In response to the disintegrating scene in New Orleans, Kevin points out that email, faxes, and phone calls are needed — not just money.
All it takes is for you, and others you can reach by email or blog, to contact your two senators and congressperson and demand immediate action as begged for by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. When Mayor Nagin was asked how we can help, he said contact your Senators and Congressperson now. Here is a site you can just click on your state or put in your zip code to reach a link for a form email to go to your Senators and Congressperson. If you do not have time to do an email, use the one I give you below.
Please take 5 minutes:
- Email your Senators and your Congressperson(s)
- What to say? Use your own words or cut and paste this: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin needs the federal government's help today. He has told me through the media that people are dying by the hundreds, his police are being overrun and that he needs troops & lots of them, he needs busses (500 or more), he needs healthcare support and he needs water and food. Things in New Orleans are worse today than yesterday. The President is traveling to the gulf today and ending his day in New Orleans. Please contact him and tell him he, with your support, needs to act today to help Mayor Nagen and the people of New Orleans.
- Tell the White House directly at: comments@whitehouse.gov
- Spread the word by email or blog; pass on this message
Also, Dave Winer was able to find a MP3 of Mayor Ray Nagen of New Orleans. The way he describes the situation sounds more like Mogadishu.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
I guess I don't understand what they're asking for. The Feds already approved 10.5 billion dollars for relief.
I suspect that what people need is immediate supplies of Food, Medicine, and for more Helicopters to airlift people out, and Busses. While nice to "approve" a budget item, that doesn't address people need, right now!
Tom Dolan made a good point this morning while we were chatting. He said something along the lines of if we can fly helicopters around Iraq during war then you would think they could handle what's going down in New Orleans.
Sounds sensible to me, but I'm no helicopter pilot.
Being a US citizen living abroad in the UK, I'm asked how it's possible that things have been and continue to be so incredibly mismanaged. Obviously no one realized just how terrible things would be, but I am deeply embarrased and ashamed by the way Shrub has bungled things yet again.
"I guess I don't understand what they're asking for. The Feds already approved 10.5 billion dollars for relief."
Immediate action. Money and behind the scene effort do little for people without food and water. In the grand scheme of things it would have cost little to nothing to have helicopters fly overhead with a loud speaker informing people where to go and where food and water would be dropped. The US have experience with sort of thing. Lots of it.
Greg, I don't agree with the way you worded your previous post but at the root of it I think we're all coming from the same place. Thanks for making the posts... at least it's being discussed.
I'd love to hear what, exactly, the 'Shrub' was supposed to do that he hasn't yet done. Everyone loves to point out that he's fumbled the ball, yet so very few have offered solutions or alternatives.
Over the weekend, BEFORE the storm hit, he released federal emergency funds. Over the weekend, the National Guard was mobilized, but KEPT OUT OF THE PATH OF THE STORM so they could respond immediately thereafter (unfortunately, there were NO ROADS for them to use to respond). The storm did not directly hit N.O., and on Monday whiz-bang pundits had already politicized the storm and made themselves look like, to turn a phrase, 'asshats.' BTW, Governers don't like it when the President commandeers their state's National Guard.
And the flim-flam claim that all of the Guard is in Iraq and that's why they can't be in N.O.? 80% of the Guard is still stateside. I believe 60% of Louisiana's Guard is, in fact, still in Louisiana.
If you recall, Sept 11, 2001 happened on a Tuesday. The President didn't visit ground zero until, yep, you guessed it, Friday.
The levies didn't break until Tuesday. The President didn't visit ground zero until, yes, once again, Friday.
Meanwhile, the local police and government fled the Big Easy, pointed fingers and are telling some unsubstantiated embelished tales of horror, all while the Mayor complains and cries 'victim' waiting for the federal government to come and cloth, house, and feed them, which, had they done it Wednesday, still wouldn't have been fast enough. His press conferences are an embarrassment and only help to stir more local hysteria.
Mayor Nagin, how about stepping up, reside at the command center, get your law enforcement personnel back to work and be a LEADER, not a whiner?
