Republicat Lessons We Will Learn from New Orleans

Originally Posted by NICOTINEGUN

I just started reading Victor E. Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning about the Nazi prison camps. It reminded me of the people in New Orleans minus the SS and the Capos. Frankl does say doctors are wrong about how long you can survive without food, though. Lucky for them, I guess.

Well, I imagine the snipers could stand in for the Capos, anyhow.

This entire tragedy just is unbelievable! Come on folks, this used to be OUR country! What in the world has happened to it? What is the greater threat to our country - imaginary WMD's or a crumbling infrastructure that left a very beautiful, MAJOR American City open to this kind of destruction? I've been following the arguments about "Well, they shudda built their houses somewhere else" or they "shudda left," but when our own fearless leader goes on the news saying, "We never expected the levee's to fail," what did you expect?

Yeah, you folks in the Midwest better move away from the giganto fault line that might give way to the world's greatest earthquake any time now; the folks in the Rocky Mountain West should stop living in towns adjacent to National Forests just dying to burn down, folks who live in Arizona will get what they deserve when the Good Lord visits them with the next major drought; everybody outta the Gulf Coast states, and CALIFORNIA? HAH!

So, what people? Just what? We are sending brave men and women – the members of our military - to fight and die in a very expensive foreign war on terror, but what about the terror here at home? Go turn on your TV set and watch it. 9/11 pales in comparison.

You know what the current damage estimates are? $100 billion And that's aside from the loss of human lives and the price of the human suffering we sit watching in front of our TV sets this Labor Day Weekend. "Oh, honey, switch the channel to "The Simpson's." I'm bored with that New Orleans stuff!"

I am SO SICK of hearing people say that "throwing money" at a problem is not the solution.

This newspaper article came out in June of this year. I quoted part of it before, and here's another quote from that same article:

The Corps' budget could still be beefed up, as it is every year, through congressional additions. Last year, Congress added $20 million to the overall budget of the New Orleans district but a similar increase this year would still leave a $50 million shortfall.

One of the hardest-hit areas of the New Orleans district's budget is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes. SELA's budget is being drained from $36.5 million awarded in 2005 to $10.4 million suggested for 2006 by the House of Representatives and the president.

The project manager said there would be no contracts awarded with this $10.4 million, Demma said.

The construction portion of the Corps' budget would suffer if Congress doesn't add money. In 2005, the district received $94.3 million in federal dollars dedicated to construction. In 2006, the proposal is for $56 million.

It would be critical to this city if we had a $50 million construction budget compared with the past years, Demma said. It would be horrible for the city, it would be horrible for contractors and for flood protection if this were the final number compared to recent years and what the city needs.
Construction generally has been on the decline for several years and focus has been on other projects in the Corps.

The district has identified $35 million in projects to build and improve levees, floodwalls and pumping stations in St. Bernard, Orleans, Jefferson and St. Charles parishes. Those projects are included in a Corps line item called Lake Pontchartrain, where funding is scheduled to be cut from $5.7 million this year to $2.9 million in 2006. Naomi said it's enough to pay salaries but little else.

Since when have Americans become so mean spirited toward their own? George W. Bush and the Republican Party didn't even save the tax payers that $50 million dollars mentioned at the start of the quote. We paid that $50 million to Halliburten, instead, and have reaped a reward of 100 BILLION in destruction and God knows how many lost human lives because we couldn't "throw money" at fixing the levee's here at home.

This is MY country, damn it! Those are MY fellow Americans suffering and dying on the the TV screen because Junior didn't want to throw money at anything but his own best interests.