Text 15151, 50 rader
Skriven 2005-09-09 13:54:15 av John Hull (1:123/789.0)
  Kommentar till text 15148 av VERN HUMPHREY (1:123/140)
Ärende: David Brooks comment
============================
VERN HUMPHREY -> ALAN HESS wrote:
 VH>>> If Guliani had been mayor of New Orleans, New Orleans would not
 VH>>> be under water right now.

 AH>> Really?  How would he have built the levees higher without sufficient
 VH> fundin
 AH>> to do it?

 VH> First of all, the money wouldn't have been siphoned off to build a
 VH> casino, or buy an airplane.  And as a result, the city would not have
 VH> lost matching federal funds. :-)

 VH> Second, the way to save the city was to repair breaches.  Like the
 VH> school busses that were left idle until flooded, there were masses of
 VH> construction equipment also left idle, and eventually flooded out.

 VH> Had the Mayor marshalled all the busses, the whole city could have been
 VH> evacuated.  Had he marshalled the construction equipment and spotted it
 VH> around the city, the levees could have been shored up and the city
 VH> saved.

 AH>> How would he have restored the wetlands that used to offer moree
 AH>> protection to the city from hurricanes, but have decreased greatly
 VH> since the
 AH>> Mississipi was channeled and now sends its silt into the middle of
 VH> the Gulf,
 AH>> instead of dropping it at the delta, as it should?

 VH> this is called "The Fallacy of False Dilimma."  The problem facing Nagin
 VH> was to save the city from THIS hurricane.  That could have been done --
 VH> wetlands or no.  There were enough resources in the City of New Orleans
 VH> to evacuate two cities that size, and to repair the levees as fast as
 VH> they failed.


 AH>> The feds (the current administration and prior administrations)
 AH>> have not mad protecting New Orleans from a greater than Category 3
 AH>> storm the priority it should have been.  The state and city
 AH>> dropped some balls, too, as we know. This was a fuckup all around.

 VH> Given the propensity of Lousiana pols to steal the money, we could have
 VH> poured in billions and seen no improvement.


Even if the levees and dikes broke in spite of using the construction
equipment, at least when things got flooded out it wouldn't have been from
stupidity, neglect, and incompetence.  Same for the buses.

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