Rebuild New Orleans, and other devastated areas, so that all communities are mixed income communities. Everyone who was evacuated from the region should be able to return and to have a decent living. Focus on rezoning the city to allow a mix of housing types; targeting low income housing tax credits to spread affordable housing broadly across the city and surrounding region, and setting up a guiding entity to help families find housing in economically integrated neighborhoods.
Equitably distribute the amenities and infrastructure investments that make all communities livable. For example, parks should be spread throughout the city; attractive, modern school buildings should be placed to serve every neighborhood; a transit system should be built or enhanced to serve all the residents of New Orleans. Equitable investment in infrastructure can attract and sustain mixed income communities.
Prioritize health and safety concerns. Rebuilding efforts should not expose residents to potential hazards like residual toxins, air and groundwater pollution, or future flooding.
Ensure responsible resettlement or relocation for displaced Gulf Coast residents. Adequate relocation support must be provided for New Orleans residents who wish to return to the city (but cannot and should not return to their former neighborhoods), as well as evacuees who choose not to return or cannot return to the Gulf Coast for an extended period of time. Make sure that residents are not relocated multiple times; whenever possible, provide families with choices; provide counseling for those being relocated; ensure appropriate support and transition assistance; and safeguard against exploitation by predatory lenders.
Restore and build the capacity of community based organizations in the Gulf Coast region and beyond. Federal, state, and local government—in partnership with the philanthropic community—must dedicate resources to enable New Orleans and Gulf Coast community based organizations to reestablish operations, actively participate in rebuilding efforts, and connect with returning residents in need of critical support. Additionally, in Houston, Baton Rouge, and other areas welcoming substantial numbers of evacuees, government resources must enhance the capacity of local community and social service organizations to provide assistance to newcomers, so that already underfunded support networks for the poor are not further diminished.
Create wealth-building opportunities to effectively address poverty. In addition to not concentrating poverty, the rebuilding effort should increase wealth and assets of residents through jobs that pay wages sufficient to lift people out of poverty, home ownership opportunities, personal savings, and small business development.
Strengthen the political voice of dispersed residents. Specifically, every effort should be made to ensure that everyone can continue to engage in the voting process. Residents of color, whether returning to the Gulf Coast or settling permanently in other regions, must continue to have representation that serves their interests and needs.
Create a system for meaningful, sustained resident oversight of the $200 billion investment that will be implemented by private development corporations. Community benefits agreements and local oversight policies can ensure “double bottom line” investments that offer financial return to investors while also building social capital and healthy, vibrant, mixed income communities.
Leverage rebuilding expenditures to create jobs with livable wages that go first to local residents. Make investment in massive job training for those who need such assistance to qualify for jobs. Rebuilding efforts should also build assets for residents and small businesses—not simply siphon opportunities to non-local corporate interests.
Develop a communications and technology infrastructure that provides residents with the means to receive and share information related to community building, support services, and access to jobs, transportation, and temporary and permanent housing, and that strengthens public will for the changes that will be required for short-term and long-term efforts to rebuild Gulf communities and lives. Online communications systems can supplement and fill gaps in mainstream media coverage of the equity implications of rebuilding New Orleans and serve simultaneously to inform and engage by providing evacuees and advocacy networks dispersed across the country, as well as the general public, opportunities to organize and take action online.
There were two ideas presented in the roundtable which I thought were interesting and should be further investigated.
The first was to empower the former residents of New Orleans themselves as agents to determine how (and whether) the city would be rebuilt, by using some portion of the earmarked money (half of the $200 billion intially estimated overall cost was the initial suggestion) to make direct payments to them. They could then decide what they wanted to do with it, move back to the city or go elsewhere. Of course such a plan would have to be accompanied by a right to return if they desired and by realistic reconstruction policies which would make it feasble, and desirable, for them to come back if they wished to.
The other intrigung suggestion was to deliberately not rebuild in the most easily flooded of the low-lying areas, to allow them to become flood retention basins to help ease future flooding. The neighborhoods that existed in these places could be relocated to higher ground, and the repurposed land could, for instance, be made over into urban park lands.
Addenda: I should also note one idea that I found totally resistable: that if New Orleans is to be rebuilt with tourism as its core industry, it should go to what was called "high road tourism," on the model of -- gulp -- Las Vegas. While the economic advantages to doing so, both to the city and to the workers in the tourism industry, seem clear, taking the "high road" would undoubtedly "preserve" New Orleans culture in an artificial, stagnant, Disneyfied way which would kill it. The mounted and stuffed carcass would be available for the delectation of the tourists, but such taxidermy cannot be performed on a living, vital culture without destroying what it was.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
