New Orleans

When Hurricane Katrina came ashore three years ago, initial reports suggested that it had made its way past New Orleans without causing the destruction some had feared. But the storm's aftermath proved unexpectedly catastrophic, with levees unable to hold back the rising waters.

It's worth keeping that example in mind this afternoon, with Hurricane Gustav, downgraded from a Category 3 storm (Katrina's designation) to Category 2 before it came ashore, passing west of New Orleans. It seems possible that the dire forecasts of the weekend – talk of flooding of "biblical" proportions that would wipe out whatever Katrina hadn't – will not be realized.  read more »

City Comptroller Bill Thompson isn't finished whacking the city's Department of Education.

He released a letter earlier today essentially accusing one of the department's high-priced private consultants, Alvarez and Marsal, of professional laziness for creating a plan for city schools that looks eerily similar to the one they created for hurricane-ravaged New Orleans.

That's problematic because, as Thompson notes:

"The glaring dissimilarity, however, is that the New Orleans public school system has a student population of 26,000 as opposed to the 1.1 million New York children in public schools.

"Whether the New Orleans plan is scalable to work in New York and whether it is appropriate to implement the plan without public recognition of its origin is questionable. If A&M is profiting from marketing as its own the plan of others, then that also leaves much to be desired."

The full letter is here [pdf].

-- Azi Paybarah

Gerald Ford is dead at 93.

John Edwards is about to announce a run for president, using hard-hit New Orleans as a backdrop.

The New York Post is skeptical.

Eliot Spitzer denied that his appointment of Nassau County Republican Michael Balboni to be his top homeland security official is part of any "ulterior scheme" to help Democrats take back the state Senate.

Democrats and Republicans on Long Island are scrambling to replace Balboni when he goes.

Some supporters of Rudy Giuliani are reaching out to the families of 9/11 victims about 2008, Maggie reports.

Sam Roberts writes that race was a key issue when Basil Paterson ran for lieutenant governor, but is largely a non-issue for David Paterson as he prepares to assume that office.

Democratic pledges to restore civility to Congress "carry risks," according to the Times.

George Pataki defended his record in an interview with the Sun, contending that it's impossible to be ideologically pure when you have a state to run.

Republican state Senator John Bonacic sent out a letter calling for his colleagues to toss Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

Peter King is opposed to a revised immigration bill that he says amounts to amnesty.

Joe Biden is going to fight any proposed buildup of troop levels in Iraq.

The mayor called the racially and ethnically diverse new class of police recruits "a gift to the city."

The city Conflicts of Interest Board released a letter scolding a Council staffer for inappropriate use of a business card.

Leaders in East Harlem and the South Bronx are angry over a City Hall deal that would allow fancy private schools in Manhattan to have "first dibs" on some of the renovated ballfields on Randalls Island.

Developer Bruce Ratner has installed surveillance cameras outside the properties he owns at the future location of the Atlantic Yards project.

The cost of doing business in New York State is high.

There will be no holiday clemencies from the departing governor.

And here's a handy guide to all the newly elected members of Congress.

-- Josh Benson

When the dozy, dreamy singer-songwriter Cat Power walked onstage at last week’s “The Mus  read more »

Look, what follows is really not appropriate. But it's hard to clear the mind and hit the Friday LIRR without finally saying something.

There is one person in America telling the Tribune-owned Los Angeles Times to be more boring, and his name is Clay Risen. Mr. Risen—who penned an op-ed this week which insanely took the LA Times to task over the crazy LA Times magazine profile of Joe Francis—is a killjoy moralist douchebag.  read more »

Okay, he could be worse. He could be Nicolas Lemann, who pleaded poor and then cut the budget of CJR Daily without ever attempting to put advertising on that site, thereby losing two staffers, and who recently penned a horrid and barely readable piece in the New Yorker saying that online presences needed more reporters and reporting. See? Man, it doesn't get much wronger than that.

