NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The proposal was controversial from the beginning: Focus resources on rebuilding New Orleans' less-damaged neighborhoods first and carefully study whether it makes sense to repopulate areas that were flooded the worst.
If all areas were treated the same - that is, if resources were spread thin across vast areas of devastation - planners at the Urban Land Institute said the city would be condemned to a slow, patchwork recovery. Isolated residents would live amid lingering swaths of blight.
Not scattering the work effort makes it easier for logistics purposes. And it keeps costs lower, in the long run. Sounds reasonable, right?
Well. As you might have guessed, not everyone is happy, despite the fact that the plan makes good sense.
But what the planners viewed as logic was dismissed as racism by some local leaders.
"Florida gets hit every year and we never hear the question raised whether or not we need to rebuild the coast of Florida," said Danatus King, president of the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP. "California gets hit with wildfires and mudslides.
"What's the difference between those areas and the areas of New Orleans we're talking about? It's a majority black population and poor population," he said.
Mr. King is definitely confused. That's not it, at all. In fact, he demonstrates the need for better education in basic economics. He is either incapable of processing logical data effectively or he is playing the usual race card for political purposes.
The plan does make sense for a variety of reasons, but the main two are:
1. Costs.
It will cost less money to rebuild by concentrating in one or more areas, at a time. Not only that, you damn sure do not want to rebuild the dependent part of town that produces very little in the way of revenue (or labor), before you rebuild that part that does. That section sucked in the money without giving much back, before the flood. If they get rebuilt first, they will do the same thing again. You can't rebuild a city with parasites sucking the life out of your project, at the same time.
2. Time.
It will take less time overall. Have you ever tried to teach a toddler to pick up his/her toys? You go in and see the toys scattered all over, you make them pick it up. What do they do? They pick a toy here and then a toy over there. It takes longer than picking up one area at a time, from one end to another. And so it also goes with massive rebuilding efforts, on a large scale.
To summarize:
If the New Orleans chapter of the NAACP would use their heads, they would see the wisdom, logic, and value of this plan. But to them, it may affect the next election and many of their elected officials could lose power. So they feel, this has to be stopped.
They have been successful in getting elections postponed once. But, it is becoming more and more apparent that it may not help their situation much, anyway. Much of their base lives in the areas in question. Therefore, they want them back only for voting purposes only, no matter how costly it may prove in the log run.
They do not care about New Orleans, nor do they care about the people that they pretend to represent. They only care about their own selfish desires, staying in power is their priority. I mean, let's think about this. The people that are relocated can receive their federal government checks and other perks, in Dallas, in Atlanta, or anywhere for that matter. And they can do it, just as easy as they can in New Orleans. Many may not even want to come back, anyway.
If they rebuild this right, the way the experts have recommended, they stand a much better chance of near complete recovery, much sooner than by catering to the noisemakers and race-card players, of the left. If they don't? It may be years, if ever.
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