[Mb-civic] Losing Hope in Louisiana - Jennifer Moses - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Losing Hope in Louisiana

By Jennifer Moses
Wednesday, October 12, 2005; Page A17

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Nearly six weeks after Hurricane Katrina altered 
both the landscape of Louisiana and the national psyche, most Americans 
seem poised for the next news cycle: the fight over the new Supreme 
Court nominee looks to be especially juicy, as does the fun brewing down 
in Texas over Tom DeLay. But here in what has become, by default, 
Louisiana's most populous city, the hurricane just won't go away, and 
the initial excitement of being the state's primary triage center, and 
suddenly finding ourselves elevated from Nowhere on the Bayou to the 
center of MediaWorld, has long since worn off.

For one thing, there wasn't just one hurricane, there were two, and 
while the national media focused on Houston's horrific traffic jams, 
Hurricane Rita managed to wipe out most of southwest Louisiana, displace 
additional tens of thousands and cause huge disruptions in the state's 
already crippled economy. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, 
always on its toes, managed to confuse Iberia Parish, where hundreds of 
homes were wiped off the face of the earth, with Iberville Parish, which 
had minimal damage, and gave disaster relief to the latter while 
withholding it from the former. In some neighborhoods, garbage hasn't 
been picked up in weeks. Local energy rates, already among the highest 
in the nation, are about to go a lot higher.

Jobs are as rare as snow in August, and thanks to Washington's 
prevailing ethic of handing out the goodies only to chartered members of 
the Goodies Club, barely a trickle of cleanup jobs are going to 
Louisiana businesses or Louisiana workers, and those few that are 
magically trickling down into the local economy are grossly underpaid. 
This because the president suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires 
that federal contractors pay workers prevailing wages on federally 
funded projects. The Louisiana State University system, which includes 
not only the state university but also three public hospitals, is about 
to lay off 5,000 more workers. Trailer parks intended to house the 
displaced are being set up in overstrained and underserviced areas that 
all happen to be -- surprise! -- majority black, while Baton Rouge's 
solid, if old and often abandoned housing stock, is left to rot. 
Meanwhile, the governor flails around, her heart in the right place and 
her hand in a wallet stuffed with IOUs. Happy fall, y'all.

What's the good news? Actually, there is some, but it's as amorphous as 
it is sad, having to do with the slow erosion of our shared national 
fantasy of an endless party, our waking up with a bad hangover, only to 
find that the living room is cluttered with empty bottles and 
overflowing ashtrays. Even in Louisiana, where the prevailing culture is 
almost outrageously laid-back and endlessly forgiving, people are 
getting angry.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/11/AR2005101101324.html?nav=hcmodule
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