GO FORWARD 4

Why America Doesn't Trust New Orleans

Mayor Ray Nagin was in Washington on Monday to testify before a Senate committee. He brought his usual helping of blame that has become his trademark since the hurricane that he calls "the worst natural and man-made disaster to occur in the United States." What he apparently does not recognize is that the "man" in "man-made" is none other than himself. Yes, Mr. Mayor, you are "the man."

Nagin said he doesn't see "the will to really fix New Orleans." He criticized the Bush administration for pouring money into Iraq, but not New Orleans. The reasons, he claims, are class and racism. But to most of us average Americans -- the ones who ponied up $3.27 billion in private donations after Katrina -- it looks more like a problem of corruption and incompetency, with Captain Nagin at the helm.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has paid the state of Louisiana roughly $5.1 billion to reimburse local officials for infrastructure projects following Katrina, but only about $2 billion of that money has reached communities. As of Jan. 18, FEMA had agreed to pay for $334 million for infrastructure repairs in New Orleans, but officials in Baton Rouge had forwarded only $145 million to the city. So what's the problem?

"Most of the complaints I get from my staff now have to do with holdups at the state level," said Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish. State officials have said city leaders failed to provide required documentation. "We don't read minds down here," Smith said. "They have to apply for it." But that's too much trouble for Captain Nagin. He called it "cumbersome."

Let me get this straight. The federal government gave the money to the state, but Nagin is too lazy to fill out the paperwork, so he goes to DC to call Bush a racist?

I'd like to just trust the good people of New Orleans to take the money and do good things with it, but there's one thing makes that difficult. Correction, there are a billion things. Known fraud by "victims" of the storm topped $1 billion as they bought things like "Girls Gone Wild" videos, strippers, vacations and God knows what else. While Nagin was publicly whining about FEMA's immediate response to the storm, our tax dollars provided rental assistance to people simultaneously living in free hotel rooms. This from the same people that robbed their evacuated neighbors, looted stores and shot police in the weeks following the disaster. So why wouldn't we trust Captain Nagin's crew with billions more in undocumented funds? It has alot less to do with color than it does corruption.

But this is nothing new. Louisiana has a long history of corruption. Crime in New Orleans has long been out of control. In 2003, the murder rate was over 7.5 times the national average. (274 documented murders with a pre-Katrina population of just under half a million.) In 2006, Americans suffered 821 military casualties in Iraq -- a country with a population of 26.7 million. It could be argued that it's safer to be in Iraq than in New Orleans.

But don't take my word on that. Take it from New Orleans resident and Times-Picayune writer Chris Rose, who wrote the devestatingly revealing article, "Will violence destroy the New Orleans that wind and water could not?"

"During late night walks in my New Orleans neighborhood, sometimes I hear the not-so-distant reports of gunfire. I wait for the sirens and lights to come, but they don't...

"My neighborhood is the quietest of them all. Safe, in a relative sense. Very relative. Down in the 7th, the 8th and the 9th wards, it's part of the aural fabric of the darkness, rat-tat-tat, the deadly game played on street corners by the Children of the Night.

"They play a game called Somebody Dies Tonight. Question is, will it be someone you know - a doctor, an artist, a musician - so you'll get all up in arms about it and march on City Hall? Or will it be another nameless, faceless child of the streets, a killer at 17, dead himself at 18?

"...I've gotten several calls from national media outlets asking if I have time to write up something about the recent crime uptick in New Orleans. What they don't understand is that this isn't an uptick; it's simply a matter of shooters exhibiting better aim than usual.

"We are a community held hostage by our teenagers. What the hurricane couldn't do, what the flood couldn't do, what political chicanery and incompetence couldn't do, a random and soulless group of children can do... We can handle wind and water and fire. But what we've got on our hands is something that neither FEMA nor Road Home can fix."

There is a long list of geographical reasons why New Orleans should not be rebuilt at all, but the human factor raises even more questions. If the taxpayers pay to rebuild a violent society, who is at fault when another 274 people are murdered in, say, 2012? The violence is already returning -- 162 murders in 2006 and 15 more in the first 20 days of 2007.

While Captain Nagin cries about the hole in his ship, the mutinous crew is engaged in a gunfight. Corruption and incompentency are the real problems of New Orleans. The rest is, as they say in the real estate business, lipstick and rouge. And that has absolutely nothing to do with race.

Sources: Washington Post, The Advocate, City of New Orleans, The Sun Herald, St. Petersburg Times, CNN, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, CIA World Factbook, Houston Chronicle.