It’s a little over three weeks until Mardi Gras and, in the wake of the short shrift that the damage New Orleans received from Hurricane Katrina, the biggest domestic story of 2005, received in the SOTU address, quite some number of bloggers are kvetching about it. Democracy Arsenal writes:
The state of our union is shameful in New Orleans.
I got back from New Orleans this past Sunday. I was there to see relatives–but had plenty of time to drive through miles and miles of abandoned neighborhoods: boats piled on medians, houses piled on cars sitting amidst intersections, a lonely intrepid individual lovingly sweeping his driveway with a windowless white FEMA trailers on blocks behind him. Rescue team graffiti scrawled on every housefront like cliff-notes for the obituary of an entire city.
The post goes on to blame the state of the reconstruction of New Orleans on “the anti-government mindset of his conservative base”. This might be a good time to take a look at the post I wrote about successful reconstruction efforts of the past shortly after the catastrophe. Here’s how I concluded:
New Orleans will be re-built if the people of New Orleans want to re-build it. And if they do it themselves it will be a New Orleans they can be proud of and love. It will be their New Orleans.
If, on the other hand, they wait around for someone else to re-build their city for them, it won’t be the New Orleans they loved. It will belong to somebody else. And New Orleans will be dead.
Verbum sapienti sat est
Exactly right, sir. I believe that LA and New Orlean’s attempts to not even attempt to put up any reconstruction funds (I think federal regs say at least 10 percent is the minimum they expect states to contribute for disaster relief) is unacceptable. If they want to rebuild, they ought to start. They ought to dig in, increase the tax base, and do it themself while the federal funds flow in to purchase materials and bring in assistance as requested. But to expect a bail out that equals a year’s work in Iraq is just not realistic.