Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Compare and Contrast

I've been putting off writing this post, but there seems to be a weird dichotomy working in Louisiana right now. There are the citizens of the state who believe that we can complete any task we set our minds to, and the set of citizens who believe that someone else should be held responsible for everything.

The difference between the two is never more apparent than in the two blogs Mostly Cajun, and Your Right Hand Thief. Both appear on my blogroll.

Your Right Hand Thief is a blog centered in New Orleans, and moderated by a guy who calls himself Oyster. I have no problem with anonymous blogs, and I am semi-anonymous myself. Anyone with even a modicum of Googling ability can figure out who I am. YHRT, and the Oyster, by default, is a blog by a fellow with Democratic leanings.

Mostly Cajun, on the other hand, is a blog centered around Lake Charles, LA. The moderator of Mostly Cajun is a self-professed native who leans more toward self-sufficiency. The Do-It-Yourself attitude rings through the writing there.

Both of these fellows lost everything during the twin disasters that were Rita and Katrina. They both lost everything within a month of one another.

I'm a frequent commenter over at YRHT and I commented on this post, where the Oyster decries the lavish spending of Texan contractors who were down in New Orleans working. In comments, I asked the questions:
The question becomes, why is it necessary for the Texans to be there? If New Orleans had business handled, the locals could squeeze out the transients. The followup question becomes, who is doing the rebuilding, and why aren't New Orleans residents taking care of it themselves? Home Depot doesn't much give a damn who it sells sheetrock or shingles to. If you're not willing to do it yourself, why are you bitching? New Orleans has to be rebuilt and the guys with the hammers are doing the rebuilding.
Oyster responds that Texans shouldn't be there, that " I believe the guys I was drinking with were feeding off limited or no bid fed contracts."

Then he tells me that:
There's almost no rebuilding going on. It's quaint that you think we should just buy some nails and wood and raise the roofbeams Amish-style, but some of us don't wish to take a crippling insurance loss on our homes. We're waiting on inspecters and adjustors, (Flood, household, SBA...) and checks. Most of the affected have evacuated and are in dire financial straits. But I'll pass along your tip about Home Depot. That should help out a lot of folks.
Well, yeah, I actually thought it might.

I have always believed that the proper education of a well-raised boy should include framing a house, putting on a roof, stringing electric wire and completing a basic circuit. He should also be able to float drywall and pour a slab. Then, there is shooting and processing meat, growing a vegetable garden and cleaning fish. He should also be able to solve a quadratic equation and write a sonnet. Some might include piloting a small aircraft. There is no sense paying someone to do something you can do for yourself.

More importantly, and perhaps my barely passable writing skills need some work, I was asking where are the contractors that are based in New Orleans? If Texas contractors are there doing the work, then have the Lousiana contractors abandoned the field? I doubt it. They probably have more work than they can do for the next two years.

My son is in Lake Charles, roofing houses. The contractor he works for is local, but his crew is led by a roofer from Michigan who brought a helper with him. The crew is rounded out by two men from Oklahoma and two men from Louisiana. They are going to be gainfully employed for a long time. Why aren't the contractors from New Orleans doing the same thing?

Both of these guys took crippling losses. Both of these guys are without a home. Both of these guys are living in less than optimum conditions, yet the one in Southwest Louisiana is making plans for the future, while telling the world as gently as possible about the good people of Southwest Louisiana. The other is complaining about the lack of FEMA response, the lack of Federal funding, and his perception of President Bush and the Republican Congress.

I feel badly for both of these guys. They took a loss that would try many of us. They are both still on my blogroll and I will visit their work daily. I hope to visit with the both of them in person, eventually.

I personally don't think New Orleans will ever be the same, and as I mourn that fact, I wonder if it isn't for the best. New Orleans lost a hell of a lot, both in property and people during the Katrina episode and the unthinkable happened. I blogged about the worst case scenario back in June, and it fell on deaf ears. I'm blogging about it tonite. Katrina wasn't the worst-case scenario. Katrina was basically a near miss with a Cat 3 surge. If a Cat 4 or Cat 5 storm hits the area, the Big Easy will be decidedly screwed.

New Orleans is going to change, for better or for worse, and it seems to me that the folks that are left there had better decide quickly how much of the change are they going to influence and how much of the change are outsiders going to influence? It is time to get to work and start digging out. Sure, work with your insurance company, but don't wait for someone else to get the jump on you. The news cycle has passed you by and the face of New Orleans will be decided on the ground. Make what you will of it, or let someone else make of it what they will.

I'd hate to see it become something else. I'm not worried about the folks in Lake Charles. They're gonna be fine.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't have anything to add, but I have to say this is a really good post.

Xavier said...

It often seems to me that the politicians are more interested in rebuilding the voting block that was New Orleans than the city itself.

Anonymous said...

