Today, as the City of New Orleans descends into utter chaos, Landrieu is eagerly anticipating which companies will submit bids to take down the four Confederate monuments, labeled by the City Council as “nuisances.” These so-called “nuisances” are, in reality, historic works of art produced by famed sculptors such as Alexander Doyle.

The Mayor hopes to remove the monuments by May 19 and store them in an undisclosed warehouse. Their ultimate fate is unknown, although there have been rumors that the monuments will eventually be placed in a “slave” museum owned by a staunch Democrat Party donor and activist.

Whatever the ultimate fate of the monuments, there are few doubts that the two-year monument debate has been a political disaster for Mayor Landrieu. He has failed in his attempt to ride the monument issue into higher political office or a position with the Hillary Clinton administration. Unfortunately for Landrieu, Hillary lost and the monument removal campaign is very unpopular statewide. The only silver lining in this debacle is that the liberal Mayor of New Orleans has no possible road to win statewide office in the foreseeable future.

In New Orleans, removing confederate monuments has only lukewarm support and polls show a divided citizenry. It is so close that the Mayor will not allow the people of New Orleans to vote on the issue.

While the monument hoopla has been consuming much of the passion in the city, violence is on the upsurge. The murder rate is now accelerating at an even faster clip and is higher than the 2016 rate, which was higher than the year before.

The past few days are a perfect example of what has been happening in New Orleans in recent years. Today, there was a murder on Bourbon Street, while yesterday there were reports of an uptown home invasion, an Uber driver being robbed, and even a robbery of a man’s wallet, phone and dog in the Bayou St. John area. The past weekend was filled with reports of other armed robberies, shootings and murders.

Clearly, the tourists and residents of New Orleans are not safe and it is getting worse. From 2010-2015, the first five years of Mayor Landrieu’s tenure, the city was listed as the country’s murder capital. Since then, the rate of violent crimes, including murder, has only increased.

The City of New Orleans has too few police officers and a broken criminal justice system that is a revolving door. The criminals are arrested but just return to the streets to commit more crime. While liberals decry the fact that Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country and want to reduce the number of prisoners in the state, it certainly seems that there are not enough violent criminals behind bars.

In a public relations move, the Landrieu administration called for a $40 million investment in crime fighting. It included more parking enforcement and meter maids, but no more money for the struggling District Attorney’s office, still reeling from a needless and punitive budget cut of $600,000. If the District Attorney cannot send investigators to murder scenes and has to cut staff, the result will be even more criminals roaming New Orleans streets.

As crime surges, the Mayor excitedly looks for the historic monuments to be removed, somehow believing that the sin of “racism” will be removed from New Orleans. In fact, the real racism exists at a City Hall that refuses to provide adequate public safety, resulting in more death and destruction in the minority communities it is claiming to represent.

AGREE OR DISAGREE? TALK ABOUT THIS BELOW