Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

This article is nonsense. Relying on 2 years old USA today articles to extrapolate a similarity between a hollywood version of a neighborhood thug in the 70's New York to post Katrina New Orleans is absurd. There's no comparison. Just to follow you're main thread: houses aren't truly abandoned here. They have owners who are waiting on Road Home or insurance funds (this is a highly complicated story that requires incredibly careful investigation to understand; if one even can). If the owner fails to act, the state takes the property and immediately puts in on track to be sold. Remember, these properties aren't vacant because of neglect as in harlem; these are properties that thousands of people lived in until one particular day. Furthermore, the properties that are left fallow are torn down: no heroin king is gonna live in vacant lot in St. Bernard Parish! The numbers you quote regarding Texas are evacuation numbers and represent the acute phase of the effect of the flood. The population change is completely in the opposite direction now and has been 2 years. You might as well have quoted the flood levels on particular street: such information is just as out of date. Please, don't make such ridiculous conjecture and then publish on the web.

Thank you Kim for writing an article about New Orleans.

We most definitely have a crime problem, and a hosing problem. The city has done a terrible job of managing property that it owns. It doesn't even know how much property it does own. Soon homes that residents sold to the Road Home Program will be turned over to the city to dispense. This will most likely be a disaster.

The bill you refer to in congress is about rebuilding our public housing. Public Housing before Katrina was a disaster, and there is still debate on how to rebuild it, and how much to rebuild. I for one would rather see a concentration on rebuilding our neighborhoods and letting former public housing residents use Section 8 vouchers and rent a home in a traditional neighborhood.

If you look at the Crime issues one noticeable thing is that there is very little organized crime. Our gangs have always been very loosely organized compared to the ones you see in California. Katrina also broke up most of the gangs we had. Most of the post Katrina crime problem is that there is not a very organized drug trade, and all the dealers are fighting for turf.

Thank you again for writing an article on New Orleans. Hopefully you can get down here and visit soon.

You can imagine what would
happen if suddenly nobody in a city buy their food, or the water stopped running, the sewage stopped flowing and the lights went out. There would be absolute chaos, total bedlam!
People will be slaughtering each other for food! When the trouble comes ... they're going to go out with their guns and their knives and get food by force!

What you sow you reap. What early
America sowed in the way of slavery and all the rest of it, she's going to reap.Without food and water, a city wouldn't last a week! How many people are going to stay in a city where they can't get food or water or get rid of their sewage or flush the toilets? Their cities are so vulnerable, so totally dependent on the artificial means of survival, electricity,gas, sewage, piped water and shipped-in food and all that, they are going to be the first to go!
America is just beginning to reap what she has sown. The spiritual principle that governs
the spiritual and physical worlds plays no favorites;
there are no exceptions. America has danced her way across nation after nation, wreaking havoc
and destruction with her war machine, and now it's time to pay the fiddler.
Ted Rudow III,MA
Class of 1996

Behold America's next Idiot Wind.
Ms. Tsao,
even your average neocon troll lays out less tenuous string-connections for their far-flung and desparate strange loops.
I don't want to hurt your feelings as you look like a nice person but you are a fool, I mean an absolute P.T. Barnham Sucker-Born-Every-Minute Type of Fool. I'm sorry, but...this is just foolish and hence incredibly offensive to all ongoing post-hurricane recovery efforts. You must be called on this misinformation. I really do not enjoy this as it just feels like trying to be a judge at an Ann Coulter talent search.
Ms. Tsao, Compton did not give up its title willingly and continues to provide a Battle Royal for a return of the Champion's Belt--much to the further assault of its citizens, as in any urban scape in California. You have so much gang business in fact that the Crypts/Blood Inc have been actively and aggressively franchizing New Orleans in war with our own indiginent gangs.
I cannot even begin to wonder why or how you thought to attempt this article with such dated and innacurrate information, much less how the editor allowed this into the Spartan. Perhaps they do not employ an editor. This still makes no sence. For example, everyone knows that Orleans Parrish Prison was definately NOT EVACUATED. I don't want to get into the rest of your limpid scrill, but I do want people to know about New Orleans both today and in relation to the Federal Flood. Did you know that it was not Katrina that flooded New Orleans? This story is ongoing and very easy to find via the internet. New Orleans is very easy to find these days. Please do so.
Please check out the New Orleans wiki.
Please check out the group Levees.org
Please listen to WWOZ online.
Please keep on the Ladder.
I cannot further spread this article because it is so full of...holes, just bad reasoning, faulty conclusions from sour premises.
Please do not publish something this wrong again as it does so much harm to all the information of all that is going on so right in New Orleans.
Thank you,
Bruce
editor~New Orleans News Ladder

