In the soup

Rico says that watching In the Electric Mist (with Confederate Dead), a splendid little Dave Robicheaux mystery starring Tommy Lee Jones (and way better than Heaven's Prisoners, which starred, though it's a dubious phrase in his case, Alec Baldwin as Dave Robicheaux, but Eric Roberts was great as Bubba Rocque), put him in mind of the Katrina-related problems in New Orleans. Mayor Nagin is still facing the same problems, all brought on by trying to govern a city that's below water:

The City of New Orleans is undertaking an unprecedented level of capital improvement, street, and landscape enhancement projects to rebuild New Orleans to pre-storm conditions, returning it to its status as one of the nation's most vibrant and thriving communities. Already, $1.1 billion has been allocated toward active recovery projects.

Rico says they could take a couple billion more (hey, what's a couple of billion, given how many we're giving those idiots at GM?) and pump out the sediment that the Mississippi carries past the city every day (and dumps into the Gulf, making it worse) and fill up the low-lying areas of the city until it was well above flood stage, thus making it a regular, non-flooding city like Baton Rouge or, hell, Detroit...