what's the fucking holdup in nola, you bureaucratic fucksticks?

[digitaldiscipline]

Someone on ikilled007's journal asked if I had any ideas for getting things less-fucked in New Orleans. Dovetailing nicely with today's screed from The Rude Pundit....

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-orleans-has-no-future-once-he.html

As a matter of fact, I do have a few. Having the streets cleared of debris would be a good start. Basic infrastructure, anyone? That, last time I checked, was what taxes pay for during calm times anyways, nevermind during a tumult.

I am rather skeptical that all records of property ownership and insurance would be lost; especially the latter, since many insurance agencies are headquartered elsewhere, and ought to maintain records. "This policy covers this location for this person." Cross-check with utility bills (also, in all probability, maintained elsewhere; Entergy is not a small entity), and you have a fairly strong case for Person X living at location Y. Tax records would be on file with both the City of New Orleans and the State of LA (conveniently, the capitol is in unflooded Baton Rouge), further providing ownership documentation. Federal Tax documents, social services records... all of this shit wasn't stored exclusively in the flooded slums of New Orleans, and even the most monolithic bureaucracy could have correlated this information in 360 days with minimal provocation unless it was actively ignoring it or otherwise motivated to do otherwise.

I agree that people (and their insurance policies) should take financial responsibility for getting their shit together; however, there are substantial parts of what, by all rights, are considered the public domain, that have been completely ignored... if that isn't the government's job, why do we pay taxes? Oh yeah, to finance wars nobody but the administration wants, to push a narrow theological agenda, ad infinitum.

Comments

[fenixinthedark.livejournal.com]

That would entail their having a modicum of common sense, and not being entangled in so much red tape that they can't even say "hello" without filing the right paperwork.

[megiddo-lj.livejournal.com]

I had a nice long discussion today about your former city, the jist of which was 'Nagin is a corrupt idiot who couldn't figure out he had all the cards and hold the fed's balls to the fire'. Instead, he's chosen to play the race card and sit around and whine.

[dogsbody01.livejournal.com]

Having the streets cleared of debris would be a good start.You can also add the reopening of school!

[dogsbody01.livejournal.com]

Why is it, that I would love to see Nagin do the perp walk; with Micheal Brown and quite a few other officals that I think deserve to be charged with 1,837 count of neligent homicide?Not to forget depraved indifference,misuse of funding; and a few other goodies I can think of.
*sighs*Then again,that'll happen when pigs can fly.

[mighty-man.livejournal.com]

At the risk of playing devil's advocate (I personally would like to see things go forward in NOLA just to get it off the media)...

WTF are you guys expecting in one year? You want to haul basically the wreckage of a good hunk of an entire city? Where, pray tell are you going to put it? Last I checked, most other states won't even accept the debris from LA because of the termite problem, other contaminants aside. Should we just leave the stuff at the side of the streets so the garbage truck can come down the road?

Infrastructure? Take a darn good look at that thing 400 yds from where my parents live -- it's called Ground Zero. That was 2001 and it's still a big hole in the ground. *sigh*

As for the records -- I agree with you on that one. There should be copies of property ownership both at the state capitol and presumably the insurance company and mortgage institution (if there was one). Utilities? Maybe or maybe not -- depends on where they stored their stuff. Federal taxes should be easy to track down (hell, that's the true purpose of the government is to send out bills - a good V for Vendetta reference).

As for the correlation of materials in 360 days -- that is assuming that they have sufficient "spare" resources to take care of it. To be frank, most government offices I've ever wandered into have a waiting line to handle their "regular" workload. To add on something the magnitude of a city would be insane. That'd be like asking the one fire department next door to the WTC to have handled the whole disaster themselves. Even dragging in dozens of other fire companies was not enough.

sorry if I'm ranting incoherently more than usual -- finishing work and prepping for a red eye flight with no sleep sucks.