I've already offered to share my home with a displaced family for a month to provide for them... You want to do something that helps? Do the same. Writing an email is nice and will give you a fuzzy, warm feeling while still being able to make a complaint. Helping someone by providing them housing, clothing, and food for a month? That's useful, good, and actually makes a difference.
Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, you are no Rudy Giuliani.
By "previous post" I mean Levy
Tom - I think it's great that you've offered to share your home. I'm hearing all kinds of truly heart warming tales of people just like you coming together to make a real difference real fast. My hope was that our President would have done the same. I'm sorry but things moved too slowly and have been horribly managed.
As for the Mayor - I know little of him. For all I know he could be a complete "asshat". Being a New Yorker, I have far more knowledge of Rudy Giuliani and I can tell you that he's no "Rudy Giuliani" either.
> I'd love to hear what, exactly, the 'Shrub' was supposed to do that he hasn't yet done.
Giving New Orleans the funding they've needed for a long time te repair their degraded levees would have been a good place to start, prehaps NOLA wouldn't be in dire straits right now.
In 2005, Bush cut their federal funding by 80% alone. That means if they asked for $100,000 dollars to repair old levees, they got a measely $20,000 instead.
The local goverment in New Orleans has been requesting federal money to repair their levees (they identified one of the weak spots, which ended up bursting, years ago) for over 4 years now.
What *has* Bush done is a better question. He did cut his 5 week vacation (longest presidential vacation in over 35 years) a few days short and had Air Force One fly down to 5,000 feet elevation so he could see the damage, that was pretty nice of him.
Isn't it ironic that we see 'shrub' all tan and well-rested, arms at side 'ready-to-pull-a-gun' —pat the backs of young members of the 'Guard'? At least they're doing their jobs. Can you imagine our modern-day shrublike youth out partying right now instead of doing what they can to help? And one of those awol right now could become President in less than 30 years!!!
Where's the outrage?
He becomes president after being governor of Texas and cuts the budget for fortifying the levees in his neighboring state. Then he quotes scripture today saying "now's the time we should 'love our neighbors'…"! Too little too late.
Didn't mention it before, but thanks for the ideas Greg.
Done. Done. And Done.
I even got a prompt reply from Bush himself telling me he appreciates my email, it made me feel real warm inside.
>In 2005, Bush cut their federal funding by 80% alone. That means if they asked for $100,000 dollars to repair old levees, they got a measely $20,000 instead.
So, can you tell us how much they 'asked' for and how much they received in 2005? Do you know where all that 'levy-building' money went? A lot of those funds went to other public works that the city deemed more important (ie: could generate revenue). Look at the past 20 years and see what the 'levy' budget has been, and how much of it has been spent on building levies.
>The local goverment in New Orleans has been requesting federal money to repair their levees (they identified one of the weak spots, which ended up bursting, years ago) for over 4 years now.
Why, exactly, is it the federal goverment's duty to handle state and local problems? Why should Joe in Iowa have his federal tax dollars go towards building a levy in Louisiana when his state is prone to tornados, droughts, and floods? Should Susie's tax dollars from California go towards a Levy in N.O. or towards siesmic retrofitting of Hwy 1 along the coast? Every state has their own potential problems with mother nature, and federal funding should be there to HELP with those problems, not supplant the state government who should have a far better understanding of and solutions to their problems. There is NO WAY the federal goverment can fund each and every states requests to shore them up against natural disasters to prevent them from happening.
Bonus question: which administration in the last 20 years has increased funding to the public works for things like levy construction? (hint: none.)
Double-bonus question: what percentage of Louisiana's federal 'levy budget' in the last 20 years has actually gone to levy building? Get the facts and report back.
And BigA: while Guliani may not be an ideal role model or his politics leave something to be desired, he was exemplary in the aftermath of September 11th - providing confidence, determination and leadership during a horrific time in our history. Compare his actions and speeches to those of Mayor Nagin. One was a leader, the other is a loser.
One also had immediate resources rushing to his aid and the other has had dead bodies getting eaten by rats in the streets of his city. Mayor Nagin has lost his cool, admittedly — it's hard to believe anyone in his position wouldn't.
Where in the hell is the Governor of Louisiana? I don't buy the blame game being solely thrown at Bush on this one.
