President Barack Obama visited New Orleans on Wednesday. A few months ago, I was in New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina, and I saw firsthand the devastation still lingering in the northern areas of the city and adjoining parishes. With all the media, multimedia and nanomedia attention since the flooding, it's a shock to see that little has changed in the area, as well as the neighboring Gulf Coast region, and that the recovery is happening at a slow pace.

But I'm just one man with a laptop. I did what I could for the area while I was there. President Obama, though, has an entire White House staff and cabinet at his behest. So I'm thinking he should get more done there than I could.

Even though he attended a town hall event and visited a local charter school during his stay, here are five things Prez 44 should handle for the city....

1) Lake Pontchartrain: The absolute truth is Hurricane Katrina didn't do any significant damage to New Orleans. The flooding from the lake is the guilty party. When the levees were breached, water was sent rushing into the wards bordering it (which lay below sea level) and eventually into most of the rest of the city. Now, the new levees are 17 feet above sea level, rather than the pre-Katrina level of14 feet.

But there are also geologists that will tell you the land, many years ago, got protection from nature in the form of a very important basin that held the waters of Pontchartrain back prior to the three centuries of habitation by the nonindigenous folks. Unfortunately, the basin has been decimated by pollution, wetland losses and dredging, among other factors. If Obama actually speaks to scientists about the role the weakened lake played in the flooding, he could make more informed decisions about future protection of this and other cities that are adjacent to water.

2) The local insurance industry: Anyone who has tried to file a claim in the last four years will tell you it's a mess. Some cases have even gone to the state Supreme Court, because it's still not clear who should be getting insurance payments for property losses, who's scamming the system and who should have to wait. FEMA, in hindsight, perhaps could have done more to assist property owners who were largely left alone to fight insurance company bureaucrats whose jobs are to turn back the millions of people who came looking for what they'd paid for since they purchased their homes. The disaster made lots of middle-class folks homeless and eventually drove them from the state. Denying their insurance claims is certainly not an invitation back to their homesteads.

3) Public safety: It's no secret that pre-Katrina New Orleans was one of the nation's murder capitals. Since people have begun to find their way back, though, NOLA's rate of violent crime remains disproportionately high. This is because many of the people split, but the guns somehow found a way to stay put and eventually found their way in to even more dangerous hands. No, it's not Obama's job to police the city, but it should become clear to him what happens in any city when ineffective firearm policy puts guns in the hands of the wrong people.

4) The disabled: These were the people least likely to find help in the aftermath of the disaster, and they keep hitting a brick wall. There just wasn't enough help for the disabled to survive the storm. As many as 1,300 people who suffered a disability died in the wake of the storm. Services for this group, especially children, is still lacking in the poorer neighborhoods because so much is focused on infrastructure. Obama would be well-advised to approach this segment of the population carefully, because few have actually listened to them or tried to satisfy their needs.

5) Algiers Point: This is a little known story of white vigilantes shooting anything they thought was black in the days after Hurricane Katrina. It's a disgusting tale of people who shot 11 black men as they sought help. These weren't people who were defending themselves, although they claim they were. These are the rifle-toting Daniel Boone wannabes who, instead of trying to be human and help others in the wake of tragedy, sought an opportunity to go Negro hunting. No one was arrested for the crimes, but Obama should at least send Attorney General Eric Holder to seek justice for some of the worst crimes committed in the melee.