Just compensation
 

AZ, NV and UT are (maybe even to a greater extent than CA) likely to run out of water. Do we want to encourage people to live in a place that really can't sustain large populations of humans?

Just compensation
 

I don't know, things worked out really well for the Anasazi in those regions (throw in NM for good measure).

Just compensation
 

I have heard it said
They now think the levees
Fell from bad construction
Instead of rough seas.

That said, I don't see
How Feds predict for sure
An Act of God
(Or at least Force Majeure).
I'm afraid to say, Spanks,
That is seems it is so -
You find assumed risk and bad luck,
And you throw at it dough.

Just compensation
 

Exactly. If you don't ban people from living there, there willbe political pressure to protect them and compensate them for their losses.

but I'm not saying ban people; I'm saying don't rebuild there at taxpayer expense. Some modest levees perhaps to protect reasonably protectable higher ground. But nothing more. And inform people that based on science/surveys/etc., that any place marked on this map in red is a place likely to have severe flooding every 5 years. Move in at your own risk.


As for those other places, sure. But it's impossible to make a credible political commitment not to help. Much as i hate the federal flood insurance program because it encourages settlement in flood-prone locations, its one saving grace is that at least the people have to pay a bit of the cost up front.

Just compensation
 

No, and I'd get ridof the glen canyon dam too. no more subsidized water.

Just compensation
 

I'm OK with compensating people to an extent for bad luck -- and this was partly bad luck. I don't think we should rebuild for them, though, there's the issue of putting infrastructure back in. Not sure to what extent the infrastructure is ruined as opposed to just needing to be cleaned up and put back into operation. I'm not opposed to helping people with temp housing until they get back on their feet somewhere else and/or everyone has a better idea of what's going on in NO.

Another B.S. warning?
 

My wife told me about this several years ago, in more general terms, as something "she had heard" which should answer your question.

S_A_M

Just compensation
 

The main purpose of
the New Orleans levee
system is to keep passable
the lower Mississippi,

Not to save private houses
or other properties.
The river wouldn't be navigable
without the levees.

Just compensation
 

We can rebuild them to that point, then. I should have known that. I think it's like the definition of a levee, which now that I am thinking about it is not synonymous with floodwall.

Just compensation
 

Bravo

Just compensation
 

Guys, Guys, Guys. There is a cold wind blowing through here. The whole city of New Orleans is a flood plain. If you are rich, then OK you should have seen this coming. But what about all the poor people that have lived there for generations. Where they all supposed to move out? They detrimentally relied on the levee. Screw the nice areas but should the poor have some help in rebuilding their homes?

Another B.S. warning?
 

Snopes says not so. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/madmen/lightsout.asp

what is wrong with you people that you don't check snopes? Even my ancient mother checks Snopes.

Just compensation
 

They should be given a reasonable amount of money and make decisions on their own for going forward. Which is different from having their homes rebuilt in NO.

Just compensation
 

Merci beaucoup -
Guess the effort's well spent.
(Though I think that "Brava"
Is the word that you meant.)

Just compensation
 

The rapping Libertarian.

I eagerly await your next album -- "F--k tha GOP."

S_A_M

Just compensation
 

I don't lack all pity,
Nor charity eschew,
But, alas, the poor
Will be always with you.

(I should pro'bly be careful -
This gets easy fast,
And I'm not sure how long
Y'all's patience will last.)

Just compensation
 

That's more normative that descriptive.

The only purpose
of a new orleans levee
should be to allow ships
to reach the sea.

Just compensation
 

You don't know that. Maybe they detrementally relied on a lying broker, or the long-range forecast of global warming.

They assumed the risk; it's their burden to show they didn't.

Hello from the Gov't. We're Sorry About Katrina.
 

Welcome to your new Trailer Park.

Seriously. From the LA Times:

• WASHINGTON — Two days after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced plans to issue emergency vouchers aimed at helping poor storm victims find new housing quickly by covering as much as $10,000 of their rent.
  
  But the department suddenly backed away from the idea after White House aides met with senior HUD officials. Although emergency vouchers had been successfully used after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the administration focused instead on a plan for government-built trailer parks, an approach that even many Republicans say would concentrate poverty in the very fashion the government has long sought to avoid.
  
