While Standing on One Foot...

All right.

In the spirit of my former elementary school level of blog readability, I will try to sum this up as simply as possible, with illustrations to try to help out the confused, 'cause pictures will always be helpful to visual learners.

On Monday, I observed the following at the meeting from hell:

It occurred to me, after the old business was over and done with, that there was a true trifecta of property judgments today's meeting dealt with that the public housing demolition protesters, to their eternal credit, recognized. Schooling, medical care, and housing are indeed basic human rights. The voting on Johnson Lockett School and on the Lindy Boggs Hospital was for deferral of the decision to demolish those buildings. What remained was the last-ditch fight for Lafitte, C.J. Peete, and B.W. Cooper.

Soooo, let's try this one mo' time.

This is a demolition deferral of a local hospital, courtesy of E:

This is another property whose demolition was deferred:

And this is a photo of a property that is coming down a little ahead of schedule. Notice the fellows not wearing any safety equipment (Thanks, Sophmom!). The housing demo protestors may want to apprise OSHA of this fact if they get really, really desperate:
Are there any concrete plans and contracts to return and redevelop all these basic services that other cities across this nation of ours enjoy and take for granted? Anybody seen anything in writing that is legally binding? Anybody hear anything other than lip service and promises coming from the folks who are charged with the demolition of city property?

Do I hear a no?

Any other questions?

All the rest is commentary, now go and study:

Round Two: Editor B
So Much For the RSD Master Plan: Matt McBride
Continuing coverage of the housing debacle from We Could Be Famous
God bless Karen Gadbois. I don't know how she does it.
G-Bitch, Jeffrey, and Mominem weigh in.
Grandmere Mimi brings in some words from local clergy (thanks, Scout).
Oooh, and I nearly missed Spawn O' John's comment on Oyster's latest:

Since the storm, the LRA has been given a free pass on pretty much everything. They get full credit for the wins, but don't take any blame for the losses. Walter Leger and Andy Kopelin show disgust for ICF, but take no responsibility for how screwed up things have been. The LRA set the policies that ICF follows. While ICF is not without fault, it is clear that the policies were poorly constructed and poorly monitored.

Make no mistake about it, but the LRA has held on to money that could have helped the recovery of New Orleans because they wanted to make sure they had enough for the homeowners - that was purely a political decision. They believed that many more people would choose the buyout option, which would make New Orleans smaller, which would mean less infrastructure money would be needed (evidence of this is the fact that the shortfall didn't appear until much later, remember the buyout was at a discount). I have heard stories that several LRA members have even made comments shortly after the storm that spending the money on New Orleans is a mistake because the City will never come back.

The problem for them was that the citizens of this city completely screwed up their plans. By rebuilding and becoming active in our community, the LRA realized that they could not kill this City by starvation. While there is not much we can do now, and clearly things are on the mend we need to stop giving any sort of walk to the LRA.