We're six months now after the storm, and there are still large swaths of [New Orleans] that look like they did a month after the storm. It's just inexcusable.

The French Quarter and Uptown, you see life basically as it was before the storm. It's eerie, because life really is normal in those neighborhoods and then you cross over the Industrial Canal and enter the lower Ninth Ward or eastern New Orleans, and it looks like a bomb just went off yesterday.

The idea of providing $5,000 to evacuees for job training, education and for childcare expenses during their job search is exactly the type of program that would be successful in employing the 7.5 million people unemployed every day in this country.

The city is certainly broke and it doesn't have the citizens today or the businesses to afford to rebuild on its own schools and services like transportation.

I think that (auto) dealers prey on everybody. It's just that low- income folks are armed with less information.

It's really death by 1,000 cuts. It's just stunning hearing the stories of people trying to get ahead. It's a Herculean effort.