• It has been called One Beacon Court, 731 Lexington Avenue, 151 East 58th Street, and--for long-time New Yorkers--Alexander's. But now, The Times reports that the East Side skyscraper is commonly referred to as the Bloomberg Building, after its most famous renter. Seems like this idea has been explored before. (The New York Times)
• It's been fun--and we've learned all about sandhogs and the "indispensable backhoe operators," but now it's time to head back to work. When ex-strikers toil at city construction sites like Ground Zero, they'll be compensated for their work 20 percent more than they'd been before. Heavy machine operators of the world, unite! (NY1)
• The suburbs help drive a real estate boom in New Orleans, where "volume and sales prices" have somehow exceeded the pre-Katrina numbers. But back in the New York market--which is apparently built around international wealth and "well-designed kitchens"--there may not be enough buyers to fill the 24,400 potential new co-ops. (New York Times)
• Or maybe American home buying is "grinding to a halt"? A few statistics sometimes help when trying to decide questions like this, though the Post pays no mind. (New York Post)
• Essential read of the day: Crain's NY Market Facts special issue. (Crain's)
• Non-essential read: CNN declares there are "mixed messages" on Manhattan real-estate prices, which is almost as piercing as their last feature on how "it's never easy buying your first home." At least this story has a few wonderfully anxious quotes from the New York real estate elite: "I'm more concerned about 2007 than 2006," Corcoran C.E.O. Pam Liebman admits. (CNN/Money)
• Non-essential fact: Lord Norman Foster's new Hearst Tower has a 9,000-square-foot "exercise emporium," complete with something called "in-line skating machines" (unpleasantly dubbed, "The Wave"). (The Post)

- Max Abelson  read more »

This New Orleans dog, abandoned by her owner even after the waters receded, was rescued by Maria, at left, when she worked at a shelter in Baton Rouge. As a doglover, I welcome her onto my blog, but chiefly to raise a fresh injustice:

Maria, who dined at my house last night (my social behavior was largely O.K., though I have not yet gotten the grade from my wife), has a brother serving in Baghdad. A Marine colonel. And she reports that the troops there cannot watch the World Cup on the television service provided to them by the Coalition Authority. If true, that's wrong. I'm looking into it...  read more »

Tonight the NBC Nightly News doggedly began its broadcast with a report from the levees of New Orleans at the onset of hurricane season rather than where CBS and ABC began: with the Haditha massacre and the European-U.S. coalition visavis Iran.

By such choices, Brian Williams is hewing to the position he took at a forum of the news media in Harlem some weeks back (on C-Span), when he asserted that NBC was committed to covering the problems of black people—witness the New Orleans coverage. (An angry questioner had actually asked about Mumia Abu-Jamal; all the network types dodged that one, understandably). Good for them, and yet tonight's broadcast showed just how stupid such a stubborn posture can be, in the event. The important news was elsewhere; NBC couldn't go there, out of some kind of ideological bias.

I'm just back from New Orleans, and stunned and shocked. Nothing on television or in the papers conveys the scale of Katrina, six months on. You turn onto a boulevard and suddenly there's a mountain of dead trees, gargantuan and muddy and scraped clean of branches and leaves by crews that left months ago. That's about all the evidence of federal activity, though. The great ongoing scandal of this disaster is the degree to which private citizens are being expected to clean up after themselves. Plywood signs are nailed up in trees or on the sides of houses with spraypainted phone numbers for GUTTING or TREE REMOVAL. Yes—private citizens are offering these services, six months into the alleged relief effort.

Where's the government? This isn't a question of Big government, this is a question of No government. A disaster blights one of our greatest cities, halving its population, and six months on nobody's home and the most basic recovery services are being marketed by private vendors. It's a national shame (and where's the outrage?).

We treat dogs better. No doubt about that, the evidence is before your eyes. Everywhere you go there are still signs spray painted on houses and fences: Two Tan Dogs Here. 4 Dogs Here. 0 Cats Here. The animal lovers of America, and I'm one, mobilized bigtime around the hurricane. They canvassed the city for animals. And though too many dogs died atop air conditioners (that's where they landed when they were swimming helplessly around in the floodwaters) a great number were saved. We can't do the same for people. Something chokes the generous impulse when it's poor blacks, or poor whites, or people who lack the wherewithal to do for themselves.

OK I'm a bleeding heart. But even the hardhearted should be ashamed of the fact that six months on there are still 20,000 to 30,000 abandoned vehicles on the streets of New Orleans, jammed under overpasses, and the city is floundering to get them cleared away. Or mountains of garbage and wreckage down every other street. This is America? Where's the pride and can-do spirit? What do we pay taxes for? The only motion of grace or spirit in the Lower 9th ward are the college kids on spring break zipping up haz-mat suits to do a little volunteer cleanup. There should be some massive federal undertaking here, to clean up this gem, this great and strangled source of culture. But there's nothing. (The bulldozers are in Iraq.)