She (the Governor) has been on TV — pleading pretty ineffectively for help from what I've seen. I don't think it's a blame issue, but Louisiana is one of the 3 or 4 poorest states in the union, so the response really has to come from the Feds, there's not an alternative — and everyone knows that (particularly a chief exec who's the former Governor of Texas). The really sad part is we haven't even begun to hear some of the worst of it. I'm guessing Slidell and some of the Bayou parishes are just gone, and the loss of life is going to be tragic. Crowding a bunch of people together in a fetid, damp, hot sewer is also a perfect recipe for an outbreak of disease. I'd be innoculating people against Cholera if I was a doc at the Astrodome right now. It's going to get worse, and it's criminal that more wasn't done earlier by more who could have done something. In your other post you talked about the citizen's having "Two. Whole. Days." notice. What about the entire machine of the federal government having 2+ days notice and responding 6-7 days later? Whose fault is that?
> Every state has their own potential problems with mother nature, and federal funding should be there to HELP with those problems,
There is no way you can argue that every city in the US has similar problems to NO. It's below sea-level, they rely on their levees (notice the spelling) functioning and being able to withstand a beating and they also rely on their network of water pumps being able to operate properly.
Neither of these things were up to snuff when Katrina came through.
Sure, a city/state should get money locally. But, the federal government *does* funding at the city/state level. States are not stand-alone entities, in case you weren't aware of that.
> Where in the hell is the Governor of Louisiana?
That's a damn good question, I don't know what she is doing/done other than press conferences and official statements.
If there's one person I blame, one person who's well-paid (though of course difficult) job it was to not have this happen, it's the FEMA Director, Michael Brown. When the Lake levee broke and the canals reversed, LA senator Mary Landrieau had this to say:
"I have been with Michael Brown since the minute he landed in this center," Ms. Landrieu said Friday in Baton Rouge, referring to the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "and I have been telling him from the moment he arrived about the urgency of the situation." But, she said, "I just have to tell you that he had a difficult time understanding the enormity of the task before us."
This guy simply has not done his job. Period. If Bush was the really the leader his supporters think he is he'd be mad as hell that this incompetency has been allowed to happen. He'd be mad as hell that he's been made to look bad by the inactions of his subordinates. He can pat these people on the back in public, but he should be tearing them a new one in private. Hey, here's an idea — how about another tax cut? That solves everything, right?
I have to believe that Lousiana has an active and effective National Guard whose infrastructure for providing aid doesn't rely upon New Orleans being functional in order to successfully operate and deploy. That is a core function of the Guard in each state of the Union. I'm not trying to take the Feds off the hook but why wasn't more of Lousiana's seven-thousand-strong Guard brought in to alleviate the situation? From what I have been able to read only 300 personal were dispatched to the city.
No idea.
I can only speculate that it's a combination of 1) The Guard doesn't have the food and water resources that were needed to alievate the problem, 2) It's not just New Orleans that has been ravaged, but a huge swath of SE Louisiana — we're still only hearing about NOLA, and 3) All communication was destroyed. Phones failed, cell phones failed, all electricity failed, back up systems failed. Like 9-11, the breakdown in communication systems has been immense and a tragic contributor to the suffering and loss of life.
A long story on the response at the NY Times is a good one.
I recall some report stating that a third of Louisiana's Guard are in Iraq. But still the response by those able to help was woeful. To be fair, they were probably trying to save their own families first. Or, if safely outside the reach of Katrina, waiting until they could get through to help?
I'm discovering that I'm not the only one thinking FEMA Director Michael Brown is coming across as an incompetent idiot. Turns out his one qualification for becoming FEMA chief was his GOP activism and his good-ole-boy former college roomate who was already in the FEMA adminstration. The job he's had for the last 11 years? Running an organization that oversees horse shows — where he was asked to resign amid a spate of lawsuits over administrative failures. Nice job, Shrub (or Rove, or whoever is doing the non-thinking in Washington regarding this one). The 9-11 style hearings on this one should be enlightening.
Is the 7,000 strong National Guard actually all in Louisiana? Or is that how many are left while the remaining National Guardsmen are in Iraq?