Pawpaw, not 1 in 10,000 of today's teenaged boys can do two of the things on your list of what they all should know how to do.

Pawpaw said...

well, J. I know three that can, except for piloting a small aircraft. So that means there are 30K out there that don't have a clue.

oyster said...

Here's my response:

My name is Mark, but I go by Oyster. I've tasted oysters from throughout the world, and none are meatier or more delicious than Louisiana oysters. Plus, oyster is a more memorable handle than "mark".

Comparing the aftermaths of Katrina and Rita is not very revealing, in my view. It can be highly misleading if you assume that this is an apple-to-apple comparison. The circumstances, while perhaps superficially similar, are actually very different. Nonetheless, I pay Lake Charles (and all cities in the gret stet) the respect it deserves. Conversely, the author of Mostly Cajun has seen fit to disparage the "welfare jungle" of New Orleans while it is reeling from an unprecedented disaster.

My main problem with the Texan building supply moguls (who I later befriended) was that they were obnoxiously celebrating their windfall amongst locals who had lost everything. They were celebrating the fact that Texans had received contracts in place of Louisianans. The city was still recovering corpses and these guys were making loud toasts to themselves with expensive champagne. I thought it was undignified-- I mean, two dozen people from my neighborhood died in the aftermath. (Like I said though, believe it or not, I did end up befriending these guys. Sort of.)

Don't diminish the role of insurance in this. Ten weeks after the flood, I'm still waiting to see an SBA adjuster. I lost my home, my possessions and my business. That's over a $500k hit for me. Flood insurance goes up to $250k and homeowner's insurance doesn't cover flood damage. My net worth is very much tied up in how some beancounter assesses my claim. I sure as hell am not going to repair or raze my house and office prior to the adjustor visiting. (And insurance is only one piece of a very complex urban planning puzzle here in post-K New Orleans.)

So what are the New Orleans contractors doing? I've spoken to several. Some contractors only have a quarter of their employees, because the rest have moved or are displaced. One I spoke to has a dozen of his guys staying in his house, because their homes have flooded. Others simply cruise the cheap hotels and load up Guatemalans in their truck. They pay them $100 to gut houses all day. Others have the resources to do larger projects, but are getting shut out of the gubmint (sub)contracts. I praised Mississippi Republican Chip Pickering's work on FEMA contracts in this post

Perhaps my parents didn't "properly educate" me, or perhaps I wasn't "raised well" because I don't have homebuilding experience. (I do know how to pour a slab, but that is not a good foundation for a New Orleans home. Piers are much more preferable.) Like I said before, I can't build an automobile from scratch, either, but that doesn't mean I have to keep my mouth shut about the varying quality of cars. I doubt I'd want everyone to rebuild their own home, anyway. Tourists don't come here so they can see simple boring Home Depot houses.

What's this balderdash about "There is no sense paying someone to do something you can do for yourself." I couldn't disagree more. There's a great deal of sense in paying others to do work you are able to do. It's called leveraging other people's labor in order to make the highest and best use of your time. While I may not be able to show my daughter how to process venison, she will sure as heck understand the concepts of leverage and the time value of money. Doing everything yourself is for the Amish. Succeeding in our capitalist system requires more sophisticated thinking.

I also found it interesting that you claimed in your comments that "New Orleans has to be rebuilt...". a previous post seemed much more skeptical on that front. Here you questioned the wisdom of funding the restoration of wetlands.

Here's the deal: I "complain" about congress because after spending like drunken sailors for five years, they suddenly can't find room in the budget for South Louisiana. Bush says he wants New Orleans to rise again but he will only allocate 2% of the needed funds for our wetlands, and he won't commit to anything above Category 3 strength levees. After Katrina, I find that unconscionable, and I won't apologize for making a stink about it. Only federal funds can save the wetlands and provide Cat 5 levees and floodwalls; businesses are clamoring for these investments because New Orleans will be uninsurable without adequate protections. (The wetlands protect the levees from storm-surge-- as well as seafood habitats and oil/gas infrastructure.) The Army Corps of Engineers allowed poorly secured floodwalls to be built with ridiculously low safety tolerances (1.3) for dynamic loads. These walls gave way and flooded the city, causing over a hundred billion in damage. Oil drilling and the federal decision to divert the Mississippi has contributed mightily to wetlands destruction. Over a hundred square miles of protective marshes were blown away by Katrina, too.

Put simply: without federal investment, South Louisiana has no future. The truth is that the fate of New Orleans will be decided in Washington-- not in New Orleans. That's why I'm raising so much fuss. There's no point in rebuilding-- whether it's me or Manuel or Tex doing the hammering-- if we can't get adequate protection from another flood. We are desperate for help, and much of the rest of the state doesn't seem to care about these issues to the degree that they should.

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For more info, do a search on my blog for wetlands, flood protection... etc.