John Edwards has chosen the perfect place to make the long awaited announcement of his Presidential campaign. I suggest that all of the upcoming campaign announcements by Democrats should be made in the Democratic enclave of New Orleans. New Orleans is the perfect place to spotlight Democratic policies and the implementation of those policies. After all New Orleans has been controlled by Democrats since Reconstruction, which of course occured during the century before the last century. I was lucky enough to spend a good amount of time in New Orleans in my younger (and even dumber) days and the town still stands out as a fun but backwards and very corrupt place. Possibly because of the town's corruption the wealthy locals of New Orleans do not support their own city, they invest elsewhere. Spend some time in New Orleans and you will see why the wealthy invest elsewhere. I write these opinions as a person who once owned a "get out of jail free card" for that city, it was given to me by a friend's father who was politically connected. I must also state that whenever I list the most corrupt states in the union I always start the list with New Jersey, Illinois and Louisiana.
New Orleans is a city below sea level and some parts of town will flood during a good summer rain, I was in New Orleans once and saw water shooting out of sewers after an hour of rain. I have also been in homes along the Industrial Canal where one can look up to the hulls of passing ships. Such experiences make one wonder how a person could live there. It should be clear by now that New Orleans flooded due to collapsing levees along the canals, those levees are controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers and by the notoriously corrupt New Orleans Parish Levee Boards. I have an acquaintance who is from New Orleans. who currently resides in Chicago, he was once on one of the levee boards; while the city was just starting to flood he was cursing those Levee Boards for what he saw as their corrupt negligence.
It is now well known that New Orleans was required by the Federal Government to have a workable evacuation plan for an emergency like, oh I don't know, a hurricane! It is also well known that the Democratic city government of New Orleans was incapable of carrying out any evacuation at all and in fact they did not even attempt an evacuation and the city's buses were subsequently flooded. During a press conference before the storm hit both Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco lamented that President Bush had advised them to evacuate New Orleans the previous day; they both waited until Sunday when it was largely too late. Despite the fact that those comments were made at a "press" conference the media as a whole ignored those comments and blamed Bush for the storm and it's aftermath.
The nation should know by now that the post-Katrina disaster was caused by poorly constructed levees that are controlled by the local corrupt Democrats in the city of New Orleans rather than some inaction (intentional or otherwise) by the Federal Government (see update below). It should also be obvious that the disastrous aftermath was caused by corrupt and lazy local politicians and frankly complacent people who live below sea level in that city rather than any actions taken by the Federal Government.
I write all of this as a person who has both spent a substantial amount of time in New Orleans and one who has lived through a category 5 hurricane.
The title of this post states that John Edwards has found the perfect place to announce his candidacy. New Orleans is a backwards corrupt Democratic town that abandoned it's own citizens during the hour of their greatest need. Two Americas indeed.
UPDATE:
A commenter has made me reread the above post and I must add that the Federal governments' responsibility for the levee failure is concurrent with that of the levee boards in that they both allowed contractors to use substandard material and/or not build to specs. My acquaintance who served on a levee board left no doubt that he believed that the local boards allowed substandard work. Problems with the Army Corps have been legion and are decades old. That however does not excuse the city government of New Orleans for their failure to heed their own evacuation plans.
Labels: Edwards, Katrina