(P.S. The dull murmur here, the conspiratorial whisper, louder when Mayor Nagin says it, is that New Orleans is being remade as a boutique city, a Charleston on the bayou, with red beans and rice for $17.95, the shotgun houses all neatly painted, and the poor blacks and their problems exported to Houston. "It's never been safer here," a guy from Fairhope, Ala., says at my hotel. The place has been, er, cleansed. That's another story, of racism and urban planning and gentrification. Again, the federal government could rewrite the narrative here, could dedicate itself to restoring New Orleans's former scale. But again, we see a vacuum of vision or even understanding...)

Click image to enlarge.

Devoting an entire issue to real estate is a great idea for two reasons.

First, New Yorkers seemingly can't get enough of the topic. Second, there's a lot of brokerages ready to spend big money on full-color ads for their luxury developments.

Bulging to over 200 pages, this weekend's New York Times magazine features plenty of articles, advertisements, and advertorials.

It's honestly difficult to know where to begin.

There is the "Agents Provocateurs" piece with full-page, stylish shots of the city's top developers and brokers. Some of those included are Aby Rosen, Dolly Lenz, and Paula Del Nunzio--whose picture is taken at Emilio Ambasz's mansion on East 62nd Street. Not only do we find out about their current projects and biggest coups, but also fantasies and dress codes. For the record, Mr. Rosen prefers Thomas Pink cuff links.

There are at least a dozen other pieces which vary from subsidized housing, to the Donald Trump of New Orleans, and even what a 400-year old house in Amsterdam can say about today's market.  read more »

We might need all weekend to get through it.

- Michael Calderone

I should have known I wouldn't be able resist a short post on the Harlem political festivities today, first at a freezing 1199 rally, and then at the cozy Canaan Baptist Church, where Al Sharpton holds court.

Hillary, speaking at Canaan (and keeping a good distance between herself and fellow guest Harry Belafonte) seemed to get a bit carried away by the day's rhetoric, veering after a strong but safe passage abouit New Orleans, into a charged simile:

"When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation," she said. "And you know what I'm talking about."

The audience loved it, as did the press corps clustered in back.

Also uptown today, Spitzer and Suozzi jostled a bit, with Suozzi wowing the 1199 crowd by leading the rally in song and then performing an open-air signing of a living-wage bill, as Eliot found himself forced into the background. Later, Suozzi took a beating from Acorn's Bertha Lewis on the issue of housing, while Eliot ducked the question of clemency for jailed Black Panthers.

He was followed by Harry Belafonte who -- as Sharpton noted, and for all the Caracas controversy -- backed Martin Luther King before it was a bipartisan necessity.  read more »

The Weather Channel is debuting a new series, “It Could Happen Tomorrow,” with an episode Sunday on what would happen if a 1938-style hurricane hit modern-day New York City. Hey--they produced one on a hurricane hitting New Orleans back in May, 2005, and used it to test pilot the series and then you-know-what happened.

Ah, brings back memories of those hearings with city Emergency Management Commissioner Joe Bruno and state Assemblyman Richard Brodsky in the fall.  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

Ex-Politicker Intern Azi, who is threatening to launch his own blog, emails over this item:

So, Eliot Spitzer has a .com for his campaign, a .us for his AG job, but he doesn't have the cool .net extension.

Spitzer2006.net is owned by Richard Fan, a guy who also wants to buy "waterfront property in any condition, or possibly something in the French Quarter of New Orleans."

What kind of guy would poach hurricane-ravished communities for development opportunities? The kind of guy who owns Iwannaberich.com. Classy.  read more »

After I inquired about Spitzer2006.net, Fan emailed me to say: "Starting bid is US$1000. If you are interested at that price, then I will put it up on ebay."

It was the summer of 1999, a few days after John F.  read more »

That's the New Orleans Times-Picayune's verdict, expressed by a National Guardsman in the Superdome, on the coverage of murder, rape, and crime generally in post-Katrina New Orleans.

No real connection to this city's politics, but this look at the contrast between coverage and reality is a real cautionary tale for reporters and public officials.  read more »

A typical statistic: "Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina -- making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year."

