Actually Katrina is a chance for NOLA to get a do-over. (not that I’d wish Katrina on any city).

Brain Dead Nagin has to go along with most of city hall and half of the city council. I feel for the good hard working people in NOLA because they don’t get the media attention. It’s mostly the whiners and the corrupt politicians that get the headlines.

Why are you leaving?

Laura on May 20, 2009 at 12:39 AM

The biggest reason is to get away from my inlaws. I’ve also been working out of Baton Rouge for several months. There are jobs in New Orleans but there’s a shortfall in IT jobs as companies are moving their IT assets out of the city for disaster recovery and prevention.

I’m moving to Hammond, which is still close and considered part of the NOLA metro area in some way.

As to City Business being a rag… think as you please, of course. But the facts are not in dispute if the best you can do is name calling.

Ummm I’m from there city business is nothing more than a cheerleading rag always has been always will be.

People are “coming” for the Federal contracts – like with the oil boom – they wil be leaving soon as well

Laura, New Orleans is struggling – hey always has ever since about 1983 its been in sharp sharp decline – sad

:-) They don’t call them the Cajun Kennedys for nothing. And we’re in very good company – here’s Ed’s take at his old blog:

The election proved a fascinating look at a city still trying to decide who it is and what it wants. In his first election, Nagin had been considered the more moderate candidate, a businessman who would bring reform and a friendly face to enterprise in the corrupt Big Easy. Landrieu came from a political family with a long history in Louisiana, representing the political insiders that have always run New Orleans and the state as a whole.

Florida copes with storms without the theatrics,

Two things: 1)those theatrics were to some extent exactly that: theatrics. Performed by the usual suspects and played up by the media and the Democrats in order to bash Bush. There were legitimate issues here, and yes, looting and bad behavior, especially after the guns were confiscated by Nagin and the National Guard. (Looting happens in every other storm struck city as well, google any hurricane name and looting and you’ll find plenty.) But a lot of what the media hammered day after week after month was about political gain. If I could just get my hands around Geraldo Rivera’s neck for five minutes… The truth is the vast majority of New Orleanians just got on with it. 2)A good part of why people here are still angry is it wasn’t just a catastropic storm. Most of the damage was thanks to poor engineering on the Corps’ part. That Levees.org site is free from hysteria and contains loads of verifiable facts. Paul from Wizbang also beat the media hands-down on reality-based Katrina coverage, this is a must-read if you really want to be informed.

I’m the last person to say tons of things didn’t go wrong, and that the city and state government wasn’t a train wreck. But things are more complicated in this situation that most people understand; the typical narratives really don’t cut it. (Which you know of course, since you’re from around here, but I’m posting this for others as well…)

I will disagree with you on Nagin though… bad as he is (and there was a time I did defend some things about him, but I’m way over that) he is not as bad as letting the Landrieu family get further entrenched in La. politics. The last thing we need is Mary’s little bro to get hold of the city checkbook. At the time of the election, remember: Nagin was the reform candidate. The guy who was a relative newcomer to politics coming from a business background. I would have rather had several other candidates, but when it was time for the runoff, the choices were Nagin and Landrieu, and the voters made the choice they thought would bring the least corruption.

Lay-Z… man, it’s old home week. :-) My church has gutted a lot of houses and cleaned up a lot of yards in Lakeview, and we never miss the marketplaces at Harrison Ave; lots to give away each time. Why are you leaving?

EricPWJohnson on May 19, 2009 at 10:07 PM

I guess the New Orleans City Business paper has morons writing for them.

The Louisiana Workforce Commission are a bunch of idiots too.

So I’m an idiot for claming that unemployment in New Orleans is better compared to the rest of the nation with proof to back it up. Do you even live in Louisiana much less New Orleans?

The federal government has already thrown billions at the city for Katrina recovery. You claim it hasn’t been rebuilt so your answer is more money.

If New Orleans was “dying”, why are people coming here for jobs.

If anything is killing NOLA, it’s the idiot box known as City Hall that’s doing it. They’re screaming about emails rather than trying to do something constructive. The city is still using money from hurricane relief and even that has been tied up in red tape or defauded. Yet your answer is more money.

