Le Show; 2007-02-18

from deep inside your radio. From where else then would you like it? Ladies and gentlemen, from New Orleans, Louisiana, about which more in a few moments, another edition of the show coming your way. And Don Rumsfeld, of course, has stepped down from his position leading the Pentagon. But he's being channeled now by the president of the United States. This, the president this week had a news conference. There was a dispute because the Pentagon had held a confidential briefing off the record briefing that is you couldn't name the briefers and you couldn't tape record it. And there were no notes being taken and blah, blah, blah, saying that the Iranian government, the highest level to the Iranian government were responsible for certain devices, explosive devices, being used against the United States troops. And then a couple days later, the head of the United States military, Peter general Peter Pace said he didn't know if the head of the highest officials of the Iranian government were involved in that. So the dispute was bumped up to the presidential level. He was asked at the news conference

about this apparent discrepancy. And channeling Don Rumsfeld, here's what the president of the United States said. But here's my point. Either they knew or didn't know what's worse that the government knew or that the government didn't know. That's cute. Ladies and gentlemen, what's worse? Pakistan being our friend or Pakistan being our friend, senior U.S. military commander, urges Pakistan to crack down on an entrenched network of senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders training camps and recruiting grounds in Pakistan. Isn't that wild? They're our friend. This is a sanctuary from which fighters have tripled cross-border attacks since last September and are preparing the anticipated major spring offensive. This is Army Lieutenant General Carl Eikenberry. He's only the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. He's going out the door and he's urging Pakistan to crack down on his way out. He warns an even greater threat than the resurgent Taliban as the possibility of the government of president Karzai

will suffer an irreversible loss of legitimacy among the population of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda and Taliban leadership presence inside of Pakistan remains a very significant problem. Eikenberry testified before a House committee that suddenly holding hearings on the subject. Warns of the growing threat of Talibanization inside Pakistan. Really? I mean, they're going to do something worse than proliferate nuclear knowledge and materials to North Korea. And Iran quote a steady direct attack against the command and control in Pakistan and sanctuary areas is essential for us to achieve success. Eikenberry said, well, that's easy. A critical question Eikenberry said is whether the Afghan government is winning. He said in several critical areas, corruption, justice, law enforcement, and counter-narcotics, it is not. He says Afghan government institutions are extraordinarily weak. We'll join the club. The Taliban resurgence has been supported by a strengthened command and control structure that moved across the border into Pakistan right after US forces toppled the Taliban.

Today, Eikenberry says senior Taliban leaders are collaborating with Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. Pakistan's government, you may remember last September, struck the peace agreement that halted raids against the tribal areas where the Al-Qaeda leadership is believed to be. Since then, the number of cross-border attacks has tripled Eikenberry says, there've been problems with the agreement, problems like stupid agreement. What's worse, ladies and gentlemen? Knowing or not knowing? Hello, welcome to the show. Let's see.

Take your heads up, soldier. They're boxing. Go ahead. Save you. Save me. That's the way you are, baby. Save you. Save me. This is a show every once in a while. We take time out to talk about my favorite city and what is or what is not going on in it with people who aren't in a position to know. And one of those people is with me today. He's a friend, but he's knowledgeable and a student of, among other things, the culinary arts and also a native New Orleansian and columnist for the New Orleans Times pick you in whose columns I commend to you. Lollis Eric Eli, Lollis, welcome to the show.

That's a pleasure. It's been a long time. I've been trying to get you here for a while. I know, I know, but I listened to the podcast. Oh, good. And you have done well by us, man, trying to keep this before the public eye. Thanks. Well, you wrote a stunning piece, op-ed piece, and last Sunday's Washington Post, basically setting the table for whoever reads it to look at carnival season and what the country does not understand about New Orleans. Let's start as we're in the climax of carnival here with what is it that the country doesn't understand about Marty growing carnival in New Orleans? Well, for people who live in New Orleans, imagine they've got people of all ages here. So everybody's not gonna be out taking their clothes off on Bourbon Street, you know? My grandmother doesn't do that. Really? That's not what I hear. But you know, what happens is that there's this whole sort of fascination with what takes place on Bourbon Street or in the French Quarter. But growing up, man, carnival was like a picnic.

You go and you find your place on a neutral ground or whatever part of the time you wanna be in. You pack a lunch, and it's you, your cousin, your mother, your father, your grandparents, your best friend, your neighbors. And it's a fun time that the parade occasions, but the parade is not the be all an end all. A lot of it is about fellowship. I noticed it, because I go to a spot at the neutral ground near the start of the parade route that the same people have their spot picked out every year. Yeah, it's a tradition in all sorts of ways. And I can remember, we used to be at the Napoleon and Saint Charles every carnival day. And it ends up being sort of base camp. So you know, you're a kid, you're about 12 or 13. Not quite old enough to go away, told you on your own, but you can go away from out a half hour and come back and check in, you know? It's the same kind of thing. The long leash. Yeah, right, right. Yeah. There is this sense that New Orleans has had its image painted by the author, the author of the girls