Amazing.

David Lindsley is a 20-year-old sophomore and New Orleans native who has landed, practically overnig  read more »

David Lindsley is a 20-year-old sophomore and New Orleans native who has landed, practically overnig  read more »

Tons and acres of murky filth rushed in a flood surge and still lingers weeks later.  read more »

A 1995 U.S.  read more »

Tons and acres of murky filth rushed in a flood surge and still lingers weeks later.  read more »

Here's an idea that feels hard to resist: Both political parties hold their 2008 conventions in New Orleans, and announce their plans to do so jointly, right now.

"This would be a powerful vote of confidence for the city's future. It would also indicate a serious bipartisan commitment to disaster recovery for the New Orleans/Gulf Coast region, both substantively and symbolically," writes Ron Faucheaux, a political consultant and writer with roots in Louisiana, in an email he's circulating.  read more »

Anyway, while Mike is bidding for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, civil libertarians and cops alike might breathe a sigh of relief if we let that one go.

Dogs that don’t bark in the night have always captured my attention, and I suppose the same can be  read more »

“People inside were literally dying,” ABC News correspondent Chris Bury told The Observer over t  read more »

As Hurricane Katrina gathered force on Sunday, Aug.  read more »

“I think this was a story where the journalists were way ahead of everyone,” said Steven Newhous  read more »

Dogs that don’t bark in the night have always captured my attention, and I suppose the same ca  read more »

The tragedy of New Orleans is not that desperate need turned the city’s overwhelmingly poor and bl  read more »

“People inside were literally dying,” ABC News correspondent Chris Bury told The Observe  read more »

“I think this was a story where the journalists were way ahead of everyone,” said Steven Newhous  read more »

On Tuesday, Sept.  read more »

“I think this was a story where the journalists were way ahead of everyone,” said Steven  read more »

On Tuesday, Sept.  read more »

“I think this was a story where the journalists were way ahead of everyone,” said Steven Newhous  read more »

The tragedy of New Orleans is not that desperate need turned the city’s overwhelmingly poor an  read more »

“I think this was a story where the journalists were way ahead of everyone,” said Steven Newhous  read more »

As Hurricane Katrina gathered force on Sunday, Aug.  read more »

Dogs that don’t bark in the night have always captured my attention, and I suppose the same ca  read more »

George W.  read more »

Dogs that don’t bark in the night have always captured my attention, and I suppose the same can be  read more »

“I think this was a story where the journalists were way ahead of everyone,” said Steven  read more »

I have an exclusive Pace Poll of "prime" Democratic voters, which shows Freddy strong, Gifford rising, and has some interesting results in down-ballot races as well.

Also, Jason Horowitz watches as Bob Morgenthau gets into the swing of retail politics.  read more »

Chris Lehmann and Joe Conason slap Bush over New Orleans. And Andrew Rasiej has a sweet new apartment.

The Transom is so relieved to finally hear the truth from those liberal fatcats on 43rd Street:

In New Orleans, the mayor seemed to assume all that was beyond his control, just like the mayors in the 1960's who let the riots occur.

They said their cities couldn't survive without help from Washington, which proceeded to shower inner cities with money and programs that did more damage than the riots. Cities didn't recover until some mayors, especially Republicans like Rudy Giuliani, tried self-reliance.

It's so nice to finally hear someone say it! Damn all those mayors and their pro-riot agendas! And affirmative action and that evil, baby-loving Head Start program: actually more damaging than urban riots. "He's just a very interesting thinker," NYT editorial page editor Gail Collins once said of Mr. Tierney. "Just"? Surely that's faint praise for a man who manages to hold down a job on the op-ed page while being too fucking stupid to dress himself in the morning without assistance.  read more »

UPDATE: Hey, didn't Mr. Giuliani actually, like, cause a riot among cops in New York City? Huh. —Choire Sicha

Staff at the New Orleans Times Picayune received a shot of good news this afternoon, when editor Jim Amoss talked to missing Times Picayune reporter Leslie Williams for the first time since the reporter went missing on Thursday while covering Katrina along Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

"This is best news I've heard in days," Mr. Amoss said by phone Sept. 5. "He was covering the story from Mississippi under hellacious conditions. He was on assignment and we're just now hearing from him, we haven't had a chance to debrief him yet."  read more »

--Gabriel Sherman

Yesterday, as Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff described "isolated criminal misbehavior" while, on the split-screen, anarchy ruled, it was possible to wonder how Bush's first choice for the job would have performed.

