We just saw one of the most pathetic and instructive spectacles in recent Louisiana political history, and the corporate state and local media just glossed right past it or reported it with straight faces as though it wasn’t farcical at all.

What are we talking about? This…

“Big changes.”

What an absolute joke. Moreno hired Sadie Finkel, her old chief of staff from when she was on the City Council, for a new job working for the city, and that seems to be the biggest change. Finkel is now in charge of one street.

One street. All hail Tsarina Sadie of Canal Street. She is now the “Canal Street Renaissance Director.”

And this is supposedly big news.

Moreno put together a gaggle of the clowns from the New Orleans political clown car – the incompetent boobs from the City Council, including its head honcho J.P. Morrell, some cops who had to be there, Downtown Development District and French Quarter Management District reps – so that she could announce that she was issuing an Executive Order to revitalize Canal Street.

How?

Fixing streetlights. There are 20 of them out along Canal Street, and my gosh, they’ve already fixed six of them!

Give that woman a cookie!

Of course, Kenny Rubenstein, whose Rubenstein Bros. men’s store, maybe the only high-end retail store left on Canal Street, hosted this dog-and-pony show, noted that every time it rains the street lights on Canal flicker and go out. Maybe make sure that isn’t a problem anymore before you show up to hunt for aspirational kudos at a press conference.

But wait, there’s more. They’re adjusting the traffic-signal timing at Rampart and Canal.

And in the coming weeks, the city is “acquiring new crack sealing equipment.” They haven’t actually acquired this new equipment, which you would think it would be basic urban management to do without calling press conferences weeks in advance of such purchases, but Mayor Helena and the clown car wants you to know that the crack sealers are coming by this fall.

Oh, and also, we’re getting “quality of life sweeps” from cops “walking the length of the Canal Street corridor three times a day.” And they’re assigning a dozen new cadets to the NOPD’s 8th District. You need a press conference to announce the intention for the NOPD to do some facsimile of its job.

Will those quality of life sweeps involve rousting bums and winos and crackheads – sorry, the unhoused – from the stoops and doorways of Canal Street? Well, we can’t be sure. What Mayor Helena did tell us was that next month there will be a “homeless-outreach pilot” – a NOPD officer paired with a case worker – getting started to work Canal Street.

In other words, Moreno just called a press conference to announce a commitment to basic urban governance as though somehow that is noteworthy in New Orleans.

And maybe she isn’t wrong to call it noteworthy. But given that she’s been a member of the political clown car that runs New Orleans for more than a decade, the fact this would be somehow noteworthy, or even praiseworthy, is such a self-own and an indictment of the excremental quality of that city’s leadership that the stench reaches to the Gulf of America.

How much is all this going to cost?

Well, you can figure on Tsarina Sadie Finkel getting a six-figure salary to play Mahjong on a city computer, so there is that. Otherwise?

“No dedicated funding sources are proposed as part of the plan.”

Moreno and the clown car didn’t attach a budget to their promises of retail recruitment, upper-floor redevelopment in the empty buildings along Canal Street (the t-shirt shops on the ground floors are full), arts and cultural programming, or “sustainable governance structure.” The mayor did tell us that the Downtown Development District and the French Quarter Management District “could contribute in the future.”

Seriously. That’s what she said at her press conference announcing a “Renaissance” of Canal Street.

And there have been no less than six separate “studies” of how to revitalize Canal Street over the past 40 years.  Just last year, the City Planning Commission put out a report that documented everything. In 1996 and 2018 there were “revitalization” pushes which fizzled. Moreno said the problems are “already thoroughly documented” and it’s “coordinated implementation” that’s been missing. Sure, Helena. Canal Street just didn’t have enough central planning to get it back on its feet.

Morrell didn’t help his pal Moreno’s cause. He said he’s “seen plenty of press conferences to announce new plans for Canal Street” in his two decades in office. Then he threatened to “seize and raze” blighted buildings and reassess underdeveloped property on Canal Street. J.P. Morrell doesn’t have authority to do any of that, and none of it is in Moreno’s executive order. That’s a jackass showing up to freelance at a meaningless press conference.

And it’s worth asking: hey J.P., if Canal Street is so important to New Orleans, why are there blighted buildings? Seems like maybe there’s a larger problem if Canal Street’s real estate is falling victim to blight, huh?

It couldn’t possibly be that Canal Street, which is supposed to be the most marketable commercial corridor New Orleans has, has turned into a bum-riddled shithole because that’s what happens in a lawless city dying for lack of a viable economic base or anything. No, that’s not it.

Why are those storefronts on the ground floor of Canal Street selling bongs, vape pipes and t-shirts with vulgarities on them instead of high-end items by local retailers? New Orleans has lots of those, actually, but they’re mostly in residential neighborhoods in the city or else they’re in the big shopping malls in the suburbs. Meanwhile Canal Street is covered with tourists. Strange that the upscale merchants wouldn’t want to be where the people are, right?

Hmmm. What could it be?

Well, Fox 8’s site in the last week ran stories on two people shot near Canal and Carondelet, and then there was the tourist teacher who got caught and killed in a crossfire a block or two away just this weekend. They claim violent crime is down 70 percent since 2022, and it might well be, thanks in large part to that governor the clown car has spent this entire year demonizing bringing the Louisiana State Police down to the city and parking them in the high-traffic areas.

But the reputation for crime – and by the way, shoplifting isn’t a violent crime, so it wouldn’t be counted in that 70 percent decrease – is well deserved. And that’s why you don’t have much high-end retail on Canal Street; if they’re stealing t-shirts and bongs from the Pakistanis who own the t-shirt shops,  it’s not a big deal, but if they’re stealing Apple watches and Gucci bags, that’s something else.

What’s funny about this is there is a private-sector entity called Celebrate Canal! which attracted something like 100,000 additional visitors to Canal Street last year solely through private events. Sandra Herman runs Celebrate Canal! She’s a volunteer; nobody’s paying her. They invited her to the photo op, at least, but it’s not like she got anything more than a pat on the head.

But the clown car will claim that Sandra Herman will vanish into the ether if the clowns can’t get their bailout from the state. That you can bank on. When in fact, it’s Tsarina Sadie Finkel who could lose her one-street empire if the money runs out. Surely, that would be a global tragedy, though perhaps the street and the city could survive.

That having been said, Tsarina Sadie is required to submit an “annual report” on the state of Canal Street’s “renaissance,” so we’ll wait with bated breath to see what she’s got for us this time in 2027.