Project Katrina

Basing their estimates on hotel and restaurant figures, vendor permits, and the overall crowd size, New Orleans officials think the economic impact of the 2007 Mardi Gras celebration was strong, if not quite up to the levels reached before Hurricane Katrina. USA Today reports:

“The real economic impact of the celebration that ended last Tuesday won’t be known until sales tax figures are compiled in mid-March. However, Nagin said he thinks the economic impact of the 2007 bash will be around 80% of the estimated $250 million a year generated by Mardi Gras spending before Katrina flooded the city in August 2005.”

This is great news. So much of the New Orleans economy is based on tourism. Mardi Gras coming back to pre-Katrina levels is one of the only ways the city and region is going to rebuild and rebound.

The New York Times is reporting some much needed good news for residents of the Ninth Ward:

The first new houses built in the Lower Ninth Ward since Hurricane Katrina were turned over to their owners on Thursday, creating a small island of hope in a sea of ruin.

Side by side, sparkling and bright on Delery Street at the neighborhood’s eastern edge, the two houses unveiled at a ceremony on Thursday stand out in a landscape grimly frozen since the storm. The twin pastel variants on traditional New Orleans architecture sit incongruously whole amid block after block of ruined shells with doors swinging open and windows gaping wide.

Now we just need 20,000 more and we’re be talking about something.

As Media Matters reports, Glenn Beck recently said:

“I find it very difficult in some ways to feel bad for New Orleans,” said CNN Headline News pundit Glenn Beck, who once called Katrina survivors “scumbags.”

I’ve often wondered how this guy has a prime time show. It is just amazing. You can listen to the clip here.

State Farm, which insures one out of every three Mississippi homes, has decided to "stop writing new home and commercial policies throughout Mississippi," which "could prompt other insurers to retreat further from the Katrina-battered region." Great, just great. So I guess people are going to have to moved to another state if they want to get insurance or rebuild.