…that’s something which is very, very apparent after the New Orleans mayor’s latest idiocy.

So you want to do business in Orleans Parish? Well…

New Orleans business owners will need to keep records of who enters their establishments when the city begins easing restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Tuesday.

The requirement, which Cantrell announced during a conference call with state officials, is aimed at making it easier for health officials to track down residents who may have come into contact with people later found to be infected with COVID-19.

It’s not clear how the city would enforce the rules or even if the information will be collected in a uniform way. New Orleans’ approach, as outlined on the city’s website Tuesday, instead directs businesses to create their own method of tracking employees and patrons.

A Cantrell spokesman said details about the effort will come later.

The policy seeks to help state and local governments in the complex process of contact tracing, which tracks where the disease has traveled once new cases are confirmed. Public health officials have said that a robust plan for tracking down people who have come in contact with infected residents is one of several hurdles, including increased testing and low absolute numbers of cases, that must be cleared before stay-at-home restrictions are eased.

“Contact tracing just doesn’t involve government alone,” Cantrell said in the Tuesday conference call. Businesses will proactively track the names and the contact information of patrons “as part of the new normal,” she said.

Hey, this will be easier to do now that there are no more large events in New Orleans!

Every time we hear this obnoxious phrase “the new normal,” we think of this scene, or at least the first half-minute of it…

“The new normal” means “satisfied with less.”

It means having to give all of your contact information at every single place you frequent, on the orders of a mayor who doesn’t even pay her taxes.

Or, instead, you can simply drive a little further into Jefferson Parish and not have to surrender a record of your movements to one of the most incompetent, destructive municipal governments in America.

Which do you think consumers in Orleans will choose? And what effect will that have on merchants in New Orleans?

Our guess is they’re going to get out of Orleans Parish as fast as they can, because it’s obvious that so long as LaToya Cantrell is that city’s mayor the environment for commerce will be toxic.

Or if they don’t, how religiously do you think they’ll enforce her list-making order? The guess here is those lists will be kept about as well as the city’s books are.

What is she going to do? Shut down the businesses who don’t rat on their customers? Yell at them for having an incomplete log book?

This has gotten completely out of control, and it really doesn’t have much to do with the virus. The virus is just the catalyst; the real cause of all this is the mayor’s latent authoritarianism. She’s fulfilling life-long fantasies of being in total control, and seizing on every lame-brained idea public health bureaucrats can devise in order to get there.

And New Orleans suffers, and suffers.

Exactly how do you expect contact tracing to work on the downside of an infection curve? Thousands of people have already had the virus. People in New Orleans have probably had it since December, if not before. You’re going to isolate single patients with this approach? Good luck.

This is what you get when you put stupid people in charge of a major city. New Orleans isn’t alone in this regard, but Cantrell seems to have more flair than some of the other morons running large municipalities.

This can’t continue. If it does it will utterly destroy New Orleans.