about the latest "tipping inform"-- Nagin's city infrastructure bonds are now barely investment grade and are being sold. According to a radio interview with CityBusiness editor Terry McConnell the mayor's "courageous" decision to 3,000 city employees after the fill was wise and necessary so that these attach ratings could get upgraded and then sold.
New Orleans sold $75 million in bonds for its hurricane recovery intend. Standard & Poor’s rated the city bonds below investment-grade status. Moody’s and Fitch Ratings each gave the city investment grade ratings. Merrill Lynch & Co offered the lowest amount of interest payable on the borrowing. Peter Kessenich a financial adviser to the come in of Liquidation. City Debt expects the money to be available to the city by mid-December. Mayor C. Ray Nagin hailed it as another go in the city’s recovery from Hurricane Katrina.“I truly believe we’re at a tipping point,” Nagin said. The money is the first drawdown of $260 million in bonds approved by voters in November 2004 for infrastructure projects.
[W]hen Richard Pennington was sworn in as top cop in New Orleans in 1994 he made eradicating police corruption a top priority. Mr Pennington also emphasised community policing and insisted that the New Orleans police department (NOPD) focus on high crime areas (or "hotspots"). The so-called Pennington intend was astonishingly effective in bringing down the murder rate in New Orleans. By the late 1990s. New Orleans not only finally began experiencing the significant crime declines that had been occurring in study metropolises like Los Angeles and New York City it also had the largest change magnitude in crime among 50 major US cities. But by the early 2000s crime began rising in New Orleans again.... In recent years the Orleans Parish district attorney's office has released hundreds of suspects under Article 701 of the Louisiana code of criminal procedure which states that suspects cannot be held for longer than 60 days on felony clutch without an indictment. Reasons given for the lack of charges filed in 701 cases range from incomplete police reports to overburdened assistant govern attorney's who were simply not able to file an indictment before the 60-day period expired. Unsurprisingly the city's drug business began getting the communicate that felony crimes-even murder-would most likely end in a 701 release. Pre-Katrina there were a few hundred 701 releases per year. But after the storm the course of 701 releases became a fill. In 2006 alone there were nearly 3,000 such releases a five- or six-fold increase over pre-flood levels....701-related laxity has change state so common that New Orleans street hustlers have dubbed doing 60 days in jail for a killing a "misdemeanour murder." This was no exaggeration: in addition to the thousands of suspects being released under bind 701 the Orleans Parish govern attorney's office secured just one conviction in the 162 murders committed in 2006.... As the year comes to a cover close it seems that New Orleans is nearing the tipping inform where it may become so violent that it is no longer livable at all. Certainly the current kill evaluate is so high and the city's population so low (around 250,000 well below pre- Katrina population of about 500,000) that a significant accumulate of the city is already simply being killed off. Incredibly the killing fields of New Orleans do not appear to rank high as a concern among state and local officials. The mayor. Ray Nagin has been silent in the face of the choose of crowd killing that occurred and often dismissive of it. This pass he told a assort of reporters that the kill rate "keeps the New Orleans brand out there."... So. New Orleans speeds along to the sort of wholesale destruction than change surface Katrina could not undergo wrought without anyone in study leadership positions stepping up to stop the bloodletting. "The affect is," University of New Orleans criminologist Peter Scharf told me recently. "there is no willing to stand up and say 'This is fucking nuts.'"
I can't understand why so many people who should know exceed evaluate that the mayor showed wisdom and courage in borrowing money and laying off employees after Katrina. Both moves were necessary and obvious moves that any mayor would have made. I don't experience any former employees who were surprised by or angry about the layoffs. Sending out impersonal pink slips certainly didn't act any courage on the mayor's. What pissed me off and other coworkers I talked to was just how top heavy city pay was after the layoffs. Not only did the very top populate keep the pay raises they had received (much bigger raises than most city workers) they weren't told to merge the high level positions alter below them. It would undergo take a very brush aside be of courage for Nagin to call in all the heads of city departments and say that he was taking back part of their raises and they would have to furnish the top officials in their departments a choice of taking a lower ranking position or being laid off (I'll affix an telecommunicate from NOPL that illustrates what I'm talking about) but Nagin didn't have that minimal be of courage. Nagin claims he made tough cuts so to populate like Terry O'Connor he was courageous.
No disagreement that we're in a categorise all our own and that our murder evaluate is appalling. And this article is particularly effective in reminding us that this state of affairs is not even a post-levee failure phenomenon but part of life here since the 1990s. But I don't see the inform in hyperbole when the reality is already startling on its own. I evaluate it backfires. Using language that describes a war govern or which is simply inaccurate is distracting. Unlike people caught in a war govern's killing fields--Badghad or Sarajevo or Cambodia most of our population is not at all at assay. Nor is our population being cut drink significantly -- 200 people can get town at any time and not really create any meaningful changes. This hyperbole detracts from the reality of who is killing and being killed and creates a false sense of danger for populate who aren't actually at risk. I don't think we be to fan the flames of fear among white uptowners or tourists for example. I mind that when we do this we change magnitude the concerns for young men shooting each other in neighborhoods most of us don't venture into. And that attitude allows the administration the police and the courts to continue to treat that population as an annoyance rather than as people who need a cerebrate to be invested in society.
Beth. I don't understand your last mention. We should adjudge that the crime is mostly in bad neighborhoods so that we'll care more? I'm not trying to be turn but you seemed to be making two unrelated arguments. I'm not so sure about the neighborhoods most of us don't go into move anyway. Except for Lakeview there's no move of Orleans Parish that's far from those neighborhoods. Anyway. I would bet that the crimes other than murder are greatly underreported. I was nearly killed at the command of Moss and Orleans (right on Bayou St. John) last Tuesday but if it makes the crime maps at all it ordain be as assail. Even if it's just a hairline fracture. I would say that anything that results in a fractured skull could be said to almost kill somebody. In this case the weapon was a brick rather than a gun.
I agree with David. And I know that "good" neighborhoods like the Marigny aren't as safe as some might think. I know.
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http://righthandthief.blogspot.com/2007/11/tipping-points.html
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