I heard a remark the other day by a coworker that made me wonder, perhaps there is more to the reasoning behind why it is taking so long at the federal level to provide support. When talking about this disaster, my coworker had muttered under his breath something to the effect of "thou shall pay for thy sins..", obviously talking about the "sinful" life NOLA leads (not in my opinion, mind you).
Maybe I'm just reading too much into a statement like that, but it made me curious if there is a lot of other people that feel that why, and if so, is Bush and his supporters some of those people?
while Guliani may not be an ideal role model or his politics leave something to be desired, he was exemplary in the aftermath of September 11th.
Sorry Tom - simply not true. As an example, the footage everyone saw of Guliani walking through the debris and dust within an hour of everything, only happened because Guliani and his entire staff were trying to get to their bunker downtown. They threw out all emergency protocals by doing this and when they discovered they couldn't actually reach the bunker they started running back uptown. This is when the cameras caught sight of him and he put on his little general act. Obviously this has nothing to do with the original point of Greg's post, but it just rubs me the wrong way when people starting singing Guliani's praises.
WHY DIDN'T YOU DEPLOY THE BUSES DURING THE MANDATORY EVACUATION, MAYOR?...
Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00
'The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating'...
There are two huge breakdowns re: the evacuation:
1) Just as Essie notes, if they knew (and they did) that tens of thousands of New Orleanians lacked personal vehicles then they must have known that buses or other vehicles were *definately* going to be necessary. Period. Where were they on Saturday or Sunday? And
2) Once the Louisiana plan was an obvious failure, where were the Feds to step in? Where were the people with the authority and cojones to act outside of the box and send food and water to the tens of thousands stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center? The Convention Center is right on the goddam river — hasn't anyone ever heard of a boat? I lived in New Orleans for over four years. There are barges towing garbage and freight that could hold a thousand people all up and down the Mississippi. There are oil tankers on the Texas coast (I'm sure) that could transport tens of thousands of people. There are cruise ships. Think outside the box people. There is no excuse for not getting those poor people out or not getting them food except idiotic and criminally neglegent faith in the local authorities, who were victims themselves for godsakes. Did we wait for the Mayor of Banda Aceh to formally request aid after the Tsunami? No, we acted.
Someone's ass should be keelauled for this. The fury and rage of this disgrace is not going to subside anytime soon — especially when the economic impact hits. Good thing Bush is not running for re-election. At least it was gratifying to see some advisor told him to wipe that smart-ass smirk off his face today.
I have a simple question. If the city knew that the Levy was weak and the Feds were not going to fund repair ... Then why not fix it themselves. I know that the state is poor. But the failure of the Levies were a dagger to the throat of the city.
I wonder that myself, especially considering that the federal goverment has considered the levee a local problem since the days of the Clinton administration.
Scott answers his own question, why is there anything to wonder about? The "fix" or anything approaching a fix, involves a complete wetlands restoration project which will be a price tag in the billions. The state is poor, desperately poor. I don't have the stats, but I'd guess that Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico, and North Dakota are likely the poorest states in the Union — and they are poor in a way that most Americans seem to still not fully appreciate. Unless you've seen the poverty in these states I guess you maybe don't have the perspective to understand what I'm saying. Asking them to fix it themselves is like asking 'why didn't they fly to the Moon' — simply not possible given the magnitude of the problem. If the state raised taxes 1000% it wouldn't cover it, but simply drive business elsewhere. Where do you propose this poor state get the billions to spend to fix the problem?
The real question is have the Feds (both this administration and the earlier one) failed to invest wisely. Could spending $10B years ago have saved us $100B in 2005?
It seems to me that the president of the U.S. is much like the president of any large organization. His job is to hire individuals who are capable of doing specific jobs.
Sometimes, these "individuals" are not qualified, and can't do the job. The realization that these certain "individuals" can't do the job often comes when they are called upon to do more than just "keeping the chair warm." i.e. Michael Powell, and now Michael Brown.
Often these "individuals" are family to the president (no specific organization will be mentioned) or possibly an old drink 'n' drive buddy.
