Minor Wisdom

Suicide on a bike

Please visit Jewel Thinks and read Suicide on a bike. Do it right now. And please be reminded that, no, it ain’t over. (Greg: thanks.)

Now it’s the Corps of Engineers’ turn

As reported in America’s Finest News Source, Hurricane Katrina returned to New Orleans yesterday to apologize for what she done.

A third-year checkup

I am blessed—or have the disadvantage of—living on what’s been called “the sliver by the river,” or “the isle of denial,” the part of town that didn’t flood in 2005. Where I live, it looks like New Orleans has recovered from Katrina. The same is true of the places in town where I spend 100% of my time. Every now and then, I’m reminded that thousands of my neighbors are still struggling. One of those reminders is New Orleans, 3 A.K., an essay posted at People Get Ready. Please read it. Thanks. (Hat tip to Greg Peters.)

August 29, 2005

If you like this video, then you’ll like this record too. (For the search engines: this is Irma Thomas.)

Post-Katrina Progress Report

The Kaiser Family Foundation has released the results of its second post-Katrina survey, this one focused on Orleans Parish. The bottom line: We are not okay. (Hat tip to beSpacific.)

The Kelo backlash and the recovery

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court held, in Kelo v. City of New London, that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit a state from expropriating private land for “economic development,” e.g. a Wal-Mart. In reaction, Louisiana (like many other states) amended its state constitution to prohibit such an expropriation.

Louisiana’s amendments may have the unintended consequence of impeding New Orleans’ recovery from Katrina. For instance, they may prevent the state or the city from expropriating a blighted property burdened with tax liens, and turning the property over to, say, Habitat for Humanity. For an informative analysis of this potential problem, read this post on by Craig Williams on May It Please the Court.

A flood is a flood, regardless of its cause.

This morning, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a decision holding that a flood exclusion in a commercial-property policy applies to damage caused any flood, regardless of whether the flood damage resulted from human negligence (that is, negligence by the Corps of Engineers). This decision reverses the Louisiana Fourth Circuit’s decision rendered last November in the case, and is consistent with the U.S. Fifth Circuit' s decision last August that decided the same legal issue.

A city loses a piece of its soul

The L.A. Times reports:

New Orleans’ black population dropped 57% a year after Hurricane Katrina, while the white population declined 36%, according to an analysis by three demographers of new U.S. census data that confirm the disaster’s disproportionate impact on the city’s racial composition. Billed as the “first full picture” of the mass migration after the hurricane, the analysis also found that New Orleanians displaced to Houston and other cities were more likely to be black, uneducated and poor. By contrast, those who relocated to the city’s suburbs were more likely to be white, educated and well off.

Though many New Orleans leaders had lamented the uneven toll on black citizens when the levees broke and flooded much of the city, demographer William H. Gray of the Brookings Institution, one of the study’s authors, said it was still surprising to see the data show it in such stark terms.

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1 Dead in Attic (2d ed.)

If you want to read a first-hand account of the harrowing days in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, then get yourself Chris Rose’s new book, 1 Dead in Attic. Chris is a columnist for the  Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ daily newspaper—he also happens to be my neighbor, one block up Magazine Street. His post-Katrina columns made him a runner-up for a Pulitzer. This book is a collection of those columns.

Actually this book is the second, expanded edition. The first edition, released in early 2006, was self-published—it sold 60,000 copies. This edition, much thicker than the first, is published by an outfit called Simon & Schuster.

When the levee breaks

Here’s a video montage of the Flood of 2005, set to Led Zeppelin’s performance of When the Levee Breaks. The photos are haunting, and the soundtrack is proof that LZ was a pretty good blues band. (Hat tip to Texas Appellate Law Blog.)