gone wild videos and the makers of Budweiser commercials. And that that is what the country thinks of as a sinful sort of sinkhole. And the vast majority of the people who engage in that behavior, if I'm not mistaken, are the tourists who come here to seek that out, you know? They come here expecting to watch us do that. And we go to the French Quarter to watch them, you know? I mean, I don't know if any of my friends do that kind of stuff. Our idea of fun here is some good food, some good music, and some good alcohol. But you know, it's not about trying to fall out because the people who you see when you're throwing up on the corner are the same people going to see it work the next day, or at school, or at church. So that's just not what New Orleans is about. You know, a good time for us is not measured by how much alcohol you can sell, man. But how much dance can you do? How many friends you see? How many jokes you hear, you know? There was a phrase that I started hearing here that I'd never heard anywhere else that describes

some of what goes on by the out of towners. The phrase is amateur drinkers. Yeah. These are folks who are drinking and get drunk. And they don't understand how to pace themselves. They don't realize it's going to be a long night. You don't want to climax at the beginning, you know? It's kids of all ages, basically. There was a very controversial piece written in GQ magazine recently. Writer came down and said, the food here basically is mediocre, if not worse, and there's no such thing as a Creole. And he did this in the name of journalism. These were conclusions arrived that without benefit of research or education, one of the funniest things about it is that he interviewed Leah Chase at length. And Leah Chase is the most famous Creole chef at the country, and she talks about it. I mean, we can debate what Creole means and who's Creole and who's not Creole.

But that's a big part of Leah Chase's identity and the identity of her food. And he claims that he's doing just harsh, honest criticism of some things and some people that need to be looked at closely. I would agree we need to be looked at closely. But you gotta look at us closely, don't make conclusions that you would make. If I had looked at them closely, this is what I would have concluded. I mean, that's what you're dealing with it. And it's just erroneous in so many ways, you know? He did a radio podcast interview based on the article. And they can't pronounce the names of the restaurant so he's talking about. The other thing is that he describes gumbo. And he says all this gumbo I had was all thick and so forth and it's supposed to be a soup, but it's not really a soup. Then he says, well, burgu, now that's a real good dish. It's somewhere between a soup and a stew and they know what they're doing. Well, gumbo, those always in the soup section of the menu, is more like between a soup and a stew. And there are a whole lot of things that he said about it.

It's like, well, you know, if you'd actually asked someone, then you could actually have received some education on these points. But, you know, as I said, he used errors in his piece for the frequency that most writers reserve punctuation marks. Was the basic attitude among the food community that you know down here, anger or resignation or amusement at that piece? All three, but mostly anger. Because there's several things about it. He starts off saying, I never liked the food in New Orleans. And then I'm saying, well, if you know that, then why are you coming down here? There was also this sense that folks here are really struggling. Restaurant in particular, having difficulty getting help. Service is good, but often less than crisp because of a lack of help. And if you're gonna criticize under those circumstances, you really do need to have your ducks in a row. And so to come down and write something that is ill informed

and so aggressively ignorant, it's a real kick in the teeth. I thought that he was not just aggressively ignorant but proudly ignorant. Exactly. I'm gonna throw some questions at you that people ask me as I go around the country and it's known that I'm part of the time from here. Why did New Orleans really like Ray Nagan? There's a strange coalition of right wing white people and a lot of black folks, certainly not all. On the right wing, white folks are still mad at Moon Andrew, the father of Nagan's opponent, who desegregated City Hall. He was the last white mayor. Exactly. Remains my father's favorite mayor. Because although there's something that he didn't understand, like historic preservation, he understood that this is wasn't and has always been a city, a multiracial city.

And if we're gonna make any kind of progress, has to be on that basis. So there were some people there who did not want Mitch Landrude to win because of his perceived liberal leanings. We're just sort of a joke because the sisters, you are center from here, Mary Landrude and she is certainly not liberal. On the other side, they're black folks who said, we don't want to lose this seat. So even putting aside whether Nagan is good or bad, there's a sense that this is something that black people have fought for for 200 years and we deserve to keep it, et cetera, et cetera. And then there were people, black people who felt that if Nagan was reelected with overwhelming black support, then he'd then be more sensitive issues of particular interest to black people. Well, you know, all that's proven to be far. And there's another aspect of it because I can't just put it on Nagan supporters. I mean, Nagan ran a brilliant campaign. Nagan, in essence, played the race card in very subtle ways. He talked about re-electing our mayor.

Well, that can be we in a whole lot of different context or whole lot of different people. But Mitch Landrude was in a strange position because Nagan, to some extent rightly, was seen as under siege by forces beyond his control. And the fact that the federal government and the state government had not come to his assistance in the way that he thought was appropriate, meant that people in New Orleans sided with him in that regard. When he went on his tirade against about the lack of federal assistance in the first couple of days after the storm, everybody from New Orleans said yes. That is what we're complaining about. Well, Mitch Landrude had to figure out how to criticize the mayor without appearing to blame him for things that were beyond his control or without appearing to be just as bad as all these other folks who were criticizing the mayor. And I think ultimately, Landrude tried to run a campaign saying I'll be better,

not really talking about exactly what he would do to be a better mayor. The other problem is that there are a whole lot of people who fear that the city in an attempt to come back as a smaller and more compact and more efficient city is gonna write off a bunch of the areas that flooded. And no one would have willing to come out and say yes, I am in fact, going to recommend that we bold those the following areas. And my attitude in part is that they don't have a vision for how to communicate the people while it's possible that we could eliminate some small areas and keep bubbles or come up with a way that will be to the benefit of all of us, including the residents who's neighborhoods may in part have to be bolder. When people say there may be parts of the city that may have to not be rebuilt, a lot of folks hear that as, and the people who live there will not be invited back. And nobody's been able to clearly say we're talking about real estate, not people.