In most organizations, if the president fails to hire people who have the ability to deal with the s**t hitting the fan, the president, himself is replaced.
So yes, I do believe this is largely W's fault.
Frankly, hours later, I'm still shocked by the sentiments I see across the blogosphere — summed up in Greg's "I wonder that myself..." comment above. Do you, really? When you think about if for more than 2 seconds? Do smart, educated Americans (like our host) really not understand poverty in this country on that type of Marie Antoinette, "Let them eat cake" level?
As I type this, my friends who are doctors, all of whom trained at Tulane Medical School and Charity Hospital, are organizing volunteer trips to Louisiana and Texas, to help those less fortunate and do what they can. Don't all Americans feel like this is our responsibility — to help other Americans who need help — even if it means no $300 tax cut? When did caring about those who have the least become a value that the majority of Americans chucked by the side of the road?
When did ignorance become so comfortable?
Tom,
What does "Let them eat cake" have to do with this? First of all, Marie Antoinette never said that. Nevertheless, that type of mentality is nice and righteous, and hanging quite far to the left, but economically it just doesn't work...
And if you are going to say "our" responsibility, the least you could do is put a link on your website to donate or to help.
Since when did having friends who are helping make you a humanitarian by proxy?
Re: Marie Antoinette — the story (whether really true or not probably beside the point) goes like this: when told, "The peasants have no bread," she said, "Let them eat cake." What does that have to do with this? I see it as exactly the type of detached from reality and noxiously uninformed question Scott (and Greg) wondered about above when they asked "If the Feds wouldn't fund levee rebuilding why didn't Louisiana or New Orleans do it themselves?"
I don't think helping one's fellow man, especially those in most need of help is particularly righteous — just the decent thing to do. Call if left if you want. If decency is on the left what do you call what's on the right? What happens when decency doesn't work economically? Economic assistance to those who need it rarely turns a profit, if you haven't noticed.
Re: Websites and friends — I consider my support a personal issue, my website is neither highly trafficked nor for anyone but my small circle of business relationships. I only mention my friends as examples of Americans who don't consider taking care of fellow citizens as something that is strictly someone else's job on someone else's dime.
I have a hard time believing that Louisiana and New Orleans are so helpless when the city is able to maintain a National Football League franchise, one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive, type of sports franchises in the world. That generates a ton of money for the local economy.
And what of the vibrant tourism in the area? None of the other 'poor' states you mentioned have anything like it. If Denver can tax me $80 per plane ticket to help pay for their $1M automated baggage system then why can't/hasn't New Orleans taxed visitors to assist in paying for their own civil projects?
Top that off with a huge oil industry right off the coast of Louisiana, which I'm sure they get a pretty penny for, and I have a hard time understanding how a levee can not be maintained.
Here's some help:
The NFL franchise is a private enterprise that isn't "maintained" by the city. The franchise has been losing money for years and is close to relocating to OC believe it or not. The city owns the Superdome and the Saints pay them rent, which I'd guess is not a lot — I'm sure Saints' owner Tom Benson gets a huge break for providing [minimum wage] jobs at concession stands and parking lots. No question the local economy is better with the Saints than without them, but it's one large size business, likely generating no more money for city coffers than a Wal*Mart or factory.
Like all cities with a vibrant tourist industry, New Orleans taxes out of town visitors up the wazoo. Most of the tourism is convention related, and despite Louisiana's uniqueness, tourism is not an uncompetitive industry. You can only tax so much, and then people stop buying and move on to another choice.
How, exactly, do you imagine the state gets a pretty penny from the oil industry? It creates jobs, it generates profits, but stop and think for a minute about how politics actually works. Who do you think runs things in Louisiana? Who do you think has the money to pay lobbyists? Whose cronnies do you think are actually running the state government? You think they're about to enact monster taxes on themselves?
Why do you find it so hard to accept that the state is poor — very poor? Would you believe the average family income is only about 60% of the average American family income? You'd have a less "hard time believing" if you didn't just lazily trust pre-formed ill-informed opinions and actually did a bit of brain work on it. Google's up there in the top right.