  A similar struggle has occurred over how to provide healthcare to storm victims. White House officials are quietly working to derail a proposal by leading Republican and Democratic senators to temporarily expand Medicaid. Instead, the administration is pushing a narrower plan that would not commit the government to covering certain groups of evacuees.
  
  As President Bush tackles the monumental task of easing the social problems wrought by Katrina, he is proving deeply reluctant to use some of the big-government tools at his disposal, apparently out of fear of permanently enlarging programs that he opposes or has sought to cut.
  
  Instead of depending on long-running programs for such services as housing and healthcare, the president has generally tried to create new, one-shot efforts that the administration apparently hopes will more easily disappear after the crisis passes. That has meant relying on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has run virtually all of the recovery effort.
  
  "FEMA can help fill some immediate needs after a disaster, like giving grants to help people repair their roofs or pay for temporary housing," said John P. Sucich, a former senior FEMA official who oversaw the recovery from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. "But it is not the agency to turn to to ensure the kinds of continuing help that families need to begin putting their lives back together.
  
  "That's what the rest of government is for," Sucich said.
  
  At least in the case of housing, critics say that the president's unwillingness to rely on existing programs could raise costs. Instead of offering $10,000 vouchers, FEMA is paying an average of $16,000 for each trailer in the new parks it is contemplating. Even many Republicans wonder why the government would want to build trailer parks when many evacuees are now living in communities with plenty of vacant, privately owned apartments.
  
  "The idea that — in a community where we could place people in the private housing market to reintegrate them into society — we would put them in [trailer] ghettos with no jobs, no community, no future, strikes me as extraordinarily bad public policy, and violates every conservative principle that I'm aware of," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican.
  
  "If they do it," Gingrich said of administration officials, "they will look back on it six months from now as the greatest disaster of this administration."

Wow.

Read the rest of the article. It's amazing stuff. Miss. Governor Haley Barbour also agrees with current Senate plans to expand Medicaid, which the Administration is resisting largely because it doesn't like Medicaid in the first place and is wary of expanding it.

When you have Gingrich and Barbour slamming the Administration's plans, it means that this Rove-directed Katrina reconstruction plan has some real doozies. This will be a fun few years to watch.

Gattigap

Child Expelled Because Parents Are Gay.
 

http://www.comcast.net/news/national...23/227239.html

Guess they were surprised when the folks showed up for the conference in the principal's office.

I'm sure this is somehow Bush's fault.

S_A_M

Just compensation
 

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Cut that shit out right fucking now
Because I know where you live.

Hello from the Gov't. We're Sorry About Katrina.
 

It's much easier to put a 15-foot high barb-wire fence around a trailer park (for the safety and protection of the residents of course) than to let them spread out through the community and get up to god-knows-what-all mischief.

Delay = RINO
 

Perhaps you are misunderstanding me. All I'm accusing the White House of is mastering the release of budgetary information for maximum political spin. It's very simple: When they release estimates, they inflate the estimates. Then, when the actual numbers come out, they can say, here is the huge deficit but -- good news! -- it's not as bad as was predicted. As an example of the political arts it's very clever so long as people don't catch on, and that's not the sort of thing that newspaper reporters and TV journalists are likely to do, given the constraints under which they operate. Which the White House, being a bunch of pros, understands.

Instead of just calling this absurd, read The Economist:

• The more cynical observers suggested that the administration was simply releasing a gargantuan number for the pleasure of later telling voters that the budget deficit was closing faster than expected. In support of their argument, figures released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in March projected a deficit of only $365 billion.
  
  When the OMB revised its numbers sharply downward in July, to $333 billion, the doubting Thomases seemed to have a good case.

It's more complicated than that, for reasons explained in what I linked to.

Of course, this is only a sideline to the argument you've been having about who is responsible for which deficits.

Just compensation
 

RINO RINO RINO RINO RINO RINO RINO


Won't the market provide? Why should government?

Child Expelled Because Parents Are Gay.
 

The link doesn't link to any story about that.

ETA fuck, but then it did. maybe there's a gremlin in my computer.

