The national elections on Nov 7 erased any attention that was being paid Louisiana. Hostilities in Iraq continue to keep Louisiana on the back burner. An historically quiet hurricane season is ending.

The new Congress is expected to be hostile to OCS revenue sharing and Louisiana may have lost some clout on committees. This bodes ill for efforts to restore the wetlands.

The Corps is bumbling along with the HPS restorations. Business as usual seems to have reasserted itself. The Corps has reassessed its westbank plan, found it lacking and recommended an alternative. We'll just have to see what happens next.

The city is continuing to recover one day at a time. It still looks pretty grim in parts of the city, but other parts look at least as good as they did before the storm.

The Road Home program is continuing to stumble. Although 80,000 have applied for grants, only 44 have received any money and most haven't heard a peep. ICS has been holding interviews and promises 10,000 grant letters will be issued by the end of November. Verification of insurance and federal assistance including FEMA and SBA are listed as major bottlenecks.

The city is struggling with administration in a decidely more political environment. Pay raises have been issued. The new garbage contract is under review. Wireless internet service still hasn't made its way out of the CBD and Quarter as promised. Everything is more expensive with federal grants filling the gap in 2007 but looking ahead to 2008 suggests there will be a price to pay.

The Unified New Orleans Plan is still under development with a January 2007 rollout expected. Plenty of public meetings are being held so there should be any surprises.

Police are under the microscope because violent crime is still rampant. the Criminal Justice System is struggling and we don't hear much about progress. The police captain responsible for narcotics was reassigned to DA Liasion duties which was perceived as a major demotion. That bit of new may help explain why the CJS is so disfunctional. The National Guard and State Police are still here.

Schools are in session and things have quieted down substantially. Now we'll have to wait for testing results in the Spring to see how well the competing approaches are working.