in the days of hurricane katrina, nola.com came to the forefront of the best places to go for breaking news...we had been there before off and on over the years mostly to view bourbocam the oyster bar the river cams the karoke cam is good too...we came across the forums there first the volunteer forum then soundoff.
we posted on soundoff daily from around the 1st september up till the first special session that started at the 6th november 2005. watching that special session and the hijinks and shenanigans took away our zest for posting ~sigh~
we had such high hopes for our state at that first session and the legislature failed over and over time and time again on everything they did oh we never had reason to believe in our louisiana legislature before, its just that we thought that katrina's winds had blown in a new conscienceness a new way of thinking and doing business, we felt as a lot of others did too we had the perfect opportunity to start over, to do things right, and make up for past mistakes.
geeze were we ever wrong. if you're reading this and you're an american citizen please contact your congressional delegation and tell them no federal funds until the ballot box has sprung, down there in louisiana. we need to vote the whole lot of them out from the governor the entire legislature down to the parish level.
anyway, there is a regular on soundoff whos nick is carolina fats. he posted the following back at 13 october 2005 and its so good we saved it for posterity we dont know maybe a time capsule to see if what he suggested came to pass about the quarter, the port and algiers we had debated this a lot.
if you have a few minutes you may see soundoff by clicking here.
63231. nola is dead, long live nolaEXTERNAL LINK
by carolinafats, 10/13/05 15:09 ET
This is so harsh. It is not meant to hurt anyone's feelings but rather as some kind of focus. its just my opinion.
All these ideas for this and for that in the future of nola, like casinos, Fortune 500, school improvement, police improvement, etc. are worth talking about in the abstract but lets take a look at the facts.
In the Pic today, there are articles about businesses that are finding it peachy in Houston and that arent coming back til Cat 5 protection is in place. We know that can't happen for years and years. Read: the businesses are in Houston for good.
Another article says that the school population has been reduced by as much as 70% and that at least half of school buildings are no longer needed.
Another article says that there was a high percentage of renters in devastated areas and they aren't coming back.
We already know the city has terminated half of its employees and more are likely to follow.
Its going to take a long time just to bulldoze the tens of thousands of ruined houses. How much more time for the individual processes to rebuild by individual homeowners?
Pple with children have been told to stay away. If you are mom or dad, you are going to leave your kids, for how long?
The new Casinorleans has been declared DOA by the Governor.
Face these facts: for the old nola, city of 450,000 pple, it is taps, over, finito.
A lot of the plans, etc dont take any of this into account. They seem to assume away all these facts in the calculation.
This is like arguing about how to dress up the corpse in the funeral parlor. Its fun but it is not going to bring nola back to life. Its a totally new nola, not the old,that is the future.
NOLa's new role, at least for the near future, is going to be greatly diminished. Baton Rouge is the new queen city of La. Respectfully, focus on how to start from a base of the quarter, the port and Algiers. We know that works, we know it will survive a very nasty hurricane, and go from there.
