After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, Congress underwrote $7.9 billion in tax-free bonds that Louisiana could sell in order to rehabilitate the area.
According to a status report, $5.9 billion in bonds have been sold by the state, but only $55 million of that (1 percent) is for projects inside New Orleans (and none in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward).
By contrast, $1.7 billion (about 29 percent) is going to projects that benefit the state’s oil industry.
Now, that
is sure
inspiring
Artist Noam Braslavsky’s life-size sculpture honoring the great Israeli army general and prime minister Ariel Sharon went on display in Tel Aviv in October.
However, Braslavsky chose to depict Sharon (who he said is “kind of an open nerve in Israeli society”) not in battle nor as a international statesman — but in his hospital bed, where he has been confined, in a medically induced coma, since suffering a massive stroke in January 2006.
Welcome to
Payton Place
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing appointed Ralph Godbee police chief — a job he had held on an interim basis for several months.
Godbee had ascended to the job when Warren Evans was fired for, among other things, having an affair with a subordinate, Lt. Monique Patterson.
Before turning to Evans, Patterson had had an affair with Godbee, also.    
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa Fla. 33679 or go to www.newsoftheweird.com.)