The most uncovered by the national media story to me, to my eyes in recent weeks in New Orleans has been ed Blakely. I can't go to a meal without people sitting around talking about, do you know this guy? What do you think about him? If you talk, have you met him? What's your take on him? One of the few acts that anybody knows that Mayor Negan has performed since being reelected was to name a recovery czar. Ed Blakely has this very impressive resume having presided over. Was it Oakland or San Francisco after the earthquake? Several places now. Oakland fires and I think San Francisco earthquake. It just has gone around the world. I think he did some time in Australia. When it was not the proper term. Oh, I agree. Smith some time in Australia. There you are. So we have another fellow on the payroll. But has this very impressive resume for having presided over the recovery from disasters of many metropolitan areas. And he's come in here and he's talked fairly explicitly about what he would do in terms of maybe retiring

some parts of the city geographically from settlement. But using land swaps to make it possible for the people who live there to have a new place to live. That's all by way of background. What's, if you met him, what's your take on him? I actually was at a dinner party with him a few nights ago and set next to him. It was quite impressed. One of my main concerns about our mayor is a certain lack of vision, a certain real understanding of where this city would be if he were totally in charge. And often what you have is the mayor will say, well, the market will determine where people will rebuild. And obviously, if there's stores and so forth in your neighborhood that encourages you to rebuild your house. But if the market's going to be in control, why do we need a mayor? Well, Ed Blakely, when you ask him these questions, it's funny because you get the impression rightly that he's done this a million times before. And he has answers that are not so much rehearsed

as conditioned or practiced, I should say, because the kinds of issues with the island were the kinds of issues that had been done around the world. And he says that during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, he was in China. And people ask him why he was in China when the soul of America was underwater. And that was part of his impetus for coming back because he'd been invited to speak here several times before the mayor actually hired him to be the recoveries are. Until someone actually begins to implement policy or until you see how they come down on hard questions in which you have a personal stake, it's difficult to evaluate them. But we get from him far more so than from the mayor, far more so than from anybody on the city council in the state legislature or in the governor's mansion. Is a real sense of direction, a real sense of vision, and a real sense of experience? One might ask why it took the mayor 17 months

to appoint a recoveries are. Well, the mayor is a more thoughtful man that might be obvious from the decisions he makes. Mm-hmm. Oh, one of the knocks against him is that it takes him a long time to make a decision. And the decisions he makes often end up taking place for the surprising lack of consultation with the community. You know, it'll give you one quick and obvious one. They got these new garbage cans in the French Quarter. What you're wonderful, they're big and they can be picked up by automated trash trucks and so forth. The problem is the French Quarter isn't old part of the city. So this kind of suburban model can't work in that area. Well, it's to kind of think that somebody thoughtful, somebody from New Orleans should have understood or should have been able to get information on. Not our mayor. He doesn't come to the French Quarter, I guess. You know, when I was thinking about him and his office, I thought back to the performance of Rudy Giuliani in New York in the aftermath of 9-11. And it seemed that Giuliani took as his template

an old Woody Allen line, you know, that 90% of the job is showing up. He was here, he was there. He was making himself a visible leader. And to me, part of the problem with Raynagan, and it's been exemplified in the number of people who sort of as an ironic greeting to me saying, now have you seen Clarence, as he's been invisible. He's, especially since the re-election, don't a cloak of invisibility. When one would expect, you know, okay, you don't have money, you don't have resources, you have a recalcitrant city council. The least you can do is they're the small businessmen who are, you know, moving heaven and earth trying to survive. Be around, say, hey, you're leading the recovery. I'm proud of you. The restaurants are leading the recovery. Be out of the restaurant every night, saying, this is the heart and soul of the culinary culture of America, and I'm proud of, you know. Yeah.

Well, one thing I'm very sensitive to comparison with Giuliani, only because the world trades, and I had a whole lot of symbolic importance. We're talking about a relatively small amount of real estate and a small percentage of overall New York. And so in that sense, he had a far, far bigger problem than Giuliani. Additionally, the shorthand analysis, what happened on 9-1-1, is that once your foreigners came in and attacked us. So you can go through all the shenanigans about whether or not Clinton or Bush didn't do what they were supposed to do. But we can all focus and rally around a foreign enemy. Well, ironing me here was domestic in a lot of ways. The failure of the Army Corps of Engineers, the failure of the President to send help, assume, et cetera, et cetera. Also, finally, Marinagan stayed here doing the storm. And he could have left. He didn't. In terms of what's happened subsequently, Megan is strange, because I find Megan to be personally likeable. But he seems not to enjoy going out and shaking people's hands and so forth.

