of the WWII war years an inspiration for today
We are pleased to report that the National D-Day Museum, designated by Congress as America’s National World War II Museum, survived Hurricane Katrina and her destructive aftermath with no serious structural damage or flooding. The priceless artifacts, displays and oral histories were not stolen or damaged in any way. The Museum did sustain losses from some vandalism and looting in the Gift Shop and a nearby storage building. Like many other institutions, our employees are scattered across the country.
Although the damage was contained, the restoration of the Museum to full operations will require much work and will take several months. And yet, even in the context of a city and a tourism industry facing challenges of unprecedented magnitude, the leadership and staff of the National D-Day Museum are working and looking ahead with optimism and determination. This Museum, which portrays and celebrates the courage and fortitude of the World War II generation, will be an integral part of rebuilding New Orleans, pledged Dr. Gordon N. “Nick” Mueller, Museum president and chief executive office.
“Like soldiers in a battle, our team is in the trenches,” Mueller affirmed. “We are meeting the daily challenges before us, but never losing sight of our long term goal to complete the Museum’s expansion to commemorate all campaigns and service branches of World War II.”
Construction to complete Discovery Hall, the Museum’s education center and new exhibition space, is continuing, and a major international World War II conference planned for October is being re-scheduled for spring or fall of 2006. Construction to complete Discovery Hall, the Museum’s education center and new exhibition space, will resume as soon as possible.
Arguably the National D-Day Museum’s true hero during the storm and its aftermath was Jake Staples, a member of the facilities staff who lived in and guarded the Museum and its collections for two weeks, preventing the loss of World War II artifacts, many of which were donated to the Museum by veterans, their children or grandchildren.
The late Stephen E. Ambrose, Museum founder and noted author, wrote this in describing the spirit of New Orleans during World War II: “In a scene repeated in cities all across the country, the people of New Orleans came together -- black and white, old and young, men and women -- to propel the war effort. Like their soldiers, they worked hard and made sacrifices because they all believed in the righteousness of their cause. They believed that, as a popular saying of the times had it, 'we're all in this together.’”
The people of New Orleans and other across the globe have made the National D-Day Museum a place of respect and honor, showcasing the sacrifice and courage of soldiers fighting in Europe and throughout the Pacific. The Museum also demonstrated the commitment and efforts of the men and women working on the homefront and with many organizations that are helping hurricane victims today, such as the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army. New Orleans is our home. As we were 60-plus years ago, today we’re are all in this together.
http://www.ddaymuseum.org/about/news_10_07_05.html
'Schoolbus' Nagin's economic development and recovery plan fosters businesses that seek gambling addict dollars as the previous focus on drunks and sex perverts would provide insufficient revenue to pay off all those who know too much.
Don't paint all of LA with that broad of a brush. Southwest LA was wiped out by Rita and you don't hear the whining. That's because the Cajuns are tough and independent, while New Orleanians are dependent on the Gov't.
That's right! Cajuns are tough! We see the good in a bad situation. For example, NOLA whined and complained about the MRE's, the cajuns are stocking up on them for hunting season. They have their priorities right. lol
They also are busy cleaning up, helping their neighbors and rebuilding. Lake Charles even had a rainy day fund set aside from the gambling revenues and will be able to continue vital functions without going bankrupt unlike NOLA.
Now we see the true price of corruption, ignorance on the part of the local and state government, and the media's "blame Bush" pogrom.
"Business as usual" limps along ok when things are "usual", but when the chips hit the fan, the rats desert, or they loot, point fingers, or they exaggerate and cry and whine.
The state and local government could have spent their money on solid infrastructure, but sadly, a lot of it went to pay for casinos, or unneeded locks, or ghost employees instead of boring things like disaster plans, levee maintenence and lower crime statistics.
The media, in their rush to field a ploy that may have worked once, possibly costing Bush senior re-election in 1992 over fallout from hurricane Andrew, only succeeded in drawing attention to the rotting foundation the city and state had neglected for decades. Who wants to hold a convention where babies were supposedly gang raped? (Now you know why the city is trying so hard to spin that none of the violence happened, when before, in their rush to blame Bush, they couldn't tell stories wild enough.) Who plans a vacation to tour areas where black people were eating their neighbors, and where the government dynamites the levees to save the rich at the expense of the poor?
Now nobody wants to visit.
Now they cry, all of them, "But it's not fair."
It is fair, it is justice, there's not a child older than ten who hasn't heard the parable of the ant and the grasshopper.
But concern over visitors may not be the largest of Louisiana and New Orlean's concern.
Where are the people who used to live there?
How many of them, given a free pass to cities with police departments that actually fight crime will choose to go back to moldy homes that will probably have to be bulldozed anyway?
The bars are empty. That means no visitors and no locals either.
The Feds can pour billions into re-construction, but they can't force people to visit and they can't force people to live there. Only market forces can do that.
Market forces dictated that the Florida land boom of the 1920's came to a screeching halt when the 1926 hurricane devastated the Florida Keys, and the area's growth rates did not recover until well after World War Two.
The Keys may have equalled New Orleans in terms of destructive result, but over a much smaller area. How many decades will it be before the areas Katrina hit return to their pre-storm levels of growth and economic well being?
A lot depends on whether the state and local governments decide to repeat pre-storm mistakes, something that Blanco, Nagin, and the Landrieu twins seem headlong bent upon.
Market forces are based on real value, not shiny chrome.
Something the state and local governments, along with the mainstream media, are now having to learn the hard way.
Will they learn?
Of course not.
Tthey never do.
They find someone else to blame, limp along in a damaged state, wondering why the formula doesn't work any more, and slowly find enough handouts to improve their standard of living to "almost as good as the successful people", until the next storm comes along.
Business as usual.
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