Christmas is upon us so it's time to shop. It's looking much better this year but there are still too many reminders that we are living through a recovery. Lots of Christmas lights in populated neighborhoods. It doesn't look like we'll get snow this year.

OMG! We just reelected William Jefferson. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. I guess we are satisfied with the job he has been doing and believe his protests of innocence in the federal corruption probe. He has yet to explain the "cold cash" but maintains he has an honorable explanation.

Traffic is a nightmare. Much worse than preK. The I-10 parking lot makes me think fondly of Houston's Southwest Freeway during rush hour. The population densities are higher in the areas where people live, work and drive. Places like NO East, St. Bernard, still pretty empty. Its easy to drive around there but why bother.

The Saints are winning. They won the NFC South. This is the biggest news in the City.

Heavy rains on December 22 caused some flooding. Mostly just streets, a few lowlying buildings.  A few pumps had problems including Station 6 at the 17'th Street Canal.

Distribution of the LRA Road Home money is way too slow. Fewer than 100 people have gotten any of the money by the end of 2006. $11 billion is available and just sitting there, much of it has been available to Louisiana since February, 2006.

Listening to Ray Nagin, the same thing is happening with money slated for local governments. A billion dollars is available for infrastructure projects, but the process of filling out worksheets  and getting approval has been underway for months and the money just isn't flowing.

Crime is up or down depending on how you look at it. The police report about half as many murders as last year. Nobody knows how many people live here, but the consensus is somewhere around 40% of the prestorm population so the murder rate could be up. Jefferson is reporting a crime wave with their murders doubled since 2005 (hmmm....I wonder if there could be any relationship). However its harder to get away with crime in Jefferson.

Survey says...30% of people here now want to move away. Discouraging.

The President signed the Senate version of the OCS revenue sharing bill. It's worth $20 million per year for now and $650 million  later. Perhaps some creative financier can convert that revenue stream into some money and get started. Of course we'll have to convince the Corps.

The Corps agreed that MrGO is uneconomical and wants to close it down at some unspecified future date with a dam at Bayou LaLoutre. Hooray and cheers. Now lets do it. Just saying something doesn't make it so.

HUD now wants to bring people back into two of the public housing projects slated for demolition. Why?

Insurance remains a major stumbling block. If you can't get commercial homeowners insurance you have to use the state operated Fair Plan (ugh). Fair Plan costs more, does less. Commercial insurance is not being written south of I-12 (all of New Orleans metro). Business insurance in worse shape.

The State reports $2 billion budget surplus. A special legislative session called by Blanco to spend the dough ended in a shambles. Just giving the money back to the taxpayers does not seem to be on the agenda.