He has absolutely no understanding of the importance of culture. And that means a couple of things. One is the sort of culture of human interaction. And what it means beyond simply the idea of greeting your friends, but the kind of larger thing you'll do to a being seen and what that means. Additionally, in talking about culture being so important to New Orleans, talking about the food, the music, the architecture, and how championing those things will help champion the cause of the city. He doesn't understand that at all. He tends to think in a larger corporate model about how we're going to get some big company to come down here, not how we're going to help the small and survive. Additionally, he is an uninspiring speaker, even when he's saying things that you agree with. He does not know how to phrase things in such a way as to stir men's souls. So even if you had him present at these events, he speaks in a sort of off-the-cuff everyday folksy style,

which is fine if you're talking about reopening the swimming pool for the kids, or having them come by for the big sale and buy a couple of cookies. That's wonderful. But at this point, we need someone who can speak to us and rally us and speak to the nation. The other thing is that somebody who does a lot of public speaking got a decision to make between how you're going to handle being off-the-cuff and doing prepared remarks. On the invariably, he'll say some things off-the-cuff that are so incredibly stupid. It's like, man, why did you walk out your house and out of script? Who told you to do this? A class example, he gets on 60 minutes and he says, well, y'all saying New Orleans is coming back slowly, but look at the world trade. So that's just a hole in the ground. And it's been all these years after 9-1-1. Now mind you, it's possible they've said, look, they're still trying to figure out how to proceed with this terrible tragedy in New York. And thus, we are not so far behind. But to come out and slap the people in New York in a face like that, a slap the nation in the face like that,

this is not the words of a thinking man. Lillis, you lie. We'll have more thoughts on New Orleans in a moment, but now a news from outside the bubble. Well, how's the security crackdown going in Iraq, according to the British newspaper The Telegraph? At least 56 people were killed in 120 wounded and three car bomb attacks in Baghdad today. Militants are defying a security crackdown. This just two days after the country's prime minister, El Maliki had praised the new crackdown as a brilliant success. Big change must be riding as speeches, speaking of speeches. From the British newspaper The Times of London, owned by Rupert Murdoch, Middle Eastern countries are secretly arming and supported,

suspected al-Qaeda recruits in the failed state of Somalia in a direct challenge to Western interest in East Africa, according to the UN. UN investigators detailed military aid given to the Islamists by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Arab states friendly to the West. That's the axis of good. And from the Sunday Telegraph of London, there's a new ethical version of Fawgra. Hello, Chicago, allowing fans of the food to savor it with a clear conscience. The product sidesteps accusations of cruelty because it's not made by force-feeding geese. It allows geese to stock up on extra food naturally in preparation for their normal winter migration to Africa. Once they've fatten themselves for their expected long flights south, they're slaughtered. What a surprise to them. Your flight has been delayed. Ethical Fawgra latest gentleman news from outside the bubble,

a copyrighted feature of this broadcast. Going back to our conversation with New Orleans Times Picky Uncolumnist, Lowless Eric Eli. I'm sure you get this, this is another of that series of questions that one gets asked around the country, why New Orleans really like Bill Jefferson? For those who don't know the cause of Lowless's laughter, Bill Jefferson is the democratic congressman, who the feds claim to have found $90,000 in cash in his freezer. Yeah, but first of all, I was not in charge with anything. The weather gets very hot both in DC and in New Orleans, in Louisiana. So having some coal cash to stuff in your pockets while you're walking around is one way of beating the heat. The feds have never acknowledged that. On a more serious side, Jefferson's opponent was a woman who supported the state

takeover of the Orleans Parish schools several years ago. Orleans Parish schools were terrible in all sorts of ways and the board was incompetent in all sorts of ways, but we elected them. And for her to do that, rubbed a whole lot of people the wrong way. Additionally, racial policies become very important. And among her biggest supporters were some of the richest, most conservative white people who live outside the city of New Orleans, within the state of Louisiana and the Great New Orleans. But outside the city of New Orleans. So there's this sense of her siding with people who are not on the side of Black New Orleans or liberal democratic New Orleans. Additionally, and Spike Lee's film about Hurricane Katrina, she criticized the people in Jefferson Parish, a neighboring Parish, for not allowing New Orleans to flee into their Parish, trying to get out of the storm. Among the people that she is criticizing

or for the most part, white politicians in areas to which white flight is taking place in the last 20, 30 years. The district that Bill Jefferson represents includes both Orleans and Jefferson Parish, a part of each. And in essence, she insulted a whole lot of people, a whole lot of conservative white people in Jefferson Parish and they made a concerted effort not to elect her. Finally, Bill Jefferson's a good politician. He's an incredibly smart man. Rumors about his illegal dealings have been gone around for at least a couple of decades. And there's also a sense that people don't want to be told who to vote for or what to do, particularly in an era when we feel that the nation has not come to our assistance to the extent that would be appropriate, given the nature and dimensions of this disaster. Yeah, on your last point, there was a statistic that appeared in the New York Times that compared the per capita property impact of Hurricane Andrew in Florida, Hurricane Katrina

