Shock Doctrine kind of morning

Ever have one of those days when you pick up the paper, turn on the internets, look around and think "My God we are so fucked"?

On most days I'm in the mood to sit back and giggle at the buffoonery of it all. But that's just a handy way of avoiding the depression over the fact that this entire process of "recovery" is leading us further and further down the road to having less of a living city and more of a hollowed-out tourist attraction/movie set.

Today the depression is a little harder to avoid. You figure a pretty nifty method of killing off a city would include:

• Shutting down the public hospital system and making off with the spoils:
  

  The Times Picayune puts it a bit more delicately, but make no mistake about it this proposal (variations of which have been around for as long as there have been private, for-profit hospitals in Louisiana) is an ideology-driven attempt to tear the last vestiges of Long-ism (read that "paying attention to the needs of working people") from Louisiana.
  
  Were that all there was to this, it would be a hell of a fight. But, the proposal being floated by these healthcare executives — and, by the Bush administration in the months immediately following Katrina/Rita, by the Public Affairs Research Council (PAR), and the Blueprint for Louisiana group — comes to the fray with the additional burden of having been discredited in other states where similar approaches have been talked about and even tried — primarily Massachusetts.
  
  The core issue is shutting down the LSU Health Science Center hospitals, formerly known as the Charity Hospital System (also known as the safety net hospitals). And, then "letting the money follow the patient" — right into the coffers of the very people who have made healthcare and health insurance too expensive for all but the wealthiest among us: the for-profit hospitals and the insurance companies.




• Destroying what remains of the affordable housing infrastructure with no plan for 1/1 replacement.



• Turning the public education system over to a bizarre experiment in privatization built upon smoke and mirrors budgeting, union busting, and "vocational education" stovepiping.



• A disingenuous emergency services and flood protection plan fraught with cronyism and indifference at nearly every turn.



• A callous and city-backed demolition and land-grab scheme which favors the interest of cookie-cutter developers over neighborhoods.



• Entergy



• A reduction of most city public services and offices to near skeleton staff level while maintaining only enough of a veneer to please visitors. "Oooh that streetcar is pretty." or "Okay so I found the library. What can it tell me about Jazz?" or "The French Quarter is as clean as Disney World!" You need a link? You haven't been reading Moldy City.

In short, killing a city in the wake of disaster requires three core elements.

1. An ideological retreat from the very idea that a government ostensibly "by the people" can or should act positively to aid and support those people in a time of need.


2. A coterie of cronies, contractors, carpetbaggers, and professional self-promoters willing and able to scoop up the spoils associated with this massive dismantling of the social contract.


3. A Yuppie Left too gah gah over their "blank slate" myth, too distracted by their fear of Dragons, and too quietly enthusiastic over the public housing demolitions to care.

But at least Brad Pitt has put up some nice big glowing pink blocks in a field where people's houses used to be. I think that's very nice.