Posted 12/12/2005 05:13:00 PM by Douglas

Approaching the four month milestone when Katrina claimed New Orleans, and TNYT has an op-ed today that bears repeating.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

Waiting for "the government" to take care of this problem is going to be about as effective as it was at the end of August, when everyone in the world saw that storm coming straight for New Orleans, and anyone with half a brain knew the city was already under sea-level. As much as the TNYT op-ed board wants to bash President Bush, this isn't a question of spending too much money in Iraq, or what they deem as inappropriate tax-cuts. Lord knows what that $32 Billion includes, but everyone knows it has to be more than bigger levees and bigger pumps. All the money in the world isn't going to miraculously cause water to flow uphill in New Orleans.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears.

A quick question for TNYT. How many of you would give up your loft on the upper west side to live in a hurricane prone city that sits below sea level? Does that make sense to anyone? I can wax poetic about my drunken pub-crawls on Bourbon Street just like the next guy, but at the end of the day, someone has to make their home their. They have to invest their hard earned money to start (or continue) a business there. New Orleans may be the most quaint and historic place in the country, but for god's sake, it's sinking! Who in their right mind would go back after such a cataclysmic event, especially when the next hurricane season is just seven months away? How could anyone think that it could possibly be a safe and conducive place to live or work?

New Orleans and all of coastal Louisiana has been dying for over 75 years from poor land management brought on by the last great flood of the Mississippi. Katrina just knocked over the last pin, and no amount of government money is going to undo a century of erosion to make New Orleans habitable to anyone in their right mind. There's plenty of land available on Matagorda Bay if the government wants to start rebuilding cities leveled by hurricanes.