Worst roads in the nation? Check.
The City has decided to put up red light cameras in a desperate grab for more taxpayer money. Mark my words, this will follow the same pattern as it has in every other city that has done this: (1) initially, the City will raise a bunch of money catching people running red lights; (2) people will figure out where the lights are and slam on the brakes as they approach those intersections to avoid a ticket, causing lots of injuries and property damage in rear-end accidents; (3) as the accidents pile up and people learn better, they will avoid red light tickets more and more, causing the City to "earn" less money off the backs of taxpayers; and (4) the City, desperate to keep this new source of taxpayer money flowing, will shorten the yellow light time at the ticketing intersections in order to catch more people, leading to more accidents, etc. Red light cameras are a bad idea anywhere, but they're particularly idiotic on historic St. Charles Avenue, where they've been sprouting up lately with an ugly gray box in the middle of the neutral ground, unsightly tall poles with ugly cameras attached, and attention-grabbing street signs announcing a red light intersection.
A New Orleans resident, Sharon Jasper, had the gall to sit in her taxpayer subsidized home with a large screen tv and hardwood floors and whine that it's "pitiful" what the rest of us taxpayers are giving her for free. If anyone knows Ms. Jasper, I hope they tell her how sorry us people who work for a living are that she doesn't enjoy as many luxuries as she might otherwise like courtesy of those of us who choose to work for a living and pay taxes and that we hope she can upgrade to a better free government handout that she finds less pitiful real soon.
Eddie Jordan is a disaster. He needs to resign. He has done the unthinkable -- almost managing to make us forget how incompetent he is at his job, i.e., at prosecuting criminals. His incompetence as a District Attorney has largely been overshadowed this week by the need for taxpayers to pay for his racist employment practices and by his apparent harboring of a fugitive cop killer. We all need to jam the phone lines at the District Attorney's office with calls for his resignation, tell all of our other elected officials they need to publicly call for his resignation, tell our state senators and state house members to impeach him, flood local talk radio with complaints about him, and do anything else you can think of to force him out of office. The Eddie Jordan Should Resign bumper sticker is available here."Do I worry about it? Somewhat, it's not good for us, but it also keeps the New Orleans brand out there, and it keeps people thinking about our needs and what we need to bring this community back. So, it is kind of a two-edged sword."
