Hoodoo City Elections

The hoodoo ramps up as a variety of candidates jostle for a variety of city-wide positions from mayor to city council to assessor to criminal and civil sheriffs...
Mayor C. Ray Nagin is going for a second term, but has lost most or all of his white uptown "Isle of Denial" base for a variety of reasons ranging from his "Chocolate City" and other glib remarks that spotlight his inability to be thoughtful and effective, to his failed economic policies and cronyism that dwarfs that of the Morial Administration.
Hey Ray! Just in case you didn't know.....New Orleans is creole- the essence of creative multiculturalism...or at least it used to be.....
The Isle of Denial money folks that funded Nagin previously now seem to be throwing their money at Audubon Institute CEO Ron Forman. Yeah OK, he turned the zoo into a worldclass facility, got the Aquarium built - but an insect museum?? Please. Ranks right up there with the D Day museum.
Before Katrina, New Orleans needed better schools, better housing and better jobs and what do we get? Huge facilities celebrating war and bugs, and scarce public funds going to football and Walmart. The sorry-ass Saints, (actually sleazy car salesman Tom Benson), not the schools, get $18 million and Walmart, $28 million in tax increment financing - the Tchoupitoulas Walmart looted the city long before the Katrina looting. Where is the people's insurance against these acts of theft?
None of the mayoral candidates with the exception of Tom Watson and Virginia Boulet, can even bring themselves to utter the word POVERTY, which remains the most pressing issue, as it was before the storm. And white uptown Republican mayoral candidate Peggy Wilson speaks of nothing else but preventing the "...pimps, gangbangers and welfare queens..." from coming back by establishing a 'tax free' city... funny, because Wilson is just an independently wealthy version of a pimp/gangbanger/welfare queen......and a bigot with no talent at all, except at divisiveness. Time to hang it up old girl!
As I said in my previous post, the city and its tourism industry has traded off the efforts of the poor for decades....it was the music, arts, culture - the unique improvisational impulse, that sprang from the city's poor neighborhoods that saved the city from the 80's oil bust, not the Saints, not the tourism industry, not the hotels, elitist museums celebrating war and bugs.....
It is time this is acknowledged.
It is assumed that the reason so many in New Orleans are poor is because they lack skills and talent - which is a totally erroneous assumption - there's a ton of talent here, and ironically, there is probably much more at the lower end of the economic spectrum than at the upper end, judging by folks like Peggy Wilson and her ilk....
Talent has traditionally gone unacknowledged in New Orleans in order to create the situation where the talentless with money can more easily exploit the talents of those without money.
Like every other city in America, New Orleans is scrambling to develop a high-tech sector and a bio-medical sector, but once again that is likely to prove to be a 'putting the cart before the horse' strategy, as it does not build upon the strengths and ingenuity already present.
Build the creative and cultural sector and the others will follow. Build vibrant liveable and INCLUSIVE neighborhoods and small businesses and the rest will follow. Build friendly inclusive neighborhoods where residents can walk to the store, where kids, teenagers and adults can ride their bikes of the sort we had pre-Katrina.
It is almost impossible to ride a bike or walk in the new New Orleans anymore.....huge pickups and SUV's are everywhere, impatiently careening through the city's old narrow pre-auto streets at breakneck speeds ........none of the candidates have addressed this issue either.
Election day is Saturday April 22nd. I wish both Tom Watson and Virgina Boulet could serve together. A Power duo. Black & white, male and female - thewy could bring some much needed balance. And maybe the job, given the present circumstances, id too much for just one mayor. Two heads are better than one....and both serving could also serve to eliminate the "Bidness as Usual" factor.........
more later..........Sneakin' Sal