Plans for rebuilding
Sep. 10th, 2005 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI saw extracts of this a couple of days ago, but I am not a paid subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, so I let it go by; for lack of context in the original. Two layers of filtering could make for some serious deviation from the author's real writings.
But Pittsburgh Post Gazette has seen fit to pick it up.
Old-line families plot the future
The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.
Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires....
A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.
He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city.
The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.
The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out...."
Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr. O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its unique culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a year temporarily -- they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," he says.
Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the city wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't trying to reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We understand that African Americans have had a great deal of influence on the history of New Orleans," he says.
Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed. Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the city's professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another African American to win the mayoral election in 2002.
Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves, dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to ally themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education, while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters. Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of them have the means to do so.
There you have it, a plan for rebuilding is taking shape among those who have the money, and perhaps the political pull to make it happen.
But Pittsburgh Post Gazette has seen fit to pick it up.
Old-line families plot the future
The green expanse of Audubon Park, in the city's Uptown area, has doubled in recent days as a heliport for the city's rich -- and a terminus for the small armies of private security guards who have been dispatched to keep the homes there safe and habitable. Mr. O'Dwyer has cellphone service and ice cubes to cool off his highballs in the evening. By Wednesday, the city water service even sprang to life, making the daily trips to his neighbor's pool unnecessary. A pair of oil-company engineers, dispatched by his son-in-law, delivered four cases of water, a box of delicacies including herring with mustard sauce and 15 gallons of generator gasoline.
Despite the disaster that has overwhelmed New Orleans, the city's monied, mostly white elite is hanging on and maneuvering to play a role in the recovery when the floodwaters of Katrina are gone. "New Orleans is ready to be rebuilt. Let's start right here," says Mr. O'Dwyer, standing in his expansive kitchen, next to a counter covered with a jumble of weaponry and electric wires....
A few blocks from Mr. O'Dwyer, in an exclusive gated community known as Audubon Place, is the home of James Reiss, descendent of an old-line Uptown family. He fled Hurricane Katrina just before the storm and returned soon afterward by private helicopter. Mr. Reiss became wealthy as a supplier of electronic systems to shipbuilders, and he serves in Mayor Nagin's administration as chairman of the city's Regional Transit Authority. When New Orleans descended into a spiral of looting and anarchy, Mr. Reiss helicoptered in an Israeli security company to guard his Audubon Place house and those of his neighbors.
He says he has been in contact with about 40 other New Orleans business leaders since the storm. Tomorrow, he says, he and some of those leaders plan to be in Dallas, meeting with Mr. Nagin to begin mapping out a future for the city.
The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.
The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out...."
Calvin Fayard, a wealthy white plaintiffs' lawyer who lives near Mr. O'Dwyer, says the mass evacuation could turn a Democratic stronghold into a Republican one. Mr. Fayard, a prominent Democratic fund-raiser, says tampering with the city's demographics means tampering with its unique culture and shouldn't be done. "People can't survive a year temporarily -- they'll go somewhere, get a job and never come back," he says.
Mr. Reiss acknowledges that shrinking parts of the city occupied by hardscrabble neighborhoods would inevitably result in fewer poor and African-American residents. But he says the electoral balance of the city wouldn't change significantly and that the business elite isn't trying to reverse the last 30 years of black political control. "We understand that African Americans have had a great deal of influence on the history of New Orleans," he says.
Black politicians have controlled City Hall here since the late 1970s, but the wealthy white families of New Orleans have never been fully eclipsed. Stuffing campaign coffers with donations, these families dominate the city's professional and executive classes, including the white-shoe law firms, engineering offices, and local shipping companies. White voters often act as a swing bloc, propelling blacks or Creoles into the city's top political jobs. That was the case with Mr. Nagin, who defeated another African American to win the mayoral election in 2002.
Creoles, as many mixed-race residents of New Orleans call themselves, dominate the city's white-collar and government ranks and tend to ally themselves with white voters on issues such as crime and education, while sharing many of the same social concerns as African-American voters. Though the flooding took a toll on many Creole neighborhoods, it's likely that Creoles will return to the city in fairly large numbers, since many of them have the means to do so.
There you have it, a plan for rebuilding is taking shape among those who have the money, and perhaps the political pull to make it happen.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 05:35 pm (UTC)http://www.halturnershow.com/DiversFindExplosiveResidueOnRupturedLevy.html
If true...?
Tinfoil hat?
no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 06:04 pm (UTC)As presented, those are tinfoil hat stuff.
Apart from a few (like AnFO) which are really hygroscopic, HE doesn't care if it's unserwater.
More to the point, that implies a lack of competence beyond even my imagining (which is to say they think they can pay people to set, and detonate the charges, and then they planned for the secondary FEMA related problems. Either that or they meant it to be a great show of how well they do things, and they'd get to reshape New Orleans).
And the speed with which an unauthorised sample of suspect HE (which doesn't leave a whole lot in the way of burn marks) managed to get to Georgia, get analysed and then get leaked to Hal Turner? Possible, but straining credulity.
Combined with the rest of it (the neglect of the levees, the noises tons of shifting concrete and earth make, the huge amount of water moving behind the aging levee) and the combined improbabilities... I don't buy it.
If I did buy it I would have to accept that America, as I know it, is gone, and rebellion, or flight, are the only options.
TK
Small defense of tinfoil hat wearers
Date: 2005-09-22 10:24 pm (UTC)1927 flood (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/topics/attach/html/ssd98-9.htm)
Interview with Barry (http://www.pbs.org/greatprojects/interviews/barry.pdf) (.pdf format)
The 1927 incident was not a government action, but I understand why people who aren't technically knowledgable, or generally well-informed, might be suspicious today.
Vanessa (of LASFS and APA-L)
Re: Small defense of tinfoil hat wearers
Date: 2005-09-22 10:44 pm (UTC)I don't think the Gov't is likely to do it, the the Good Citizens of Gretna, maybe, but the feds? No.
The main thing which argues against this being deliberate is the source. Hal Turner is a nut, and he's claiming anonymous sources, who got a test done, off the books, and then decided to tell him, instead of Jon Stewart.
The other details of the levees failures argue to poor design, and are what one would expect from that sort of failure.
Which is why I say this theory is tin-foil hat stuff.
TK
no subject
Date: 2005-09-11 06:20 pm (UTC)Relevant portion:
The preform concrete panels can withstand considerable pressure over their surface, and can withstand far more force than the attachments between the panels.
Bereft of support from below when the levee slumps or fails, the panels are bound to fail if sufficient water pressure pushes against them, and when they fail, they will almost certainly fail at the attachments -- individual panels will not break, but will tear away from their sister panels because the joints are the weakest point.
This seemingly overlong description is actually grossly simplified and doesn't go into actual pressures, etc., but I offer it to you so you can understand what you are looking at when you view pictures of the breach and wonder why the break looks so "clean."
TK