Photo du Jour: Our Best Guys Are On It

I took this picture last week on Jefferson Highway near Causeway--in the parking lot of the still closed Picadilly Cafeteria. Care to guess how many contracted individuals are local? Care to guess how many of these individuals speak English? Care to guess how many of these individuals are likley not American citizens? The title of this post is in refence to that commercial a few years ago where a guy is calling a repair shop to check on the status of his car. The guy at the shop on the phone looks up the man's car--and these two workers are sitting ontop of the car eating their lunch and he repsonds: "My best guys are on it . . ." This picture sorta reminds of that . . . Not breaking news, but the majority of the big time "no bid" type contracts for the New Orleans cleanup effort were given to a handfull of politically-connected corporations which in turn hire predominately non-American workers to physically do the work.

Myself and a couple of friends went over to Fellini's on North Carrollton for lunch today--they got about two feet of water inside the building during the flood, but have renovated and are open. The subject of the Red Cross and Salvation Army came up in regards to both of these continuing to hand out free lunches. One of my friends made a good observation: everytime he passes the Salvation Army or Red Cross "chuck" wagon parked at the Mid City intersection of Tulane/South Carrollton (this spot has been used nearly every day by both for its apparent central location) the majority of the queue waiting in line for free food is not legitimate, needy local residents, but instead out-of-town/out-of-country contract laborers. So just like the Wal-Mart method of not offering affordable insurance/health care to its employees and instead forcing that burden upon the social/health programs of cash-strapped state governments, legitimate charity organizations meant to help the victims of a disaster instead are basically a free catering service for the contract-holding corporations and their contract laborers.