Rebuilding New Orleans
by Larry L. Eastland

Elizabeth Taylor is a beautiful new bride. Peter Finch is her wealthy husband driven by the life ritualized by his deceased father on his tea plantation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) known as “Elephant Walk.” The 1954 movie puts the plantation directly in the path of the tide of elephants that historically use the corridor to get to water. The decades-long balance between man and beast is maintained until a catastrophic cholera epidemic reduces the defenders to just four people, when the elephants take advantage of the opportunity to return to the path that nature intended, and overrun and destroy everything in their way to resume their natural “elephant walk” to water. The plantation, now destroyed along with the determinism of the deceased patron, is no more.

Like Elephant Walk, humans along the Mississippi determined to live directly in the path of – and contrary to the natural order of -- nature. However, once the levees broke, Katrina, the storm of our lifetime, sent water again down its natural path, and in addition to the overwhelming human tragedy, also set in motion political changes of great consequence. But, it all began with the far left environmental activists. In an interesting article John Berlau noted that

the national Sierra Club was one of several environmental groups who sued the Army Corps of Engineers to stop a 1996 plan to raise and fortify Mississippi River levees. The Army Corps was planning to upgrade 303 miles of levees along the river in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. This was needed, a Corps spokesman told the Baton Rouge, La., newspaper The Advocate, because “a failure could wreak catastrophic consequences on Louisiana and Mississippi which the states would be decades in overcoming, if they overcame them at all.

The result of the suit by the Sierra Club and their allies was that the Clinton Administration, with its ‘no environmental absurdity left behind’ philosophy, caused the Corps to hold off on critical work while doing an additional two-year environmental impact study. Congress also is not exempt from blame.

Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion . . . . [Hundreds] of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state’s congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of “earmarks” inserted by individual legislators.

The post-Katrina consequences of this policy have been devastating. Fifty seven percent of the evacuees from Louisiana either plan on relocating (44 percent) or are considering relocating (13 percent) permanently from the greater New Orleans area. Only 43 percent are considering returning – if they ever can.

Such massive population relocation from one place is unprecedented in American history, and means a dramatic shift in social and economic relationships. It will have an equally unprecedented shift in politics because of the central role of New Orleans in the Democrats historical ability to control politics at the state and local level in Louisiana – with national political implications.

The voting behavior of Louisiana voters in national elections follows a pattern that has steadily moved it into the Red State column. In the Presidential races, for example, Republicans increased their percentage of the two-party vote from 43 percent in 1996 to 57 percent of the vote in 2004 -- a 33 percent increase.

At the same time, the most stable national voting measure, the total state (aggregated) vote for Members of Congress in 2004 gave 59.5 percent to Republican candidates. Also, for the first time Louisiana voted for a Republican for the U.S. Senate, David Vitter, with 51.03 percent of the vote.

Seeing these numbers, one would assume that this means Louisiana is firmly in the Red State column at all levels. This was not so before Katrina, primarily because of New Orleans.

Louisiana is subject to provisions of the Voting Rights Act requiring the U.S. Justice Department to approve any substantive changes in election districts. Thus, the U.S. Department of Justice may legitimately be compelled to step in and cause a re-districting once the 2006 Congressional elections take place, and actual new voting patterns are established and confirm the decimation of the 2nd CD -- the heart of New Orleans – where 154,000 Black Democrats are gone . This disrupts the on-going federal government’s positive efforts to give black voters political power through the creation of black-majority congressional districts. A reasonable challenge to the current district boundaries could force the federal government to take action – whether they want to or not.

In all, it is estimated that 400,000 registered voters left Louisiana: 1/7th of all registered voters in the state. That’s one complete Congressional District.

New Orleans is the centerpiece of the Louisiana Democratic Party. As former Louisiana Democratic Party Chairman Jim Nichel is reported to have said: “New Orleans has been a veritable ATM of votes for the Democratic party.” However, Louisiana State University Ph. D. Gregory Borse observed the week after Katrina that

• While Bush won Louisiana comfortably in his 2004 campaign, New Orleans—with its half-a-million citizens -- voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry. [The] entire city has disappeared. New Orleans does not exist at the moment and will not reappear on the landscape for years—perhaps for decades.

• U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu and Governor Kathleen Blanco have just had the major portion of their constituency moved out of state.

A survey of Red Cross evacuees performed by The Gallup Organization, showed that of the 98 percent of the evacuees who from New Orleans, 57 percent are self-proclaimed never-to-return New Orleanians. If approximately 300,000 of the voters in New Orleans were evacuated, and if 57 percent do not intend to return, even if every one of the 43 percent who intend to return actually do so, this is still a loss of 114,000 Democrats to only 15,480 Republicans: a net loss of 100,000 Democrats from New Orleans. Wipe out 100,000 Democrat votes, and a U.S. Senate seat in 2008 and all statewide offices currently held by Democrats are in serious jeopardy. This would give the Republicans one additional U.S. Senate seat, another Congressional seat, and perhaps even a restructuring of state politics akin to that which is going on in Georgia.

In the current Red State – Blue State battle, one Senate seat and a House seat become big stakes in the national war for control of Congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008.

The levees that held the river in place, also dysfunctionally held the population in place, too. Now, for the first time, perhaps a new generation of post-Katrina politicians with no ties to the old machines and patronage of the past can create a new “opportunity society” that empowers all residents regardless of color with a future without the corruption, government squandering of resources, and a poverty-in-place mentality that has so destroyed hope in the Big Easy.

But, it will not solve anything if the Republican-controlled federal government simply hands out money like candy – up to $240 billion – into the hands of the same incompetent officials, their lackeys, and their string of political cronies who helped to destroy the people and their environment in the first place.

If we truly believe that the conservative economic system called capitalism is meant to help everyone, then the Administration has an opportunity to leverage federal dollars and create opportunity that actually helps people, not just funds a wish list.

First. The most important infrastructure that requires renewal after the levees and other systems to prevent another disaster, and the health and safety expenditures, is the infrastructure that will create opportunity and capitalist wealth in the society. So far, all the policies of the government at all levels have done is keep the poor people poor. As President Eisenhower called it, we should look at our “enlightened self-interest” and provide the resources to build technologically proficient schools, hospitals and other institutions to renew and upgrade the residents’ knowledge, skills and abilities.

Second. The Administration should keep the money out of the hands of the entire current structure of state and local government, and instead appoint a reconstruction czar not beholden to local interests. A Jack Kemp kind of person who looks to empower residents to succeed would be a good start. Sending $240 billion into this current leadership is sheer folly: (1) they do not have the skills and integrity to properly utilize it; (2) it will only perpetuate their hold on power as they dole out the lolly to friends, sycophants and supporters; and, (3) as usual, what will get left behind in the end are the people who need help the most.

Third. The goal should not be to reduce Black influence in elections. It should be to give the best of the local Black leadership a stake in the outcome. If they have no part of the process, they will have no stake in the outcome. A new generation of Black leadership can be empowered to take a new direction in creating a better New Orleans.

Our responsibility is not to re-build New Orleans back the way it was, as the local (now follower-less) leaders would have us do. Rather, we must take advantage of this one-time opportunity to carefully develop leaders, infrastructure, institutions and methods of accountability that will help Louisiana residents – whoever they may ultimately be – to create their own wealth through education, a stable community support system, institutions of economic opportunity and growth, secure families with two parents nurturing children, and a state and local governmental system free of corruption and incompetence dedicated and skilled at promoting the public good.

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