Those people are all dead, I don’t think resources should be allocated to them.

For example the people of New Orleans didn’t build the levees in New Orleans or the surrounding area. They were designed and their construction was engaged and supervised by the United States Corp of Engineers, without the participation of the city or state.

Someone commented that St Louis knows how to address the problem as “they built a steel levee for a mile”. Assuming the city of St Louis built that levee (I suspect the US Corps of Engineers designed and funded that one also) its a lot different situation altogether. The New Orleans area is composed of several parishes(counties). Orleans Parish alone which accounts for half of the population of what people generally think of as New Orleans, has more than 150 miles of levees by itself.
A project of the scale to rebuild levees to make the citizens of a city safe is way beyond the financial ability of any city and sits within the realm of the United States Government in the same manner that every major waterway diversion project, or highway construction for that matter is only able to be addressed on United States Government scale.

Finally as the the issue of public corruption: Its a problem everywhere,but in Louisiana concerted efforts have been ongoing for years to bring it to the surface, publicize and prosecute aggressively. New Orleans has one of the best and most aggressive United States Attorneys in the country. In testimony before the United States Congress last month, Louisiana’s Lieutenant Governor presented documentation that there were more charges of public corruption in the states of six of the members of Congress that sat on the committee reviewing the need for Katrina funding than there was in Louisiana.

http://solomon2.blogspot.com/2005/09/on-levees-of-new-orleans.html

First, was your family able to get out in time and are they all ok? Secondly, I am trying to find “Louisiana Hayride” so I can be more up to speed on the history and the prognostication of what has become their current dilemma. I have tried repeatedly to get objective information (pre-Katrina) regarding the allegedly corrupt “elected” political officials and some history from only as far back as Huey Long (it appears he is infamous and I must have missed that day in History class) to see where this whole city went awry….to no avail…everything I have located so far has an agenda and already has Katrina in the “history” portion….

I am of the thinking that the state of Louisiana is accountable for what transpires good and bad in their state….it is always disturbing to see the blame game played in these types of “after the fact” situations….heads should NOT roll just to appease the apparent “mob mentality” of our American public…

I know how important free speech is to our country (our forefathers are surely turning in their grave on that one), however, the media in its typical self-serving fashion has managed to fall short of reporting factual and objective news (there is a distinct gleam in their eye as they report about a tragedy that clearly could have been averted by the Louisiana political officials – how do they sleep at night, knowing they are contributing to the fear of those affected)….unfortunately, many people believe them and fall prey to this “brainwashing”, if you will, when it is propaganda at its lowest form.

Maureen P. Hedigan….from Florida (another Hurricane state…..)

1) African-Americans are not a separate society. They are Americans. Your soft-racism is showing.

2) No levee will protect against a Cat 4 or 5. The city was doomed to flood eventually and building more levees just lures more people into the danger zones. In addition, the levees destroy the surrounding ecology making the city more vulnerable to storm damage.

3) American deals with at least one major disaster every year. We handle these events on routine basis better than anyone else. If the president was a democrat the picture you get of the Federal response in the media would be much different.

I will remember that you would choose to live in a police state without the most basic freedoms rather that risk a war and the chance for freedom and democracy. But just because you would make that choice for yourself don’t assume that the people of Iraq have.

1. A society that was brought to America as slaves still a century and half ago.

2. An adequate systems levies and dikes such as the steel one in St. Louis.

3. True emergency relief funding.

All this before putting tens of billions into the immoral Irak war where another city was lost and thousands have died for oil/economic reasons.

Too many mistakes too many deaths too much waste – the USA should start to meditate on what it is doing.

Perhaps it was wise for the current administration to “cut-back” on funding, since it seems little was ever going to be used to build or shore up levees!

But to comment on the Dutch dike system: most of our dikes are designed to protect us against the North Sea. That are the dikes people seem to talk about.

We have also river dikes who are much smaller, still higher as the levees, but that’s because the rivers’ waterlevel rises in the winter.

There are some things you there have and we don’t. For instance hurricanes. Dutch enigneers doubt if dutch dikes would withstand a category 4 or 5 hurricane. Yes, they are designed to stop storm-surges, but the max. windspeed here is 120 km/h. And that’s very rare, I myself never experienced these windspeeds. Our BFT 10-11 windspeeds are nothing compared to Katrina or other hurricanes.
Another difference is that the Netherlands aren’t sinking, New Orleans is.

So I, as someone living in Holland below sea-level think it isn’t fair to compare this. Disasters of this magnetude aren’t normal. It’s very unlikely that these kind of things will become normal business.

(Note that I am talking about shipping, not production, disruptions. Of course grain is largely fungible, but an increase in the perceived unreliability of US shipping makes it rational for overseas buyers to diversify their sources of supply.)

And of course we will have to wait and see what actually happens. Maybe the analyst I cited is too pessimistic. His argument seems plausible to me, however.