I'm gonna just throw 2 things in. One, what other cities are doing is irrelevant. It's a red herring and isn't the standard by which to judge what's happening in NOLA. We need to judge the city based on how the city should be.
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Not drawing a direct parallel, but I am questioning your analogy- if your kids brought home a 70, you’d probably be a bit upset and you’d question all the reasons your kid brought home a poor grade
If you found out all the other kids in class got a 70, wouldn’t you at least have some questions about the test or the structure of of the class?