geoffrey gauchet

Waiting for the New New Orleans

So, Mayor Ray Nagin announced today that they would be launching free city-wide WiFi internet with download speeds of up to 512kb/s, pretty much awesome.

I like this idea. Now, granted, that speed is illegal abse don state laws so it will probably drop to 128kb/s once the state of emergency is lifted.

Which reminds me—hwo long will we be a state of emergency? I'm not saying it should be lifted because we're fine. I wanna know how long it'll be untill we are fine.

The city, in a word, is fucked.

We have people living in tents outside their homes in 50degree weather. We have thousands of people without electricity, thousands more without natural gas.

But we'll have free WiFi!

Where the HELL are our priorities? I mean, yeah, I'm totally for this WiFi thing. Other countries have already started doing this and it's a great idea. But, instead of using this money for the handfull of people that are back in town, why not, say, help out Entergy and get some damn lights turned on in Lakeview, Gentilly, Chalmette, and the 9th ward?

Or maybe throw FEMA some of that money to buy some more trailers for people who don't have any money left to live away from home.

Which reminds me as well: why do we still have people in tents? I mean, the guy across the street from me bought his house for $1.4million and owns a large company. The guy has money. Where is he living? In a trailer from FEMA on his front lawn. Why did he get a trailer?

Why are people who are living in houses that didn't get affected or living in areas where not much happened like parts of Metairie and Kenner getting phone calls from FEMA asking if they need trailers?

Seriously. Shouldn't they start dialing numbers in certain zip codes first? Call some Lakeview families. Call some Chalmations. Call some Ninth Ward guys. Get these people set up and ready to rock first. Most of Metairie and Kenner is living at home with high speed internet (like myself).

Why is it that our Mayor is working on free internet and our Governor is worried about 3 days of not state sales tax? Um… isn't the state pretty much poor right now? I'm sure it could use those sales taxes especially since it'sthe weekend before Christmas. That'll be a ton of money the state won't ever see, unless Congress is footing the bill, which is retarded. Why not just get Congress to funnel the money to us to fix up the lower portions of the state?

A point that many have made is that it costs the US roughly $69billion a year to occupy Iraq. Congress themselves has said it will cost far mroe than that to successfully rebuild New Orleans. Great! Pull the fuck out of Iraq and rebuild our homeland before we spread (flawed) democracy over there.

If we can't even elect ourownPresident, how do we expect Iraqis to elect one? But I digress…

All's I'm saying is that, pardon my French, "clusterfuck" does not evenbeginto describe the situation in New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana.

I wish I could point at Nagin and Blanco and say "You and you. Get your shit and go. I think you've done enough."

It's times like these I wish Schwarzenegger was our Governor. He would've picked up every Congressman up by the collar—at the same time—and said "Rebuild my state, you pussies!" and he would then throw them down on the ground, spit, and walk off. We'd have New Orleans and its levee system rebuilt in 10 months.


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