along the Mississippi coast and whatever it was that happened in New Orleans. And it was, I think, a hundred something dollars in Florida, four hundred something dollars in Mississippi and $6,700 per person in New Orleans. Those are the kind of statistics that the president does not want to discuss. I mean, one thing I need to make very clear, George Bush was not responsible for what happened in Hurricane Katrina. He may have been responsible for the slowness of the federal response, but the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers, by its own admission, built levies that were insufficient or were not even to the standards that they were supposed to be, that is the cause of what happened in New Orleans. Not even the storm itself because the storm was not that strong, not as strong as it was predicted. So given that, it seemed to me like the perfect opportunity for President Bush to come here and say, look, I didn't do this, Bill Clinton didn't do this, my father didn't do this, Ronald Reagan didn't do this. But the fact that the levies system has not been strong enough

for you over all these decades is an opportunity for us to address these things and for the federal government to take responsibility. In part because the president did such a bad job and he needed aftermath of the storm, and in part because of party politics, he couldn't let it seem as if conservative republic had messed up, became crucial for him to blame other people or to pretend that the money he has sent to Louisiana is some huge sum of money when in fact, given our need, given the admitted culpability of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, we deserve to be made whole. Yet what he will do is he'll take some figures out of the air or we spend 110 billion dollars. Well, that's for four states. None of which have been hit as hard as Louisiana with Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent hurricane via the disaster.

And the thing I'm trying to tell people on the rest of the country is, man, don't support assistance for Louisiana simply because we're nice people and everybody deserves a break. You need to support it because the agencies that failed us are supposed to be protecting you. If something happens to you in Oklahoma and Michigan in California and Tennessee, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is gonna be the people who are supposed to be there for you. If they weren't there for us, what makes you think they're gonna be there for you? The Army Corps of Engineers released a list of 27 states in which it has projects that are needed repair, that are in danger of failing, dams and bridges and levees and so forth. Well, what makes you think that they failed in Louisiana but they're not gonna fail where you live? So my point is this is a national issue that folks have to deal with, not out of charity, but out of self-interest. And additionally, if the federal government will not appropriately compensate Louisiana's

for our losses that resulted from their negligence, their incompetence, their admitted inability to do what they themselves said they were going to do, we can assume that the same kind of pattern will happen when disaster strikes elsewhere. You've been on the front lines of what recovery really is like here because you've been cleaning up and fixing up your mom's house, talk a little bit about what that's been like. Well, first of all, man, you know what it's like in California now trying to do renovations. Yes, I do. So you're trying to get some might in a show, you're trying to get some mighty competent, you're trying to get some might or not to show up the first day of the show, the rest of the days. Well, imagine if 60% of the people in your city are all trying to get that kind of work done. That's the first hurdle, the competition for finding someone who's gonna show up, also price of going through the roof. They were going higher even before this

because of the alleged reconstruction in Iraq. So I remember two years ago, my carpenter told me, well, you know, plywood is just shooting through the roof because they sent it all to Iraq. Well, imagine if you got everybody in southern Louisiana needing to buy a sheet rock. Well, first of all, you lucky to get it. And then you go there and you say, well, there's $2 more than it used to be. I'm glad to pay the price, glad to have it. That's a big part of the problem. Additionally, where are you gonna get the money? Well, there are a whole lot of people who when they bought their homes were told, well, you're not in a flood plain so you don't need flood insurance. Well, who's fault is it that you didn't take it? And I will make no conclusion to them but just to point out the difficulty in assessing blame. Let's assume that you paid for your house already or that you inherited your house. You were therefore not required to keep insurance. So maybe you figured instead of spending $2,000, $4,000 a year on insurance, you'd put that aside to do repairs. When the face of this kind of disaster,

the money you were able to put aside is negligible. Additionally, in the best case scenario, when you have homeowners insurance which will take care of wind damage and flood insurance which will take care of water damage, you end up in a strange position. The flood insurance program is a federal program and part in recognition of the fact that flood claims can be so devastating in a real disaster. So the private market, your private insurance guy may sell it to you but it's a federal program. It tends to be less generous than the homeowners policy that you pay for. So the insurance companies have been trying to do is tell everybody that their damage is not wind damage, it's water damage. To put it on the federal program. Exactly. Well, you gotta have this argument with your insurance company and you're having this argument with somebody who's living in some comfortable office in Baltimore, a Delaware or something like that. And he ain't no hurry to solve this thing. Well, what are you gonna do if it's gonna be another month, another six months, another year before you get

the money you're supposed to get? Where are you gonna live? How are you gonna live? How are you gonna rebuild? How do you deal with the kind of depression that comes up from that uncertainty? Additionally, man, the thing that is hard to explain to people who ain't dealing with this is to told that this takes on people physically. People have been having high blood pressure, diabetes, or powder whatever for all these years. And they deal with all of a sudden how it's worse than ever. Folks who drop in dead, you know, 89 year old people who had been from all, I would sign strong, dropping dead. Now, we have no doubt that it's from home sickness, from the uncertainty, from the frustration of trying to deal with it. I'm going through physical therapy right now from my shoulder and I was talking to my physical therapist this morning here and she said, you know, you wouldn't believe the number of people who are coming in just for that because they're doing all this work themselves and they're coming in with shoulders and backs and stuff and so even on that relatively trivial level

