Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

The New Orleans paradox

Deroy Murdock:

Nearly three months since Hurricane Katrina battered this glorious city, it has become the capitol of the Catch-22. The multiplicity of chicken-and-egg scenarios here could feed every FEMA employee in town.

Business owners who wish to re-open or expand to pre-Katrina levels face a daunting labor shortage. New Orleanians, finding jobs scarce, remain in exile. Shorthanded employers are reluctant to resume operations, so they stay shut, compounding joblessness.

Workers desperately need housing. Katrina harmed some 74 percent of local residences, 50,000 of which may be bulldozed. This ranges from modest wind damage, to mold-encrusted walls in structurally adequate homes, to the Lower Ninth Ward’s breathtaking obliteration. Countless houses there floated off their foundations before settling atop cars or street corners, sometimes blocks away. Restoring and creating residences, in turn, would be easier if carpenters and roofers themselves had accommodations.

Tourism might fare better if hotels, restaurants, and nightspots were more abundant. They, of course, might open more quickly if visitors proliferated—which would be likelier if hotel rooms were plentiful.

Civic boosters here need to spread good news to attract conventioneers and venture capitalists, but emphasize bad news to keep aid coming. Fortunately (or not) preaching this contrary gospel is a snap.

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Will New Orleans come roaring back, or become a much-reduced metropolis in both physical size and inhabitants? It already has shrunk from 462,269 residents in 2004 to some 70,000 today—an astonishing 85 percent depopulation.

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