Hurricanes--good for what ails you?

This from WaPo:

ALEXANDRIA, La., Oct. 12 -- Amid fears that the effort to repopulate New Orleans is stalling, Mayor C. Ray Nagin hopscotched shelters across the state Wednesday to assure Hurricane Katrina evacuees that the city is beginning to operate again and urged them to "come on home."

For the charismatic first-term politician, it was a novel kind of political campaign: not for votes necessarily, but for voters themselves.

It is a daunting task. New Orleans's lower Ninth Ward reopened to residents Wednesday, but few came back. The number of students in neighboring communities has been reduced by half. Business owners are desperate for workers, and city leaders are increasingly concerned that many residents will never return.

Evacuees are scattered across 44 states, and many have vowed to remain where they landed.

and

With much of his city still vacant, Nagin launched his campaign. "My big message is: You can come back to the city," Nagin told a group of about 40 at a shelter here, a three-hour drive from New Orleans. He urged the crowd to "get back to the red beans and rice and gumbo and all those things that you love."

But wait--here's the really good part:

It was in a many ways an advertising effort. Crime is lower than it has been in a hundred years, he told the crowd, and city schools will begin to reopen in November and January.

He noted that some restaurant franchises are offering $6,000 bonuses to new employees:

"I'm not talking about minimum wage jobs -- minimum wage is out in New Orleans," Nagin said. A shortage of workers has driven up wages. (emphases added)

Crime is lower than it has been in the past 100 years?? Is this because of a brilliant new law-enforcement initiative masterminded by Nagin? No, dear readers--crime is down because a friggen hurricane came in and blew all the criminals (along with everybody else)out of town! And minimum wage jobs are "out" in New Orleans? Is this a result of Nagin's and Blanco's efforts to bring in high-pay industry jobs to what was once a bastion of poverty? No, no, dear readers; unfortunately you can't give them that much credit. Minimum wage is now "out" in New Orleans for the simple supply-and-demand reason that, due to a hurricane, a sizeable number of workers are now "out"

So you see, dear readers, it actually took a hurricane to correct the decades of squalor and misery brought about by decades of New Deal policies and incompentent liberal governance. This leads me to thinking that if I were a New Orleans resident, listening to Mayor Nagin's travelling dog n' pony show, I would have two very serious questions:

1. Mr. Nagen... errr.. your honor (heh)... You say that crime is lower now than it has ever been for the past 100 years. What are your specific plans to maintain that low crime rate, and to clean up corruption in New Orleans?

2. "Mr. Nagin... errr.. your honor... err, our love for red beans and gumbo aside, You say that the minimum wage is now "out" in New Orleans. What are your specific plans to encourage a climate where entrepreneurial spirit can flourish and to bring in and maintain high-paying industry jobs, and to lift us out of the cycle of dependency that has led our citizens to living in a state of poverty three times the national average?

The way I see it, New Orleans has literally a golden opportunity for a shot at revival the likes of which is rarely given to a city. There are two possible scenarios:

1. Nagin and Blanco continue the "tried and truefailed" limousine liberal policies that will serve to maintain a pattern of corruption and keep its citizenry in a miserable cycle of dependence for generations to come; or

2. Nagin and Blanco will seize this opportunity to control crime, and establish a climate favorable to entrepreneurship and industry as a means of breaking the miserable cycle of dependency among its citizenry, and moving N.O. off of the limousine liberal plantation for good.

Hmmmm... Which scenario seems more likely?

Let's see...

...billions of dollars of other people's money going into liberals' coffers.

Heh-- upon further review, don't hold your breath waiting for that second scenario to materialize.