Ray Ray's vision thing
"I've come to the strong realization we're not set up for post-Katrina."
Ray Nagin
Well, Ray Ray, welcome to our world! Unfortunately, you're about
And what's this, Ray Ray actually has a vision for the future of the city he thought he'd share with his vassals:
Despite the bleak financial situation, Nagin painted a hopeful picture of the city he would like to see when his term ends in 2010.
By that point, he said, he hopes the population west of the Industrial Canal -- what he calls the "Mid-City bowl" -- will have surpassed pre-Katrina levels; that there will be "clarity" about whether and how eastern New Orleans will be redeveloped; that most public housing developments will be reconfigured; that tourism will be close to pre-Katrina levels; that a Canal Street makeover will be complete; that riverfront development will be under way; and that public schools will be showing marked improvement.
Susan Simon, I know how you're feeling:
It has been many weeks since Mayor Ray Nagin was re-elected. Where is he?
Anyone elected at such a crucial time in New Orleans' history should be giving us weekly updates, words of encouragement and state of the city speeches. He failed to communicate to us right after the storm and now he is failing again. I need to know what is happening!
Tags: Hurricane Katrina | Katrina | New Orleans | Louisiana | We Are Not OK | Nagin | Ray Nagin
posted by Schroeder @ 5:39 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Why bother?
I mean really!
Why are any of us expecting government to do anything for us? The ineptitude of government beauracracy left us in that post Katrina mess to begin with, so why should we ever expect that same government to do anything about getting us out of that same mess? I say when it comes to plans we need to worry about making our own plans as individuals and as members of our own respective communities. Talk to your neighbors and see what they want to do about reviving your community. Get with your neighbors neighbors and see about reviving that community. Get with whatever other "community service" agencies you can find and see what you can do to help revive communities evern farther afield. I think we desperately need to relearn how to rely on each other and how to NOT rely on the government for anything.
Yes, the government got us into this mess, and we'd all be a lot better off if we could actually sue the government for redress, but for some reason we've let that same government get away with making itself immune to that kind of legislation. We've let ourselves become dependent on the same inept entity we'd long ago been taught to distrust and despise. What ever happened to considering government as, even at its best, a necessary evil (to paraphrase Thomas Paine)?
I think we desperately need to take back the power of the people from our government. WE need to make the plans. WE need revive our neighborhoods. WE need to rely on each other to pull ourselves out of this mess and revive OUR community, not the government. We need government to stay the hell out of our way and do what it was really meant to do, take care of crime, take care of foreign threats and keep those who would take advantage of us from being allowed to do so.
It seems to me that asking government to plan any of this out for us is just asking for the same thing that put us in this mess in the first place. Didn't Einstein say something about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results? (Rhetorical question.)
I know many of you will want to react emotionally to those kinds of statements, but I beg of you to really, really think it over. Is government, are police armed with assault rifles, really the answer to all of these questions? (And remember that using firearms is the ultimate form of force our government uses to keep people in line.)
If I might suggest I have rather enjoyed this piece by physcisist/Sc-Fi author Dr. David Brin. (http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/06/allocation-vs-markets-ancient-struggle.html) I think it addresses both viewing the situation from having a centralized government control us as well as corporate control. Just think about it is all i'm asking.
I don't disagree in whole, but what you're saying isn't reality.
We the electorate ask other people to serve our needs where the private sector can't do the job. There *are* services that require public investments -- like roads, bridges, levees, health care, law enforcement and defense, education.
If we go down the road you're advocating, I just have one question, can we have our taxes back?
I think the answer is no.
Therefore, our only recourse is to hound the bastards who tell us they'll do the job of the people, and then either rob us blind, or sit on their hands.
Perhaps he's been on a vision quest for the last four years (or ten months), and has finally discovered that his totem is: the sloth.
I would argue that some of the items you list as rquiring public funding don't actually require it, and don't require it in several places where government has gotten out of the way to let private entities do those things. The reality is that we seem to be in the rut of two-party politics that seems to force us to vote between the "lesser of two evils". And we continue to allow it to happen.
What about nwere voting procedures that at least would throw out the wasted vote arguments and let folks really vote for whomever they want? (IRV, for example... http://www.fairvote.org/?page=19). Maybe then we could get rid of the career politicians who are only too happy to keep our tax dollars ihnstead of giving them back to us?
That's what I get for writing that as I was being pushed out the door to go to lunch. ;) Sorry for the hatchet job on the spelling.
No one ask him for his 100 day plan he volunteered and gave that information out on his own. But my question is why haven't a plan already been put in place. He stood there and begged for dollars every chance he had, so in the meantime why he was waiting for the dollars he so desparately needed he should have been putting a plan in writing so that when the dollars did roll in all he would have had to do is start the process of getting things done. Apparently his mind is somewhere else instead of being on rebuilding the City he claims he love so much.
I try to stay out of politics all together and especially since I'm not living in NO. But with "Da Mayor in Your Pocket" selling like hot cakes (it was even in the NYT's magazine last Sunday), one can't help buy say that Ray Ray is going to have a vision and it'll happen sometime in 2010.
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