In a press conference on Monday I read this quote from The Decider™
“Mississippi removed about 97 percent, 98 percent of its -- what they call dry debris. We're now in the process of getting debris from the water removed. Louisiana is slower in terms of getting debris removed. The money is available to help remove that debris. People can get after it, and I would hope they would.“
I’ve got pictures springing out of my ass of debris on the streets. Maybe money’s available. I don’t know. But the fact of the matter is that Louisiana isn’t just slower, debris removal isn’t happening. They’ve bulldozed some houses in the 9th Ward but the place is still a total mess.

Outside of the 9th most of the houses still aren’t gutted. Some haven't even been moved out of the streets. Houses that don’t need gutting still aren’t occupied so they haven’t been cleaned out.

There’s no regular garbage pickup. For some reason the garbage company won’t pick up my neighbor’s garbage. Their full cans have been there since I’ve moved here. It makes no sense. They pick up our garbage but not theirs. The neighbors joke that the garbage men know they’re black.
The NY Times has had a couple of interesting articles the last couple days but they don’t really convey how the city is and I think it’s really hard for most Americans to understand how dysfunctional the local government is.
Katrina wrecked huge amounts of infrastructure. There are huge sinkholes all over town because the sewage system is falling apart. Telephone poles keep falling over and power goes out about once a week. The post offices are only open a few hours a day. I’ve only found two grocery stores in the entire city.
Recovery isn’t a little slower. It’s barely moving. The city council is actually trying to fix a lot of the problems in the way the government is set up but they’re not getting much help from the mayor. He doesn’t even bother to show up at important meetings.