For the lazy of mind or finger, here are some representative Louisiana stats, brought to you by the magic of the search engine and the US Census Bureau. While property values are not like California they're not giving stuff away. Please think of these numbers in relation to gas prices and how much it costs to really live in America:
Household median income, Louisiana ranks 47th out of 50.
40% of the population 'not in the labor force'.
Households (all income earners included) that total less than $50K: 68.4%
Average per capita income per year: $16,912
Families classified below the proverty level: 183,448
Households with "female householder, no husband present" : 16.6%
Householder 65 years or older: 9%
Source:
http://www.census.gov/census2000/states/la.html
and
http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h08a.html
Tom D. wrote -
>he NFL franchise is a private enterprise that isn't "maintained" by the city. The franchise has been losing money for years and is close to relocating to OC believe it or not. The city owns the Superdome and the Saints pay them rent, which I'd guess is not a lot — I'm sure Saints' owner Tom Benson gets a huge break for providing [minimum wage] jobs at concession stands and parking lots. No question the local economy is better with the Saints than without them, but it's one large size business, likely generating no more money for city coffers than a Wal*Mart or factory.
Please, use that lazy mind or those lazy fingers to substantiate just one of the suppositions you posit in that paragraph. There is not one fact present, yet loads of "likely's", "which I'd guess's", and "I'm sure's". Have those figures right there, do you? Any idea what the taxpayers paid for the Superdome? Or what they're going to pay for its new replacement (yes, it's reportedly going to be demolished). Supposing that Mr. Benson does get 'huge' tax breaks for "providing [minimum wage] jobs at concession stands and parking lots" (never mind the fact that most of the parking lot jobs are privately owned & operated) - what, exactly, is wrong with providing minimum wage concession and parking jobs? How much should someone selling a bag of peanuts at the big game make, exactly? Your comments imply those jobs are demeaning and unworthy of respect, or, at the very least worthy of more than minimum wage.
The world needs ditch diggers (and concession stand sales people). Sometimes ditch diggers realize they don't want to dig ditches for the rest of their life, and they dig themselves out. Some people enjoy digging ditches. Have you ever dug a ditch? I have. I've also sold concessions. And been a parking lot attendent. And worked construction, and laid flooring, and planted trees, and delivered pizza, and been a bartender, and a waiter, etc etc, and, yes, even gone to college! Now, I run my own business. America, what a country.
Using that lazy mind or lazy finger, have you found the figures for how much poor Louisiana spent on Levees over the past 20 years? The feds had a fund-matching program (65% matched) that went UNUSED because the city & state thought they should spend their tax dollars on rebuilding a Mardi Gras fountian, adding 10% more space to their convention center, and building tourist-attracting nightclub piers. That's like that poor concession stand salesperson relying solely on social security for their retirement because they never enrolled in their 401k program where their employer matched 6% (and yes, many minimum wage jobs do in fact offer 401k benefits).
Did you know they had over 40 billion dollars for public engineering works in the last 10 years and spend 1/10th of 1% of that on levees? It's probably because they're such a poor city. Please think of those numbers in relation to gas prices and how much it really costs to run a city in America.
You also ask who runs things in Louisiana. Do another search for those with lazy minds/fingers. See which political party has been running the show there over the last 30 years. High taxes = no new business = relying solely on tourism = 2 largely disparate classes of citizens (owners/visitors vs. service industry). Then ask yourself why Houston's population has consistently grown at a rate 6x's that of New Orleans in the last 10 years. BTW - Houston is doing a bang-up job of hosting displaced Katrina victims, even though you don't hear too much about it.
Google's up there in the top right, if you know what to look for.
tom (with the small t):
Of course I'm not demeaning ditch diggers. My point, facts substantied, is that an NFL franchise is not 'maintained' by the city, as Greg stated. It's a private business, losing money, and long-rumored to be moving out of New Orleans (possibly to LA or OC). As I stated, the Superdome has brought lots of business and convention spending to New Orleans, and has likely proven to be a good investment for the state of Louisiana. It was built after a public referendum. I'm sure it we be rebuilt.
