Pitt and Jolie Move To New Orleans

(Insert joke here.) Actually, I was just speaking to my friends at NYCD.com (a great place to buy CDs.) The Atlantic Monthly -- a magazine I read practically cover to cover -- had a lengthy, absorbing, depressing piece on the attempts to rebuild the N'awlins educational system, hopefully with charter schools and a desire to turn one of the worst school systems in the country into one of the best (or at least move it into the right direction). Like so much of the news about New Orleans, it was filled with the writer's description of a city that has barely BEGUN to crawl out from under the wreckage. Crime is increasing, the police force is inadequate and New Orleans is habitually described as violent and unsafe. And not just in the usual neighborhoods but everywhere. My friends at NYCD -- who go there frequently -- says it is still perhaps the areas where you know not to go that are truly unsafe. On the other hand, the area they'd hoped to buy a place has seen several people shot to death in January -- in their homes. Do we really have to wait two years for a new President before someone actually puts someone in charge of this mess in the region and actually makes something happen?