Will the crisis in NO have the effect of improving our infrastructure?

[Poiuyt]

Engineers have been saying for years that the levees needed upgrading, but the politicians ignored them. Will this crisis give the politicians the impetus to get off their collective asses and do something that is good for the country?

The infrastructure around the country has been showing its age for some time. Remember the Northeast blackout a couple of years ago? What happened to all the talk of fixing the power grid? I think this is a good opportunity to evaluate the bridges, highways, power and energy systems, and yes, dams and levees, and make sure they are state of the art for the 21st century.

Or do we only care about rebuilding Iraq?

[Birthmark]

1. Between Katrina...

...and the impending economic collapse, we WILL improve our infrastructure. We will also finally stop worshipping the dollar, since they'll be pretty scarce and maybe worthless to boot. There will now be a fifty-year of liberalism.

[Harry S Truman]

2. I'm sorry ...

but Amerika is far too stupid to understand infrastructure.

[getmeouttahere]

3. I'm closer to "Amerika is too stupid"

than fifty years of liberalism...We WILL need an FDR-style rescue, but will enough Amerikans vote for it? Or fight for it?

[akarnitz]

4. It had better!

I've been posting about this on some other threads(maybe I should start one myself) so I hope I'm not boring anyone.

The Port of New Orleans is the key to grain transport from the nations bread basket. Say a farmer near fargo harvests 1000 bushels of wheat. He trucks it from Fargo to Minneapolis where the wheat is loaded onto a barge(with a lot of other wheat) and shipped to the Port of New Orleans. The truck route on the first leg(Fargo to Minneapolis)costs just as much as the-MUCH LONGER-barge route.

From New Orleans the grain is shipped to the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards(or overseas)to be distibuted(I believe the Midwest is serviced by truck/train). This is cheaper than overland delivery.

If overland routes are to be utilized, I have these questions:
1)Are there enough trucks or rolling stock(grain cars) to handle the demand?
2)Are there enough miles of road or rail to handle the demand?

Hell, I'm just talking about outgoing traffic here! One import I can point at is bananas. They are a time sensitive commodity. They're shipped from Central/South America to New Orleans and off-loaded onto rail cars. Port of New Orleans is the only port in the US serviced by as many as six class one railroads. Sure, you can ship to Houston or Tampa, but how long will it take to move those bananas north and west?

Maybe I'm wrong, but we could be getting some ugly inflation rates very soon.