Monday, December 26, 2005
Who should be responsible for rebuilding New Orleans??
Texas City resident Carl Boudin wrote the following letter to the editor in the Galveston Daily News:
Behold The Silver Lining
If anything good has come out of Hurricane Katrina, it’s that I now know I don't have to worry about anything.Here I always thought that if my house was flooded or damaged that I was just on my own, but now I know that the city, the state and the federal government are responsible for me.They will take me away from the floods, give me money, give me a place to stay and even rebuild my house for me.And people complain about the good old U.S.A. What a wonderful place to live. I agree with many people on the right and left who said that the hurricane was a natural disaster and the flawed response was a man-made disaster.
I think there is enough blame to go around starting with Mayor Ray “I can’t stop the buses from flooding” Nagin and Governor Mary “It’s not my fault” Blanco. FEMA missed the boat and the Director was rightfully fired.
Even President Bush slipped into the trap of thinking that you can spend first and ask questions later by authorizing FEMA to give out $2,000 debit cards to evacuees with little or no financial accountability.
But all of that misses two key points:
Behold The Silver Lining
If anything good has come out of Hurricane Katrina, it’s that I now know I don't have to worry about anything.Here I always thought that if my house was flooded or damaged that I was just on my own, but now I know that the city, the state and the federal government are responsible for me.They will take me away from the floods, give me money, give me a place to stay and even rebuild my house for me.And people complain about the good old U.S.A. What a wonderful place to live. I agree with many people on the right and left who said that the hurricane was a natural disaster and the flawed response was a man-made disaster.
I think there is enough blame to go around starting with Mayor Ray “I can’t stop the buses from flooding” Nagin and Governor Mary “It’s not my fault” Blanco. FEMA missed the boat and the Director was rightfully fired.
Even President Bush slipped into the trap of thinking that you can spend first and ask questions later by authorizing FEMA to give out $2,000 debit cards to evacuees with little or no financial accountability.
But all of that misses two key points:
1. - If you build a house in a flood zone and don’t buy flood insurance, why should I as a taxpayer rebuild your house? What responsibility do you have to insure your own home? And why should I assume the risk of you not insuring your home??
2. - After what has happened, why are we using my tax money to rebuild your house in the same flood zone with levees that won’t protect you from the same risk?
Somebody once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results. Maybe it’s really a definition of Louisiana liberalism run amuck. Either way, it’s also bad public policy.