of physical toll is pretty impressive, yeah. But that's trivial if nobody else you know is doing is going through that, which means that, you know, your wife, your friends, your mother, your father, your kids can be helpful to you and can be supportive. Well, it's kind of like, man, the whole city, the hospital ward. So on one hand, people were in warm and engaging here and yes, I listen to you or probably if you listen to mine. On the other hand, it's like that scene in Candide where it's like, look, man, you see all the people over there? They got the same thing you got. So, you know, you got a problem getting the back of the line. And there's an aspect of American culture that is both very, very helpful and very, very detrimental to us now, the sort of sense of the self-reliant individual. And like you talk about these people who are doing it by themselves who are fixing their own houses because they can't afford to hire contractors because they can do it, so they will do it. There's this notion that that is what you should do. Everybody can't do that.

They're people who lack the money, they're people who are too old to do that. The people who lack even the resources to do the work themselves. And so this notion that New Orleans should be rebuilt now because that's what Americans would do that sort of can do attitude. Well, you know, that's beautiful in theory. But try to come here, you know, a nine-year-old woman, Willie Macy, who has a restaurant that flooded. She had this vision that her 75-year-old son was going to rebuild her because of handyman. So she had no concept of what it was going to take to put this place back together. We're dealing with that on a whole lot of levels, times, you know, a couple of hundred thousand people. We'll continue our conversation with Lolas Herrick-Elyne a moment. But a story we've been following on this broadcast. Secretary of State Rice misled the Congress when she said last week she had not seen

that 2003 Iranian proposal for talks with the United States. This, according to Flint Lever, was the first time she was in the U.S. in the U.S. in the U.S. Iranian proposal for talks with the United States. This, according to Flint Lever, who worked on the National Security Council when it was headed by rice. Lever said this was a serious proposal, a serious effort by Iran to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S. Iranian agreement. The Bush administration, up to and including rice, is misleading Congress and the American public about the Iran proposal. At the State Department, the spokesman said what she has said is that she has no recollection of having seen it. She has said that repeatedly. So she has a recollection of having said that she has no recollection. And the nub of this may be the State Department spokesperson, actually, a Leverit saying that then Secretary of State Colin Powell in a discussion about the Iranian proposal told him he quote, couldn't sell it at the White House. Meanwhile, the Swiss ambassador to Iran

informed U.S. officials in 2003 did an Iranian proposal for comprehensive talks. Had been reviewed and approved by Iran's Supreme Leader. The leader knew about it. Or he didn't know about it. No, he didn't know about it. Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini. I got the clear impression there was a strong will of the regime to tackle the problem with the U.S. now to try it with this initiative, said the Swiss ambassador to Iran and to cover Leverit's facts in the State Department on May 4, 2003, according to the Washington Post. Cover Letter has not been previously disclosed. It was provided by a source who felt that the contents were mischaracterized by State Department officials. But as I said, the numb may be this. State Department spokesman says, the last 30 years are filled with examples of individuals claiming to represent Iranian views. We've offered a round of chance to sit across the table from us and discuss their nuclear issue and anything else they would like, as long as they simply verifyably suspend their Iranian enrichment activities. Unquote, in other words,

we'll talk to them as long as they do what our goal from the talks is before we start the talks. Either they know that, or they don't know that. Now back to our discussion of New Orleans and issues relating to New Orleans with New Orleans Times picking on colonists Lollis Ericilai. The unanimity of the national Democrats was shattered when Democratic congressmen, or as President Bush, would like to say, a Democrat congressman is down here. Charlie Malonson went public and said the Democratic leadership has basically given lip service to New Orleans as thrown as a bone but really hasn't done the job. And a day later, he comes out and says, well, apparently they've listened to me and the legislation is now going to be speeding through and they've set up committees. Was this what it appears or was this a show? It's hard to say because I don't remember

Louisiana as having been a major part of the Democratic agenda for taking over Congress. It's not as if it was a big deal for Nancy Pelosi. I mean, she's been here. She said the right thing, but she's not said that there's a national disgrace in there for what we're going to deal with it. Part of what has happened is that the Democrats have not offered a counter narrative to explain what's going on down here. The President is basically saying, look, the federal government is doing all those things. We're giving you a whole lot of money and y'all are messing it up. It's time for y'all to do something with it. Louisiana, we say, well, first of all, these big numbers you're talking about are to be split among four states. Second of all, we're not getting the lion's share of that money anyway. And third, the amount of money and assistance we've gotten has been insufficient. I guess, finally, in disasters, the state is supposed to repay the federal government 10 or 20% of the money spent for disaster recovery or to provide a 10 or 20% match.

