Varifrank: The Kingfish is Dead

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The Kingfish is Dead

With Hurricane Katrina, we’ve had direct damage from the initial Hurricane, a city wide flood, looting, bacterial outbreaks and water so infected that it’s considered toxic just to touch it.

And the fun is just getting started.

Now that the waters are receding we are about to see the next level of unspeakable horror.

Lawyers. Lots and Lots of Lawyers.

Floodwaters have always done a great deal of damage in civilizations but we live in a different age from those in the past. We live in the age of lawsuits. Lawsuits and the threat of lawsuits are responsible for the complete transformation of the modern western world.

Now that the State and Federal officials are busy wandering the freshly “dewatered” streets of New Orleans, one of these lucky civil servants is going to discover something that I don’t think anyone in Louisiana wants to admit, but is almost certainly true.

The water surrounding the City of New Orleans is almost certainly contaminated with chemicals that the EPA and the State of Louisiana consider to be carcinogenic, and they will be found at levels almost certainly beyond what can be considered acceptible for people to be allowed to return to their homes.

“So what”; You say?

Anyone else besides me remember a place called “Times Beach”?

Go read the wikipedia entry on Times Beach, then scale the problem up by 10,000 times and that’s what we’ve got on our hands in New Orleans.

Did you notice that I said “we”?

You see, on one hand the simple answer is to condemn the flooded areas and return them to a sort of natural flood plain. The problem is that its harder to do than you think. The areas that are condemned are one part of the equation, but the other part of the problem is the areas you don’t condemn, even the areas that weren’t effected are in fact effected by the large scale changes that are about to occur.

When I said “we” what I meant to say is;"who’s going to pay for this"?

Well, we are. all of us.

But one group is going to pay in a way that I dont think most people have considered.

The people who lived in New Orleans have suffered and they will continue to suffer, but the suffering doesn’t end there. The “Food Chain” of suffering doesn’t end until the last lawsuit is settled out of court. Our children will have kids of their own before that happens.

Remember, everything is just "a problem" until someone checks their tires one day and finds dioxin, asbestos, or PCB’s and someone else discovers that its been driven all over town, then it’s "a real BIG problem". Every miscarriage, every cancer victim, every case of autism in the lower Mississippi will result in a lawsuit against the City and State.

For those of you who find yourself mystified at the attitude and behavior of the Governor and Mayor as of late this little problem might help you understand one reason why they are acting so odd(besides the fact that they were odd before the Hurricane). The real problem we now face isn’t the potential decontamination costs its that there isn’t enough money in the world to cover all those lawsuits and the threats of lawsuits. Do the words " Federal Superfund" spring to mind? Yeah, it does me too.

Add to this ‘witches brew’ of lawyers and potential lawsuits is a history of political corruption that goes back centuries in Louisiana. This corruption was overlooked and in some cases downright tolerated so long as it was kept within the family but what Katrina has done is bring attention to the outside world of a true American shame, the plight of the people who previously lived below sea level on the lower Mississippi. What the Mayor, The Governor and every official in Louisiana above "city dog catcher" is looking at is the one thing they have rarely seen in their careers and that is scrutiny by the press, by lawyers who will be crawling through every transaction looking at every relationship, trying to find every bit of corruption they can find. Insurance companies as well as a whole host of Federal agencies are about to lose a great deal of money and its always been my experience that people will leave you alone so long as you don’t mess with their money, but if you mess with their money, they will make it their lifes work to see that you pay for your error.

Once the Lawyers start finding corruption it will be very much like the effects of a second flood only this time, it’s a flood that will sweep away the Democrat political machine that has run Louisiana since the Civil War.

To the Democrat party, its as if they just lost a capitol city in their domain during wartime. Think of it like the impact of the fall of Atlanta on the Confederates during the Civil War. Louisiana just lost its last solid Democrat voting districts, and any part of the existing Democrat machine that is still standing is about to be tied down in a Gulliverian web of lawsuits and Federal corruption charges which will surely come as a result of the floods.

Katrina didn’t just end a way of life in the lower Mississippi, but it has brought an end to a way of doing business in Baton Rouge.

In the end, It wont be 'conservative values' that will have beaten the Democrats, it wasnt the "Reagan revolution" and it wont be the Bush family.

It will be the lawyers.

Katrina marks the end of the Democratic party in its current incarnation. Some day you will be able to measure time as "Before Katrina" and "After Katrina". The last great Democrat capital of the old south has fallen to an outside force, a force of lawyers and officials that will make life hell for the political machine that has run the state and city for generations, there is no "win" here, only a "hold" and in the end they will have to give up. Louisiana in 20 years time will look like a smaller leaner version of Texas, friendly to business with low taxes and Democrats will only exist in force at the edge of college campuses, just as they do today in the once great Democrat stronghold of Texas.

30 years ago, Texas was Louisiana. Today Texas is an economic force that is capable of the highest growth out of any state in the union. An economy so strong that its taken to supporting 150,000 people from Louisiana in the blink of an eye. A large number of those people will go on to stay in Texas after the waters have been removed from New Orleans but all will be impacted by what they saw in Texas, and some will begin to expect it of their own government when they finally return to Louisiana.

The Louisiana Democratic machine - is Dead.

And it was Katrina and the flood of lawyers it unleashed that finally finished them off.

Posted @ September 07, 2005 09:25 PM | Current Affairs

An excellent analysis and I suspect your predictions are spot on.

Clearly the Governor and Mayor know their political time is short. Although I do not think they are intelligent enough nor long-sighted enough to be thinking of the same reasons you supply.

A much more immediate reason for their political plight is the loss of massive numbers of democrat voters who are currently being absorbed into largely red states.

Reconstruction is transformative, everyone in the south knows that.

Posted by: ThomasD at September 8, 2005 10:22 AM

Sir, you are correct on the effect that seeing functional state and local government will have on those people who return to New Orleans and Louisiana.

An example of this is to look at any small town that finds itself a retirement hotspot. The local boys who've been running things suddenly find a bunch of citizens insisting that open meetings acts be followed, along with other "good government" laws that had been ignored for years. And the locals find that these newcomers - retirees with time, many of whom were managers in large corporations or were business owners, many of whom are quite wealthy and know when to call in the lawyers - aren't willing to put up with graft and corruption that had been a way of life for the locals.

Yes, the next twenty years will be interesting for Louisiana.

Posted by: Mikey at September 8, 2005 11:15 AM

True true...

Also, as a Texan, I'd like to say I'm darn proud of my state and fellow Texans. No the least bit surprised, but proud none the less. I do hope, however, that the majority of these people manage to make their way back to Louisiana after all is said and done. Come stay with us, get back on your feet, take a look at the way a half-way decent state gov't is run, then go home straighten things out back there!

Posted by: epoh at September 8, 2005 11:21 AM

Optimist.

Posted by: Dave Schuler at September 8, 2005 01:17 PM

Once an accountability mechanism gets going it will need more fodder (I almost wrote "victims") to gnaw on after its finished with Louisiana.

Chicago, anyone?

Posted by: Leslie Bates at September 8, 2005 09:29 PM