They're hardly alone living in those conditions. Their local and state leadership failed them. Their choice to live in that city, a known high flooding and hurricane risk, cost them whatever possessions they had. Possessions are not terribly important but the city should *NOT* be rebuilt in an irrational way with huge taxpayers debt incurred only to have this happen yet again with the city below sea level.
There's massive waste in the federal budget including the transportation bill. Tom DeLay said this week the budget was as lean as possible. Instead we'll be borrowing rather than considering offsets. This isn't fiscal conservatism.
It *is* pathetic that New Orleans has such high poverty, unemployment and so forth. It's a scandal. But it isn't unique. That's replicated across many Democrat urban strongholds. The Feds offered a cut-rate flood insurance program. The AG of Mississippi is suing to force insurance companies to pay out even to those who didn't have flood coverage. So when New Orleans is finished--and hopefully another Katrina won't hit during the multi-year rebuilding effort--when are doing going to reboot another cesspool city? Detroit? Cleveland? D.C.? Philly? Los Angeles?
We should be very careful with the tax payer's money especially that of tax payers that aren't even working age yet. Bush's solution is more give-aways: housing lots, $5000, tax breaks for small businesses targeted (quota?) at minorities. Those are LBJ and Democrat poverty pimp solutions. The pandering comes exactly in his choice of words to link their poverty with racism. What kind of racism could be causing that in a city where over 80% of the citizens are non-white?
New Orleans is dead. We're not going to learn out lesson and move the city. This will happen again and could happen during any hurricane season.
Giving someone a plot of land and house is no way to lift them out of poverty and make them productive citizens rather than criminals, addicts and welfare dependents. Something *major* has to change in the corrupt local government, with the local education system. This is a fantastic opportunity for all of those folks to get a "fresh start" throughout the country.
Early estimates are $300 billion is what Bush's expecting to spend. He's pandering to the romanticism of New Orleans with all this talk of rebuilding the city as it was. It's *shameful* and moronic. If there are no consequences to our choices of where to live, whether to pay for flood insurance, whether to stay in school and so forth why don't we just redistribute all wealth equally so no one has to work anymore unless they really want to.
I'm hoping pressure can be put on Congress so they will reign in the purse strings. It won't happen. Correct or otherwise, I know I'm on the losing end of this argument. Irrationality and a desire to "show we care" has overwhelmed all good and moderating sense.
Funny how none of the Cast Iron Conservatives realize how much Fed Tax REVENUE is being lost everyday that area is devastated. Funny how often "Fiscal Conservatives" are are pennywise and pound foolish. It isn't just the 3 states, it is a whole lot of river traffic to and from the whole Midwest. Sitting on our butts doing NOTHING, as the "Fiscal Conservatives" advocate, actually GROWS the deficit because of the reductions in tax income.