Businesses have been leaving the state for years before Katrina because of high taxes from Democrats that ran the state for decades. Your answer is to get that sweet sweet stimulus pork for unemployment, when unemployment is down compared to the rest of the nation, only to raise business taxes again and driving more jobs out of the state. Brilliant!

I only live here and really see whats going in New Orleans, yet I’m the idiot.

Quit getting your talking points about New Orleans from Anderson Cooper. There’s a lot more to New Orleans than the Superdome, Bourbon Street, and the 9th Ward.

Eric, I LIVE here. Some neighborhoods have not been rebuilt, but the city is ticking along pretty well, actually. Population is lower, crime is up, but business is still being done here every day. We even got the Superbowl in 2013.

Laura on May 19, 2009 at 11:00 PM

I live in Lakeview (for two more weeks at least) and its coming along nicely. Lakeview was flooded badly just like the 9th ward but the media will never tell you that.

My inlaws bought a house here a year ago, moving from Algiers, and my brother-in-law is renovating a gutted house as well. Harrison Ave has boomed in the two years I lived here and will probably continue to do so. There are still gutted houses but there’s a lot of new construction going on.

I’m in Vernon Parish

Ah, good old Sleezeville Leesville.

I kid, I kid. I was stationed at Polk for nearly 3 years. Fun place.

I think the reason, looking back, is that GOP governors did know about the strings, but they couldn’t articulate the problems.

It would have been viewed, and was, as fear-mongering.

CA now offers proof.

Laura on May 19, 2009 at 11:12 PM

I’d rather own the whole state of Ohio thanks…

NOLA had a really special corridor, but it has ingrained rot that goes back a century or more.

Not holding Ohio up as a shining icon either our Cleveland problem goes back at least 65 years and in essence the state has just decided that electing enough donks will set the time machine back 40 years….

Remember Rita*

*the other twisted sister

Laura on May 19, 2009 at 11:09 PM

I’m in Vernon Parish, I go to NOLA a lot just to keep an eye out. NOLA got a disproportionate amount of Katrina aid just as Katrina got a lot more aid than Rita. Buddy delivered relief trailers to NOLA I am not the “expert” you are(no sarcasm) but then again sometimes distance adds perspective. NOLA’s “crisis” in the evacuation was voluntary I will die smiling at the memory of the Sugar Ray Nagin Aquatic Bus Park. Gulfport looked like an A-bomb had gone off but the Times-Picayune claims NOLA took three times the damage of all Mississippi which is a lie.

Florida copes with storms without the theatrics, Texas, the rest of Louisiana, MS, and Alabalma as well as Georgia the Carolinas and even the Mid Atlantic states cope….

but NOLA poor NOLA stands alone….

sorry but the little raw maximum sympathy I had for NOLA expired with the one two punch of reelecting Sugar Ray and DollarBill….

glad you made it, hope the recovery happens sooner rather than later but the donks want the 9th ward JUST as it was for a reason.

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. …But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes, than to own the whole state of Ohio. –Lafcadio Hearn, 1879

But there’s something about this place; the music, the food, the history, I’m not sure what… it’s still special, in spite of it all.

And by the way – that money (most people are under the impression that NOLA got $110 billion just for ourselves) included federal responses to Katrina, Wilma, and Rita, and it was spread out to the entire Gulf Coast. Furthermore, $20 billion of it was private flood insurance payouts. More little known facts on Katrina/NOLA here.

Eric, I LIVE here. Some neighborhoods have not been rebuilt, but the city is ticking along pretty well, actually. Population is lower, crime is up, but business is still being done here every day. We even got the Superbowl in 2013.

Laura on May 19, 2009 at 11:00 PM

the potential to be a really special place is there, but status quo ante seems to be the watchword….

OT, but �������? Are these paragraph markers?

No, a glitch in the function that promotes posts from the Greenroom. Doubtless it’ll be fixed soon.

You are an idiot….. sorry but the city was Destroyed! Has never been rebuilt

EricPWJohnson on May 19, 2009 at 10:06 PM

Eric, I LIVE here. Some neighborhoods have not been rebuilt, but the city is ticking along pretty well, actually. Population is lower, crime is up, but business is still being done here every day. We even got the Superbowl in 2013.