Update on the New Orleans situation

Recently, a New Orleans-based shipbuilding company had to give up a $170 million contract it had worked for months and months to obtain. This same company has also given up several smaller contracts. There are simply very few workers available, and though there may be multiple reasons for the shortage, the one that stands out as most significant is this: There are no places for workers to live.

There are a few businesses that are going extremely well. Casinos, for example, are doing well because of the workers who are there, and strip clubs are doing better than they have ever done. Strippers are reporting the highest earnings of their careers.

An unhealthy hostility has developed against New Orleanians who have left and are waiting to come back. Almost every week, there are letters to the editor which criticize those who left and still have the "nerve" to express opinions about the future of the city. How these people are supposed to return with no houses and no jobs is beyond me, but apparently, a lot of cheerleader-type people think they should.

To make matters worse, the governor and the legislature have concocted a scheme wherein people who stay will get back more money for their destroyed houses than people who leave. This is an outrageously unfair plan for reasons that should be obvious to anyone.

In the meantime, the Louisiana ACLU has asked the Justice Department to investigate the now-infamous incident during which the Gretna police did not allow evacuees to cross the Crescent City Connection.