100 days and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in shit.

Soon after Ray Nagin was reelected as mayor of New Orleans, he organized a series of "100 Day Commissions" to focus on key problems of housing and welfare, government organization and initiative, and rebuilding. The commissions brought together a wide array of politicians, social activists and technocrats and seemed like the kind of "out of the box" thinking that we'd need to step forward through the morass of post-Katrina/post-levee social, economic and political sludge. (I should note that I voted for Nagin...perhaps something to write about later.)

So what did we get? Today's Times-Picayune reports, "Nagin says city making progress: Mayor cites trash pickup, water pressure, crime fighting." Excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed. Trash pickup? Water pressure? OK, great, I'm all for those things, but these commissions were about the BIG issues: rebuilding, insurance, fair housing, getting New Orleanians to return, making government more accessible and accountable.

Turns out (and I suppose there's no reason for surprise), Ray Nagin is an unimaginative businessman and I was a chump for hoping he might have been more.

13 September 2006; 0 comments