How Do You Eat an Elephant?
For weeks now, officials and agencies in New Orleans and Louisiana have been trying to eat an elephant. The problem is that they’re all at different tables, some of which are in different restaurants altogether. There’s a FEMA table, a Blanco table, a Nagin table, a School Board table – all of which are seated by invitation only.
Not only that, but since nobody’s ever eaten an elephant like this one before, they seem to be unsure which fork to use. Apparently they just want to talk about it for a while first. "Yep, Mayor, that's a big elephant!" "Sure is, Gov! How do you think we should eat it?"
FEMA trailers can’t go to properties that have no electricity, and electricity can’t go on because the energy company has neither money nor enough workers, and workers can’t be housed, and trailers for housing can’t go to properties…. Etc.etc.etc.
Not only are people going to “starve to death” waiting for the reconstruction meal to begin, the rest of the world has begun to lose interest in it. Louisiana – and NOLA – are running out of time.
There are no perfect solutions. Make some darned decisions and act on them – and do it together! Time’s a-wasting, and support is waning. Everybody is losing patience.
We’ve “admired the problem” way too long. Time to start eating that elephant - one bite at a time.
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