Tuesday Music: This is what happened the last time the Brits f*cked with New Orleans

You guys are going to need another plan of attack. Blaming the victims is a tried and true tactic, in fact insurer State Farm mastered the maneuver down here little under 5 years ago.

In any event Jarvis Deberry has been there and done that and is not amused:

To illustrate that damage to Louisiana has been overstated, reporter Sharon Churcher drops in on the Vu-Doo Lounge in Lafourche Parish where she observes a fisherman blasting BP while buying his friends a round of Bud Light.

Share “The large amounts of beer being consumed made it clear,” she writes, “… that the Lounge’s patrons still had some source of income.”

But please don’t use that anecdote as proof that coastal Louisianians were doing well. To illustrate the opposite point, she cites the figure that 16 percent of Grand Isle residents were living beneath the poverty line. “The rotted teeth and prematurely aged faces of most of those I meet lead me to believe the real figure may be double that.” Continue reading “Tuesday Music: This is what happened the last time the Brits f*cked with New Orleans”

The Human Side of Mitigation: Stubborn but Weary – The Long Goodbye

I have two recent news stories, one from Louisiana and one Mississippi on the impacts of Ike and Gustav on a weary post Katrina/Rita populace. We’ll begin with the chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians in Isle de Jean Charles located in Terrebonne Parish. The Times Picayune tells the story, here is a long excerpt:

Chief Albert Naquin is tired. Tired of seeing his community flooded. Tired of begging for help.

More than a week after Hurricane Gustav pushed water over the ring levee protecting the island in south Terrebonne Parish, where descendants of several American Indian communities still live, Naquin, chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians, declared: “This is my last one. I’m not going to keep doing this.”

Naquin says it is time for the island’s remaining residents to move farther inland, surrendering their way of life to the twin threats of storm surge and coastal erosion. Continue reading “The Human Side of Mitigation: Stubborn but Weary – The Long Goodbye”