The future of recovery

The Gambit Weekly just ran a long interview with New Orleans Recovery Director Ed Blakely.
Perhaps the most interesting parts are about changing state and local bureaucracies. While Blakely seems to have had some successes, I wonder if the passing months and approaching elections will dim these prospects. With time people often lack the same sense of urgency and elections bring out the worst of bureaucratic power games. Of course, demonstrable successes coming from the new procedures Blakely has promoted might be the kind of wedge needed to open a new front in these battles.

The waters keep rising

If you didn't have a chance to hear Alix Spiegel's two-part report on the misery of life in a post-Katrina trailer park and the cavern of depression into which most residents have fallen, you need to do so. Some of these folks were hurting before Katrina, but even the strongest have been beset by nearly insurmountable obstacles to rebuilding their lives, getting out of the park, and making a new start. At least in New Orleans, bad as it is, we have community, friends, and helping hands.

When I travel, especially to poorer parts of the world, people ask me how the U.S., the richest and most powerful country on earth, can permit such a travesty. I can't ever seem to come up with a satisfying answer.

Kudos to Daniel Schorr

In his review of the week's events with Scott Simon, Schorr made the link that the press needs to keep hammering at: our national infrastructure receives substandard upkeep and unnecessary disasters, like the post-Katrina flooding of New Orleans, are going to continue to happen. Wake up people! Next time it's going to be you