You can bet your asses that those levees would've been built higher

[mtnsnake]

years ago in New Orleans if....instead of so many poor black people living there in those low sections....it was rich white people. Rich white people in low-lying flood-prone areas would've had the means and the money to lobby Washington into building those walls as high as it would've taken to ford off the inevitable catastrophe that scientists have long been predicting.

The disaster in New Orleans is proof beyond proof that poor people, especially poor black people, simply have no say when it comes to their own well-being. And in this country, if you have no say, the higher-ups don't care about you. Poor people pose no threat to the rich, and since poor people can't afford to lobby Washington, the white-collar assholes in DC simply don't give a rat's ass about them.

[tjdee]

1. Rich people get everything. Not a surprise.

Of *course* rich people would have gotten better levees.

Because those rich stay at home wives/husbands/kids would have been out raising a stink and having dinners and meeting with Senators about how horrible things are and why do they have to live like this.

Disgusting, as usual, but that's what happens when money is the most important thing in a society.

[MADem]

2. If the White House was in New Orleans

Those levees would be double walled, thirty feet high, and have charming parks all round them.

But they were too clever by half, dissing the city because of its poor population. Now they fucked over their energy supplies, and I feel a nip in the air today.

And it isn't just the cost of gas, the increased cost of trucking, and a rise in the price of foodstuffs and other goods resulting.

Will it be a cold winter, I wonder??? How many people will shiver in their homes come Christmastime?

[bullimiami]

3. and on a more recent scale.

if it was a rw republican fundamentalist stronghold instead of a minority-heavy, liberal and, to their eyes, decadent, city. the levee mediation funds wouldnt have been cut over and over by bushco.
if the levees had been maintained on schedule this near miss would probably been only that instead of the disaster we now have.

[laureloak]

4. Hwy to nowhere instead of levee upgrade. Read this and weep.

New York Times
Sep 1, 6:06 PM (ET)
By RON FOURNIER

<snip>
Just last year, the Army Corps of Engineers sought $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans. The White House slashed the request to about $40 million. Congress finally approved $42.2 million, less than half of the agency's request.

Yet the lawmakers and Bush agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-laden highway bill that included more than 6,000 pet projects for lawmakers. Congress spent money on dust control for Arkansas roads, a warehouse on the Erie Canal and a $231 million bridge to a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

How could Washington spend $231 million on a bridge to nowhere - and not find $42 million for hurricane and flood projects in New Orleans? It's a matter of power and politics.
<snip>

[mtnsnake]

5. "less than half of the agency's request"

That is pathetic, giving only 40% of the necessary funds to ward off inevitable disaster. Oh, wait, it's a non-affluent area, so I guess it doesn't matter as much. How criminal.

Good find on that article, btw.

[laureloak]

6. $231 million bridge to a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

That's what really got me.

[mtnsnake]

8. I wonder if that "small, uninhabited Alaskan island"

is loaded with precious wildlife that's going to soon give way to oil rigs and pipelines.

[bleedingheart]

7. you can bet your booty if they rebuilt it they won't let those poor blacks

back into the redesigned neighborhoods...sad but I fear very true.

[mtnsnake]

10. That goes without saying. One of my biggest concerns is that,

by the time New Orleans is rebuilt, the poor black people who used to live there will have conveniently been shoved into some new "safer" locations hundreds of miles inland where they don't really want to be.

Meanwhile, the rich people will take over, the walls will be built to whatever height it takes to insure THEIR safety, and everyone will be celebrating at backyard barbecues of the new homes of oil barrens across the city.

[B Calm]

9. The means and the money were there. Bush underfunded it because

he thought it was much more important to give millionaires a much needed tax cut.