"Warren" wrote in message
...
I'll try to make this as simple as possible so you don't get confused this
time:
The hurricane was a natural disaster. The levee break was not. The levee
break was a result of deferring necessary maintenance because Federal
funds to maintain the levee were reduced to the point that the levee could
not be properly maintained.

But that is not a true statement......Are you lying or simply ignorant?

The Federal funds were cut because the Federal
government didn't have the money to pay the bills. They didn't have the
money not just because they are spending it elsewhere, but because they
cut taxes despite needing more money.
The folks who benefited most from the
ill-timed tax cuts were the very rich. (Judging from your grasp of the
situation, I'm going to guess that you either inherited your money, or
you're so far from the top that you have no perception of just how much
they benefited compared to how you didn't.)


Speaking of timing...with a rather severe recession the Gov. had basically 3
choices...do nothing, increase spending or cut taxes. I suppose any of the
three have their adherents however with tax cuts your putting money in hands
of the actual consummers and allowing the market place to decide what is
needed or important.....Since we are having a rather robust recovery and did
not sink into extended stagflation or a lengthly recession one might surmise
the tax cuts worked as intended.

Cutting the top tax rate from approx. 37% to 35% is pretty easy to
grasp......With the rather large deficit accusing the Gov. of not spending
enough is rather silly. Incidentally with a budget that is well over 2
trillion dollars the tax rate cut on those whom already pay over 80% of all
income taxes amounted to less than 100 billion. A rather small piece if you
think about it.

In 2001 FEMA identified the top three possible major disasters. They were
a terrorist attack on New York, an earthquake in San Francisco, and a
levee break after a hurricane in New Orleans. Despite that, funding for
levee maintenance was still cut below minimum levels.

Your rather confused over maintenance and capital projects......There was no
maintenance cuts but rather a future slowdown in capital improvements.... of
which "future" expenditures have no bearing on preventing past events. These
kind of construction projects also require local participation, NO has been
notably cheap or reluctant to pay a large local share.....in fact they have
paid a much smaller share of the hundreds of millions already spent than
other cities so desiring these projects.....in other words the locals
weren't all that interested in protecting their city. Nonetheless there is
no possibility that any flood control/ levee project began or finished
(these projects require decades to design and complete)) during Bushes
tenure would have made a appreciable difference to the failure of this
rather new section of the canal that failed. It appears that the actual
levees on the lake held quite well and that the pumping canal wall
collapsed.

So over four years ago, the President had information warning him that
there was an impending problem. Instead of taking the prudent course, and
increasing funding for the levees to fortify them, funding was cut to a
level that wouldn't even properly maintain what was already in place.

Actually any likely multi-billion dollar effort began then would have made
no difference here.......These flood control projects are measured by the
decade in both conception and construction......In fact the canal section
that collapsed was rather new. Building for a Cat 5 might be nice but it is
possibly not affordable...moving the city might be cheaper.....300 miles of
levees is no trivial undertaking.....one might even surmise the near billion
spent there in the last 2 decades might have afforded some protection.

So the cause of the flood was not a hurricane last week. It was a series
of decisions over the last four years to cut funding for the levees that
caused the inevitable flood. When the flood happened may not have been
predictable until 4 or 5 days before it happened, but it's inevitability
was not just predictable -- it was planned.

If one builds logic on a falsehood the general result is more falsehoods

Was it planned out of malice or ignorance? Your call. Evil or stupid. Given
the evidence that was available for *at least* four years, the fiscal
actions taken by the administration were either evil or stupid. They had
the reports and data. They can't claim ignorance. The best they can do is
claim they were too stupid to read or understand the information they had.

Since any action they took or could have taken has no bearing on this flood
outcome your conclusion is suspect.

Incidentally NO has been there for over 300 years, Hurricanes have happened
since time began........Concluding that anything in the last 4 years has
much to do with either is simply silly.

So what was the motivation to not fund the levees? Saving money. It was
one of the many spending cuts that resulted from a tax cut. A tax cut that
gave me a whopping $600, but included provisions that gave so much more
(not just in raw dollars, but proportionally) to those making seven-digit
incomes.


Nonetheless bigger, smaller or no tax cuts would have made no difference

So when you look at what the private sector is contributing in
post-disaster relief, are those people contributing as much as the common
guy? There are poor people out there emptying their savings accounts,
increasing their debt, and forgoing groceries so they can contribute. Are
any of the 20% of the richest folks in the nation making that kind of
sacrifice? Are their any that are donating all of their disposable income
to post-disaster relief? Are their any who are even giving the difference
between what they would have paid in taxes pre-cuts and what they're
paying now? Or are they just writing checks that look big to people who
have no money, but are pocket change to them?

Quite the rant.....nonsensical to the subject at hand with no way to qualify
and pointless to boot.

The break of the levees was inevitable. The President knew that. He still
put a tax cut for the rich as a higher priority than addressing the levee
problem. So was he evil or stupid in doing so?
Warren H.

There are potential safety public work projects across the land be it storm,
flood or volcano. Deciding how public funds are to be spent is fraught with
choices and tradeoffs......not every conceivable danger can be addressed. In
fact even if they are disasters will always be with us. I suppose a 100% tax
rate might pay for more and grander public works but many people might
prefer to eat.....Rod