Well, Louisiana was saying, wait a minute, Matt. The city that was responsible for like 40% of the state revenue and a whole lot of the outlined areas have been devastated. We don't have the money. More to the point though, this match has been forgiven in almost every disaster for the past 30 years. It's forgiven in New York after 9-11, it's forgiven in Florida after Andrew Abel. Exactly, yeah. So if we are talking about a disaster of greater scale than all of these other disasters, then why are we being asked to repay the money? Now mind you, what the legislation said that for what I'm called gave us or the Gulf region is $110 million. It said that these loans are to be repaid back notwithstanding the relevant sections of I think the staffer. Yeah. And so they're going out of their way to penalize us.

You know, we talk about New Orleans because New Orleans is the epicenter of it and became sort of the poster child. But in many ways, the problems in New Orleans are the assumption about lazy poor black people waiting for government handout. New Orleans Saints football fans went to Chicago for the NFC championship game. And you know, you expect a certain amount of razon when you're playing for a big game. But the kinds of things that people were saying to our fans went far beyond that. When God tells a story of folks next to them saying, oh, you're in Katrina, how'd you do? Well, had 11 feet of water in my house. And I said, I wish you had drowned. I mean, this kind of, but that's in all those cities saying, well, how'd you get up here? Did FEMA buy your ticket? Did FEMA bring you back? People are angry at us. I think because we've exemplified the weaknesses of the way in which this country handles its own people. And there's this sense of telling family secrets and therefore the problem is not that the secret needs

to be addressed, that the issues need to be addressed. The problem is that we told. We told to the world. Hey, right. I mean, you know, man, I was just in India. People in India know about Hurricane Katrina. And we used to be known for Lewis Armstrong. Now we're known for Hurricane Katrina. Friend of mine, I knew Arlene who works with the group called the Africa Air. He talks about all of the African leaders who were calling her in the days after this dawn. Offering sympathy and saying, this looks familiar. Too familiar. And the Democrats, I think, could say, first of all, the problems are not really the fault of anyone currently sitting in office. So we don't have to blame the president, the vice president, the previous congresses. We do need to address the problem. They're feeling to do that. But isn't that exactly the problem? The stuff that gets addressed in modern politics is the stuff that allows you to blame somebody else who's currently in office.

And the stuff that doesn't get addressed is the stuff that doesn't provide political juice, that doesn't energize your base, that doesn't get people to give you money, that doesn't, you know, allow you to say that person sitting right there is the reason this happened. And the core of engineers is this faceless agency which has been fed by Democrats and Republicans alike for generations and generations. And nobody gets any political juice out of attacking them or out of calling them to account. If you want to make it a partisan battle, make your linchpin the failures of President Bush and his administration in the days immediately after Katrina. As a classic example, and you got this segment on the show about news of inspectors general, well, the inspectors general or their ilk, I should say, have been looking at all these people who fraudulently got the $2,000 that President Bush showered on Louisiana and the week or two after the storm. You know, I got no sympathy for people who were doing that.

Getting three and four of those checks and other folks having difficulty getting one. But the reason they were showering those checks is because they had no plan for what to do in this kind of disaster. They had not come up with a way to deal with this thing. And so they had to just throw money at the situation through exactly what they always say is the wrong solution, to throw money at something. And when you get to the point where you're trying to give $2,000 each and every deserving person out of Louisiana displaced because of the storm, there are a whole lot of people going to get checks who shouldn't get them. Well, whose fault is it that this fraud has taken place when you haven't done even the kind of preparation and safeguards that are necessary? And additionally, is anybody investigating the layers of contractors who the government would pay $67,000 to patch a roof when a new roof would have cost about that amount of money? But in fact, by the time the contract to get to $6,000 in the subcontract to get four and somebody else gets two and the Porsche left putting on the roof gets $500.

So coming out of Alabama, who in the days after the no bid contracts went out, bid and said he could do these jobs for a less than a third of the price. He was approved for up to $100 million of work. He got far less work than that and they kept giving the no bid contracts to the big contractors. Well, why are we worrying about somebody who stole 2,000 here, 4,000 there when the people getting away with millions and millions and millions? This was a government-enabled disaster and we followed victim to government encouraged fraud. Well, as you're a native New Orleansian, your family has deep roots here. As you look at the situation, what's your feeling about the future of the place? I started in about November hearing friends asking kind of existential questions about the future here,

which surprised me. We have two contradictory messages. One is that if you come here today, we can have a great time. The old parts of the city that you as a tourist would have wanted to see the place where the night clubs, the restaurants, the museums, the fancy houses, they're back. The older parts of the city were not so badly hit. Much of our problems stems from the fact that the newer areas of the city where a lot of our population was. Those areas are not coming back rapidly, because the people lack the money. The state has done a bad job administering that money. We also have major infrastructure problems. The most obvious one is that we pump as much water through the city every day. I'm sorry, we pump twice as much as we use. Meaning there are all sorts of leaks in the water lines. Well, imagine that problem in every other aspect of it, in terms of law enforcement, in terms of utilities,

in terms of just the various kinds of things that we need. People are very frustrated now. There are a couple of things that will determine whether or not you're going to come back. One is do you have a place to stay? Do you have a job? Does your spouse have a job? Do the kids have a place to go to school? If you lose one or two legs off of that chair, then the impetus for staying here coming back is decreased. We have had a serious crime problem. It seems to have gone from ridiculous levels to, what I say, you know, gone from being absolutely ridiculous, it's just ridiculous in terms of a murderous taking place, and the sense of insecurity, which again leads people not to being hard to come back. It's clear now that we'll be lucky to get half of our population back in the next year or two. One is certainly going to be a smaller city based on population.