This is local sacrilege these days, after the frenzy of damaging revelations that followed the announcement of Bernie Kerik's planned appointment.  read more »

But does anyone else think he might have grasped the urgency of the law-and-order crisis in New Orleans more quickly, and reacted more forcefully?

Anthony, and Virginia, and, sort of, Gifford, today responded to the reality that the only thing anyone is paying any attention to is New Orleans. Anthony turned a previously scheduled press conference into a call for more action, while Virginia took part in a Harlem press conference on the issue. Miller pressed to drop the gas tax.

Freddy went ahead with an endorsement, but took a couple of questions about New Orleans, in which he kept his distance from the language coming out of the Congressional Black Caucus today, and the suggestion that New Orleans was forsaken by the federal government because its residents are black and poor.  read more »

Mike just sent out a release on a package of charity for New Orleans, and you have to expect a leak to the Times of personal philanthropy to the same end.

Local politics, appropriately, recedes.

Today's New York Times House & Home section carries an essay by Rick Marin about manly men who like to talk about fabrics and architecture. Like Brad Pitt and Lenny Kravitz, who apparently redid his New Orleans home: Mr. Kravitz's principal collaborator has been Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, who did Mr. Kravitz's penthouse - Lucite grand piano, Donald Deskey pool table - and worked on the New Orleans place and the Bahamian beach house Mr. Kravitz is building with a local architect, Jackson Burnside. Mr. Noriega-Ortiz, who is not involved in the Kravitz Design venture, schooled his client in eclecticism: that midcentury could also mean mid-18th-century.

As for his client's design skills, Mr. Noriega-Ortiz is generous. "He knows styles and proportions and color," he said. "And the shopping was great." And as a potential competitor? "I don't know how he'd mold his design to other people's taste," he said. For sure! Remember the leaky toilet in Kravitz's extravagantly self-decorated Crosby Street loft, which caused trouble for the rocker's neighbors?  read more »

By the way ... Rick Marin?

From a bit before noon till around three this afternoon, NY1 pre-empted its regularly scheduled news programming to provide end-to-end coverage of the memorial service for Luther Vandross, who died this week at age 54. The live program, from Riverside Church, showed the R&B world's version of a New Orleans jazz funeral, with musical performers including Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin, and eulogies from the likes of Al Sharpton and Dionne Warwick.

"As a public service, we decided we would put this on television for those who couldn't make it to the public funeral but who still wanted to be able to celebrate his life," said Bernie Han, NY1's vice president of news.

And viewers, according to NY1, couldn't get enough. The broadcast was so popular that the station plans to re-air the Vandross funeral program at 3 p.m. tomorrow.

"We've gotten dozens of calls today from people asking to buy copies of our coverage," Ms. Han said.

The cost? "Less than $100," she said. "But we're telling people when they call that they'll have an opportunity to see it and record it for themselves. You don't have to pay for it! We're not here to make money off of tapes of the man's memorial service."

The actual burial of the Ambassador of Love, in Paramus, was open to friends and family only. It was not televised.  read more »

--Rebecca Dana

And speaking of Gifford, the Speaker's former spokesman Fred Baldassaro has resurfaced as DNC Chairman Howard Dean's trip director. And, as you'd expect from a Democratic Party run by Dean, Fred's blogging on the side.

Here's an entry from Philadelphia last week:

"The Gov. and I spent a total of five hours sitting at B13 waiting for our flight to New Orleans to take off. You know you're at an airport too long when airline workers at the check-in counter are calling you by your first name.

"Undaunted, we carried on. We read the papers, the Governor made phone calls, we chatted with folks at the gate. A nice guy bought the Gov. a smoothie. The flight at the gate next to us -- the flight to Burlington, VT. -- was also cancelled, so we had some admirers who recognized the Gov. instantly. I even met a pilot who taught me all about how planes stay in the air without colliding with one another."

Ah, the glamour of politics.  read more »

Welcome to the Dollhouse:Diminutive Jack's Got a Big Heart  read more »

Runaway Jury , the latest in an endless stream of expensive, bloated, all-star legal thrillers by bi  read more »