by Chuck Hustmyre

It's official. New Orleans is a third-world cesspool. Ranked by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the five "murder capitals of the world," New Orleans "remains the most deadly in the United States," according to the magazine's Web site.

Although the New Orleans Police Department and the FBI don't agree on the exact number, the murder rate in New Orleans is roughly 10 times the national average.

In 2007 there were 210 murders in New Orleans. So far this year, at least 151 bodies have been scraped off the pavement.

The disagreement is not over the number of murders (although in New Orleans, sometimes even counting the bodies has proven confusing), but rather over the murder rate, which is the number of murders per 100,000 residents.

The murder rate is calculated by dividing the city's population by 100,000, and then dividing the number of murders by that first figure.

And as Hamlet would say, "Ay, there's the rub."

The city disagrees with just about everyone on the number of people who've come back to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. The U.S. Census Bureau says New Orleans had 240,000 residents in 2007. The FBI uses 220,000. The mayor of New Orleans, Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin, claims a population of more than 300,000.

The FBI pegged the 2007 murder rate in New Orleans at a staggering 95 killings per 100,000 people.

But even if you use the mayor's unsupported population figure of 312,000 residents, that's still 67 murders per 100,000 people. The national average is around seven.

By comparison, the FBI puts the 2007 per capita murder rate for Detroit at 44, Philadelphia at 27, Chicago at 15, and Los Angeles at just 10.

This week in New Orleans, five people were murdered in less than 36 hours.

In addition to New Orleans, the other cities in Foreign Policy's rogue's gallery of murder are Caracas, Venezuela; Cape Town, South Africa; Moscow, Russia; and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

According to the magazine, these cities "stand in a class all their own when it comes to brutal, homicidal violence."

Yet, even among these five killing capitals, only Caracas had a higher murder rate than New Orleans.

In part, the magazine blames "grinding poverty, an inadequate school system, a prevalence of public housing, and a high incarceration rate" for New Orleans' world-class murder rate.

What the magazine didn't mention was that the city is run by crooks and charlatans. The mayor can't keep his foot out of his mouth long enough to complete a sentence and his only skill set seems to be begging the federal government for more money. The DA was forced to quit last year because he was an incompetent boob. The city's U.S. Congressman, Bill "What's that money doing in my freezer?" Jefferson, is under federal indictment. A well-known local political hack reported to federal prison this week to begin a five-year stretch for his part in a million dollar city contract skim ...

In New Orleans, nothing ever changes. So as they say in the Big Easy, Laissez les bon temps roulez. (Let the good times roll.)

CHUCK HUSTMYRE is the author of the Penguin true crime books Killer with a Badge and An Act of Kindness, and the novel House of the Rising Sun. He lives in Baton Rouge, La., where he rides his Harley-Davidson and is hard at work on a new crime novel.

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