Typical California holier-than-thou crap! Look in your own back yard "journalist." San Francisco is the drug capital of the world. You and that head-in-his-a** Sun Microsystems employee should have Yuppie cocktails together. He questioned whether New Orleans should even be rebuilt because of its "bad" location. Hello? Can you say earthquake country? An earthquake in the Bay Area would make Katrina look like child's play. Ever wonder why the rest of the country dislikes California?

If you care at all about the New Orleans and its recovery, please stop reckless journalism! As if its bad enough, we don't need people speculating and reporting on other bad reporting! Even the U.N. recently condemned NOLA without even visiting, so I guess we shouldn't expect much more responsibility from student papers on the other side of the country.

Really...what a stupid article. Definition of stupid: "lacking or marked by lack of intellectual acuity."
I live in New Orleans...have been back since Sept. 28, 2005. We've moved on and it is time that the rest of the nation moved on...yes, we still need some volunteers and there is work to be done, but, we've got our ducks properly aligned for the future.
Come down and visit and check us out...you'd probably be surprised what the 1.35 millin people in Metro New Orleans already know...that life is relatively fine and what is on the forefront of most right now is "Will our NBA team go all the way?!" We're doing OK. We really are.
As far as the gangsta thing...that really is uneducated and just plain dumb. It sounds like this is a college student who is attempting to polish her skills and write about something that will draw people to her writings (using the word New Orleans attracts attention) for future reference (like a job). She sounds painfully immature.

Report, don't speculate.

This column must have been written by San Jose High School's student newspaper editor. I'm speculating of course, but I'm not a reporter.

"The prisoners weren't evacuated right away. It wouldn't be difficult for a prisoner or two to break out in the midst of all that chaos. That one escaped convict could return to his old ways exponentially."

This statement isn't fit for print. Do you think they don't keep records of who escaped during Katrina?

The other speculation you make is that abandoned houses breed drug traffickers. Do you really think that someone walks down the street, spots an abandoned house and thinks 'I should start selling drugs!'

You are embarrassing your paper. Please develop your reporting skills.

What is the gangster?
The original one, was a business owner selling beer at his restaurant?
Was the gangster selling 'contraband' such as cocaine?
Was it tax evasion due to bad, keeping of reciepts and tax records?
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Is it the person selling a product, and the consumer has no rights?
Is it a business person marking territory, telling competition get out?
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Looking at 'bloods' and 'cripts' was it the local problem child, that needs to 'settle down' as in sleep by 10pm, not home by 3am? Just call the police, over 21. Mark up the 'problem child' before parents loose the family house.

Kim,

Using your kind of speculative and far-drawn conclusions based upon outdated data, I would guess that you have had plastic surgery. According to 2006 tabloid journalism, 95% of Hollywood, CA, residents have succumbed to the knife in search of outer beauty. That trend is spreading throughout the state. You live in CA. Therefore, there is a 95% chance that you have had plastic surgery. In addition, it is said that there is a direct negative correlation between the size of one's implants and IQ. Based upon the intelligence of your article (and using the skills of reasoning you employed in your deductions), I would put you currently at a 32DD.

What a poorly-written and thought-out article. For shame on you!

hahahahahahaha, well if i ever had to bullshit my way through a paper i know who to ask for tips.