Your Right Hand Thief

So the new recovery czar Douglas O'Dell wants to know where all the hundreds of billions went to. Isn't that precious?

Well, first, do your fucking homework and learn what a bullshit number you're throwing around.

Long term recovery dollars are actually in the 17 billion ballpark.

If you want to know where the rest of the money went to, I guess you had to "be there". Were you there to see all those thousands of blue tarps covering rooftops after the storm? (If not, consult old Google Maps. You won't see one on my old house. Half the roof caved in but we didn't get one.) Put a 3000 dollar price tag on each of them, courtesy of the local Cajunburton.

Were you there during the debris clearing? Well, then put your best subcontracted price per ton on all that.

Were you there when we paid our flood insurance premiums all those years? Yeah, well, that's part of your figure, too.

Were you there when New Orleanians like mominem and Ricardo G. are finally getting out of their (toxic?) FEMA trailers this week?

Were you there, at Restaurant August that Thursday night in November 2005, sitting with drunk Texas contractors who were ordering bottle after bottle of Crystal? They said ... "do you think we're gonna let the locals rebuild New Orleans?" Yuk yuk yuk. Nossiter was there, probably trying to find the racial angle to his latest story. I was there. I struck up a conversation and got their business cards. Ask them where the billions went.

I'd like to see Nagin and Blakely appropriate President Bush's rhetoric when they respond to O'Dell, in a sarcastic over-obvious way. (Currently they do it in an semi-serious way.)

The fundamentals of the recovery are strong and getting stronger. The local housing market has bottomed, so buy some dirt. These new weak Category 3 floodwalls are the best levees the world has ever known. (Until they catastrophically fail... then it's "no one could've predicted...") 2006 or 2007 or 2008 or 2009 will be the tipping point, just you wait (and wait... and wait) You're either with the recovery or against it.

It's frustrating, isn't it, when feckless leaders tell you everything is fine while billions are wasted and nothing is being accomplished? Yes, it's frustrating when such people are re-elected while you think everything is going to hell. Yes, perhaps other reality-based Americans have had the same feeling over the past six years or so. Join the club.

The Marsh Arabs in Iraq are enjoying their restored wetlands, while New Orleanians live around the fastest disappearing land mass in the world, inside WEAK CATEGORY 3 levees, trying to rebuild during hurricane season.

Where' s the leadership, where's the money?... Bush's latest appointee asks. Wonderful questions, those. How courageous of you to ask them in the Year of Our Lord two thousand aught eight.