I've never argued that Louisiana spends it's money wisely. The state has perhaps an unmatched record of corruption and incompetance in city and state government. It has an entrenched tradition of "deferred maintenance" and infrastructure neglect. Like most states and like the Federal government, infrastructure spending seems determined by benefits at the polls, not on the streets. There's a huge backlog of work needed on public buildings and general infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, roads, bridges. I'm sure they've spent public money unwisely.
I lived in New Orleans for years. The Democrats have controlled the state since Huey Long, corruption and inefficiency run rampant, governors have interspersed prison sentences between elected terms. You are very right: there are definitely two largely disparate classes of citizens there (as there are in most states in the Southern US), but the causes go a lot deeper than the tax model. There are lots of contributing factors in what I'm sure we'd likely agree is a vicious circle that traps an unfortunate number of poor and disadvantaged.
My point is this: by almost any measure, Louisiana is not one of our wealthiest states — it's a state with one of the largest percentages of poor, old, and 'not in the workforce' citizens. To paint it as a prosperous state because of the Saints, Mardi Gras, or the oil industry is simply not accurate. To ask "why didn't they fix it themselves?" is simply to not understand the magnitude of the coastal problem or the magnitude of other problems faced by a state with as many challenges as Louisiana.
Note: it's not "a levee" that's the issue. The city has dozens of levees and floodwalls and pumping stations. Just about every expert agrees that any real protection of the state and city requires a much larger look at the entire Mississippi River delta and wetlands issues. It's a huge problem — much larger than any state or city could hope to tackle individually.
Props to Houston, who I hope get all the praise and thanks they deserve. I saw the mayor and director of emergency services on TV yesterday and they seem like they're doing a great job. Houston and Texas are going to take a huge financial hit as well, shouldering the burden of support for so many victims.
PS: Love to see a reputable source on your $40B for public engineering over 10 years figure.
Here is what seems like a decent, pretty in-depth article from the Washington Post, which takes swipes at both Louisiana politicos, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bush administration on the subject of who's spent what where. There's a citation that the entire slate of 107 federally supported projects in Louisiana totals $596M in last year's budget, making that $40B figure a little harder to take seriously.
Sorry, that was supposed to 4 billion. Typo. Still, from the 3rd paragraph from your Post article:
>But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion.
The article fails to mention the additional matching funds that were available but went unused because the monies went to things that did not allow matching benefits.
later in the arcitle:
>Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.
Though it's not a levee that's the issue, specifically in this case it IS a levee that is the issue, because that's what caused the flooding - a breached levee. Obviously the other issues are still a huge potential problem, and need to be fixed.
Though I never asked "why don't they fix it themselves" - when you look at the track record of spending, project planning, and preparedness for a natural disaster that has been predicted for a long, long time, one can certainly ask "why didn't they fix SOME of it themselves?"
I also don't think Greg was implying that the city 'maintained' the Saints. My interpretation was that the city appeared healthy enough to support a franchise via paying customers & attendance (those who go to games, buy jersey's, pay for parking, buy peanuts at the concession stands, corporations to purchase suites, etc). I can't read Greg's mind, however.
"Why didn't they fix some of it themselves?" is certainly a fair question — and we agree there. No one, certainly no one who has lived there, would argue Louisiana is a model of efficient of responsible government spending. My point is that sometimes there are problems that are larger than a state can bear, much larger. Almost any serious analysis would agree that the New Orleans/Louisiana wetlands issue is one of those problems.
Having lived in New Orleans, I can testify to the importance of the Saints to local culture. The city loves the Saints, lovable losers that they are. They support them, in working class tradition, the same way Detroit and Cleveland and Baltimore generate die hard fans. New Orleans was the wealthiest city in America in the early 1800's, and much wealth still exists there, concentrated in the hands of a small class of powerful elite. It's also a dense urban landscape of the incredibly poor — when I lived in the Irish Channel there were housing projects that the police wouldn't even venture into.
If there's one good thing that might come of this disaster, it's a light that might shine on the reality of poverty in America. It exists. It's brutal. It's not the fault of the people who are poor. It's part of our duty — maybe a small part, but a part — as Americans to help solve the problem. Let's debate it, let's argue about it, let's be intellectually rigorous about it, but let's solve it. Is it so hard?