WASHINGTON (AP) -- It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.Have you EVER in your LIFE heard a more assinine statement from an elected official?
"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois.
Ever?
If that was Chicago or Peoria, Hastert would be first in line at the federal trough.
And how much have we spent so far rebuilding Baghdad?
He should be removed from office forthwith.
Seriously
And so it goes
10 comments:
Hastert is a moron.
Well hold on a second here...I partially agree that we shouldn't be investing billions into rebuilding areas that can be obliterated by floods and hurricanes unless they are willing to do it correctly this time. Perhaps they could rebuild the higher than sea level portions and make it a more concentrated city. I've read that a significant portion of the population will start their lives elsewhere and never return after this.
BTW: The response level to this has been abysmal.
Sorry, wrong. The entire city is located inside a bowl that's below sea level. The city and state completely neglected the levee and other structures designed to keep the waters out. This could have happened had any hurricane hit, let alone Katrina. The city itself didn't prepare for disaster. It makes no sense for ME to pay to rebuild a city what will be destroyed a sufficiently powerful hurricane hits it.
I agree, however, that the fed response so far has been abysmal.
Should we abandon the entire Mississippi River Valley from Minnesota to the Gulf because it can be obliterated by floods? Should we abandon all of the Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas coasts because they are prone to hurricanes? Sure, New Orleans sits on low ground. It's sat on low grounds for something like 250 years. Is this an excuse to abandon a valuable part of our country and our history? Isn't this a bit more human engineering than we should be advocating?
We got Haliburton into Iraq faster than we've got federal aid to our own citizens.
No no no....New Orleans proper by the 1770 city limits was on ground equal to or slightly higher than sea level. I was just there a month ago for a whole week and took a 4 hour Grey Line bus tour of the entire city. The French Quarter (called the buccaret) and the St. Louis Catherdral area are the highest points of the city at 8 feet above Sea level. So there are some portions that are somewhat safer. The uptown area (St. Charles Street with all the southern mansions) is also okay and above the water line.
Um, Matt, 70% of the city is below sea level, and since the water in the city has equalled out with the level in Lake Ponchetrain, at three feet above, 90% of the city is inundated. As Bill said, New Orleans is a big bowl and so that water is not going anywhere.
Yes, New Orleans had warning - FEMA had already identified a Hurricane hitting the city as one of the 3 largest potential disasters the nation could face, and that was after years of alarm-sounding by academics. The levee system they had could withstand a Category 2, maybe 3, hurricane and that's about it. The Federal grant money for starting on the levee work was finally apportioned this summer, but was then re-apportioned to Iraq. Not that the project would've gotten anything done for a couple years, but it's important that the GOP powers-that-be knew about it and decided that Iraq was more important.
Myself, I'm for cleaning up and abandoning the current location (put a few memorials there and that's about it) and relocating the city to a more stable and better defensible position farther up the Mississippi, preferably above the diffluence with the Atchafalaya river. We did it after the 1993 flood to many towns in the Upper Mississippi Valley, why not do it to New Orleans?
Hastert's comment was a typical douchebag statement designed as a diversionary tactic typical of the current administration.
President (sic) Bush and his cronies - no matter how you spin it - have failed the American people in the most dispicable and dishonorable ways possible.
The last few days have been a horrific exclamation point on the miserable sentence we have endured.
I hope the house cleaning begins with the next round of elections and continues until we find enough public servants willing and able to turn this thing around and restore pride to this country.
This is lifted from Scribal Terror because I can't say it any better:
George Friedman at Stratfor has written a comprehensive, well-considered, and well-supported essay on the geopolitical importance of New Orleans -- in particular, its port facilities:
A simple way to think about the New Orleans port complex is that it is where the bulk commodities of agriculture go out to the world and the bulk commodities of industrialism come in. The commodity chain of the global food industry starts here, as does that of American industrialism. If these facilities are gone, more than the price of goods shifts: The very physical structure of the global economy would have to be reshaped. Consider the impact to the U.S. auto industry if steel doesn't come up the river, or the effect on global food supplies if U.S. corn and soybeans don't get to the markets.
His prediction?
New Orleans is not optional for the United States' commercial infrastructure. It is a terrible place for a city to be located, but exactly the place where a city must exist. With that as a given, a city will return there because the alternatives are too devastating.
When you're working from home in Jackson, WY, things always look a little different. The Unholy Trinity & their minions were no where to be found when their (version of) leadership skills were required. It's not surprising that Hastert would say something like this. Maybe if he became more of an environmentalist, he'd understand how future storm damage can be minimized in coastal areas.
Voters in the 14th CD have a choice: Ruben Zamora. Hastert doesn't have to get re-elected. About the only thing he's good for is turning IL into a colony of TX.
There was town on the Mississippi near Quincy that rebuilt on the hill after it flooded in the 1990's.
Sounds like something worth looking at...unless you want to do this re-building every 40 years or so.
Hurrican Betsy was in 1965. Take a look at what it did to New Orleans and LO.
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