There are a whole lot of people though, people like you who love New Orleans, and realize that life is lived here and a way it is lived nowhere else in the world. There's a richness of life here that's attractive to people. And I'm confident that we will remain a Bible city, we'll continue to grow. And in some ways, may recover from this in ways that will make us stronger than we had been previously, in terms of being able to think through a future as opposed to the kind of haphazard things that happen when you evolve over time. So I elect to be optimistic, but I know full well how easy and appropriate it is to paint a pessimistic picture. And does that optimism include the culture of New Orleans? Yeah. I interviewed Ellis Moiselle last not long after the storm, and everyone was talking about how the culture was going to die. He was like, I don't be ridiculous.

I rethought that. There's some significant people who have not come back. The artist John Scott is not back, and a lot of musicians. And Ray Butler is not back. Right. The Neville brothers here are not back. But in terms of, can you go to 10 or 12 clubs a night in New Orleans and hear great music? Yes. In terms of the sense that the music is part of what keeps us here, the food is part of what keeps us here, and therefore we're supporting these institutions and these individuals. That's definitely going on. The New Orleans musicians clinic, the Tipitienus Foundation, the Grammy Awards, Jazz at Lincoln Center, have all done a whole lot to help our musicians in this context. If I can range cooperation in Southern foodways and lines, it will attempt to help us bring restaurant workers back, help us solidify the restaurant industry. And speaking of Ed Blakely, he talked about an understanding of the need for cultural, for architectural preservation, and the idea that these old houses that are blind and abandoned now,

some because of Katrina, some not, he's not looking at a wholesale demolition of those properties. And finally, the people who have come back, whether they were born in the ones or not, are people who are here because they love the culture. You know, I got a whole different view about folks who live here, who are not from here. And I think they may be, they're at least as important to the culture, as a native born, because, you know, may you're not going to come here to try to get rich, you're not going to come here because this is the, you know, the hot new place. You're going to come here because with this city has to offer something you want to support. So, man, you probably go to more nightclubs than I do, you know? That's for sure. So, I never see you out there. It's something like you know, man. It's the, it's the fervency of the convert. Well, I do love the city, and I love it partly because, at this point in its history, everybody I know is having serious impassioned discussions about the future of the city.

Whether it seems to the outsider that the official level is, is recalcitrant or uncaring, the citizens definitely aren't. And the amount of citizen activism and citizen energy and attentiveness that I've seen here in the last year, the number of organizations that have sprung up, and the focused level of the meetings that I've gone to with, you know, none of the usual people wandering off on tangents. And now I'm at the microphone just because you need to hear me. It's pretty remarkable. And it speaks to me a little bit well of the future of the place. Well, I've had an interesting conversation not long after the storm with a very conservative friend of mine who's talking about, well, you know, we need to get government out of the way. You and I can do this. And I'm saying, man, you and I can't build levies. But I'm seeing his point a lot better now in the way in which citizens are doing things without worrying about waiting for the government.

There's some things that we have to wait for the government on. There's some things that are certainly government responsibility. But ultimately, we've got to take responsibility for ourselves and we're doing it. Lola, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. It's been well worth waiting for. All right. Let's do it again. On the issue of accountability, by the way, the defense contract agencies, Chief in Washington, William Reed, says unsupported and questionable costs in Iraq reconstruction contracting total more than $10 billion. And he says of Pentagon contracting practices. Iraq being the tip of the iceberg. He says, quote, there's no accountability. Organizations charged with overseen contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable. It's the grownups in charge, ladies and gentlemen. That will do it for this week's edition of the show.

I got to go out and get cold and throw some beads. The program returns next week at the same time over these same stations. And by the way, a lot of people, sorry this week, including Ed Rendell and Jed Blue and Darrell Waldtrip and Barack Obama. But Brian Williams appropriated the apologies of the week's segment on NBC Nightly News this week. So I'm going to give it to him for the week. But I do owe an apology to everybody for a couple of weeks ago putting Clemson in North Carolina when it's in South Carolina. So that's my apology of the week. Anyway, the program returns next week. And it would be just like you catching some beads. Did you agree to join with it at the end? With me then, would you? Alrighty, thank you very much. The email address for this broadcast is Lou Mail, LEMAIL at interworld.net. The show internet services by Steve McIntypital, a show shop hoe to the San Diego and Pittsburgh desks, as well as to Bob Dunn, lowless Eli Jeffrey at audio works, and of course, always to Pam Hallstead for helping to make today's program possible.

The show playlist available at harryshear.com. And lowless Eli's columns appear in the New Orleans Times pick you and available on the internet at nola.com. The show comes to you from Century of Progress, Productions and Originate Student Facilities of KCRW Santa Monica. A community recognized around the world is the home of the homeless. Happy Mardi Gras, everybody. Thank you.