The man credited with pulling the Crescent City out of the muck might be going to go after David Vitter's seat in the Senate. That's a start. Work's ongoing for a hospital -- a joint venture with LSU and Tulane -- to replace the sorely-missed Big Charity Hospital.

So it makes sense to take care of all of New Orleans, at least half of which isn't really below sea level.

We know that the funds to repair the coast of five states -- Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana -- after three big hurricanes -- Wilma, Katrina, and Rita -- were allocated. But allocation isn't provision, and money isn't flood control. Take a look at how it's done in Holland:

and give a listen to the advice of the Netherlanders on "Yes, we can!" then   Read more…

In news you may not have heard yet: Some big banks and some not-so-big banks are repaying their bailout money, and the US Treasury is actually seeing a profit.

“The taxpayers want their money back and they want the government out of our banking system,” Representative Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican and a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel examining the relief program, said in an interview.

Profits were hardly high on the list of government priorities last October, when a financial panic was in full swing and the Treasury Department started spending roughly $240 billion to buy preferred shares from hundreds of banks that were facing huge potential losses from troubled mortgages. Bank stocks began teetering after Lehman Brothers collapsed and the government rescued A.I.G., and fear gripped the financial industry around the world.
...
But critics at the time warned that taxpayers might not see any profits, and that it could take years for the banks to repay the loans.

As Congress debated the bailout bill last September that would authorize the Treasury Department to spend up to $700 billion to stem the financial crisis, Representative Mac Thornberry, Republican of Texas, said: “Seven hundred billion dollars of taxpayer money should not be used as a hopeful experiment.”

So far, that experiment is more than paying off. The government has taken profits of about $1.4 billion on its investment in Goldman Sachs, $1.3 billion on Morgan Stanley and $414 million on American Express. The five other banks that repaid the government — Northern Trust, Bank of New York Mellon, State Street, U.S. Bancorp and BB&T — each brought in $100 million to $334 million in profit.

The figure does not include the roughly $35 million the government has earned from 14 smaller banks that have paid back their loans. The government bought shares in these and many other financial companies last fall, when sinking confidence among investors pushed down many bank stocks to just a few dollars a share. As the banks strengthened and became profitable, the government authorized them to pay back the preferred stock, which had been paying quarterly dividends since October.

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Hmm. So it appears that Texas' House Republicans,

Natural like a natural aristocracy. [gag. spew.]

One of the hilarious things about Shearer's article is how the talking points show up in it, even "he's only been in office for a month/two months/three months"! And the moral? The inside game doesn't work. Listening, "progressives"? HuffPo:

After I started noticing the absence of any public words (let alone actions) on [rebuilding the levees and the wetlands] from the new administration, several commenters here criticized me for, in essence, just running my mouth. "You're a celebrity," they mis-advised me, "go talk directly to the White House about it, like Brad Pitt." I thought I should start my Pitt emulation slowly at first, maybe by wooing Angelina Jolie, but after a couple of weeks, I took the challenge to play the inside game. I haven't written about it until now, because I wanted to see how it would play out before drawing conclusions.

Here's how it played out: