Go read Moseley today

I've been super busy this week but I've got more coming on this.

Instead of being “sold out” by a Nagin, focused on feathering his nest, allegedly through bribery and kickbacks, are we being “priced out” by Landrieu administration policies that favor an upper-crust influx that’s crowding out the poor? And if so, why?

More to the point, even, what is the difference?  The big change from the Nagin to the Mitch years hasn't been the direction so much as the marketing.  In politics, the substance of the debate doesn't change so frequently as the language of it does.

In the 2000s the ostensibly technocratic argument our wealthy elite pushed on us was basically, "Let's elect an MBA guy to come in and cut red tape so we can run government as a business."  That's what got George Bush elected President.  And it's why the New Orleans media and money classes were so sweet on Ray Nagin.  

That stuff eventually ran its course.  But in the long view things worked out quite well for Nagin's original 2002 backers.  They've chalked up a number of big wins we would have thought inconceivable at the turn of the century.  They've demolished public housing, privatized the public schools, elected a white mayor, and they're well on the way to re-imagining New Orleans as the smaller, whiter, more fashionable resort town they've always longed for. 

But after a while the marketing loses momentum and the bullshit machine needs a re-branding. And so the media and money classes have moved on to, again, an ostensibly technocratic campaign to  get a bunch of "entrepreneurs" in here to "hack" us some solutions.   It's the same agenda dressed up for the new decade. And it doesn't seem to be losing any momentum.