Just compensation
 

2. I saw a story on CNN about how Starwood Hotels has a crisis command center going from the point two days before the hurricane even hit. They secured their hotels, their employees and since the shit hit the fan, have kept them secured and have most, if not all, back in business.

Nagin, Blanko and the NO city and State of LA governments would need 50 or 60 years to achieve the same result. Perhaps the government should turn the city over to Starwood.

Delay = RINO
 

All sorts of things affect the bond market. If some serious source really thought that the spike in rates that Spanky described was solely attributable to which party controlled Congress, I'd like to see more. If, on the other hand, Spanky was talking out of his ass, I'd expect a lot of bluster and crap.

Since all that's forthcoming is the latter, I think we can all tell which was which.

When he asked me for a source, I posted it (The Economist). Compare and contrast, y'all.

Delay = RINO
 

the babyjesuschristsuperstar moves in mysterious ways.

Just compensation
 

2. Well put.

Delay = RINO
 

Not true. Spanky referenced "common knowledge" and "generally accepted wisdom." Hard sources to beat, Ty.

Delay = RINO
 

Ooh, burn.

Delay = RINO
 

Your ideas on sources are really screwed up. You confuse opinions with primary sources and facts. You stated that the Bush administration intentionally mispredicted budget numbers. Then you asked why I did not acknowledge this fact. It is not a fact. Just because people are speculating about it does not make it a fact. I was asking for some evidence supporting this idea. That would be someone from the administration leaking or admitting that such an event occurred. Or someone witnessing such a conspiracy. Speculation that it might have happened does not mean anything. You cite an Economist article that discusses such speculation without really taking a position.

If I ask for evidence for something, people speculation about it does not qualified as evidence.

Delay = RINO
 

Ty argued earlier against the idea that FDR misled the public about his intentions on getting the US involved in WWII. He also was skeptical about the fact the public buses where flooded during the Hurricane. Was he not questioning "common knowledge at these junctures"? Why should I have looked for cites to back this stuff up?

Why should I look up cites to demonstrate that the bond markets were disappointed in the 93 deficit reduction act? I am confident it happened. Why should I care if he believes it? If I spent my time finding cites to obvious facts that would negatively effect Tys twisted perception of reality it would be a 24/7 job.

Just compensation
 

My faith in humanity is restored. There is no worse feeling than having liberals tell you that poor people need to suck it up. Where are the defenders of the poor and dispossessed? Is Ty the only compassionate Dem on this board? Are the rest of you just Dems because it is cool, but in reality are just greedy capitalists that don't care about people that are more unfortunate than you?

Delay = RINO
 

I posted factual evidence of both of the items you cite above and those facts were ignored or non-substantively discounted. In fairness, Ty acknowledged that we were right and he and his liberalista cohorts and thugs were wrong on those items when he issued his blanket acceptance of responsibility and apology.


Word. Ty has a cadre of blogsters working 24/7 to churn out illusory and fallacious "source material" for his insights. Unfair advantage.

Just compensation
 

Excatly. This is the part that burns me and any rightminded American. Ted Kennedy and his criminal enterprise (aka the Kennedy family) have a net worth of in excess of $600M. Many of this ilk claim to be civic minded social activists concerned about the living standards of the least amongst us, and in furtherance of the same "social justice and equity" they insinuate themselves in positions of power on the public dole, much like insidious viral agents in the body, eg HIV, and seek to take the money of hardworking middle and upper middle class Americans to further their utopian ideal of marxist redistribution of wealth. Yet, in their spare time, they loll on their yachts and in their mansions in the most exclusive of American communities drinking French champagne and eating Soviet caviar, while the rest of us continue to toil and strive to save a few dollars so our children can have a little bit more than we, perhaps Cold Duck and Sushi take-out.

If these Kennedys were so interested in social justice, why not liquidate their assets, give each family member $1M dollars, which is more than enough to create a solid economic foundation to build a life upon and then give the remaining several hundred million to the poor?

[2nd Amendment alert!] Answer, becuase they are greedy Marxist thugs looking to rape and pillage the freedom fighting patriots of this Land.[/2nd Amendment alert!]

Just compensation
 

If I was poor I wouldn't take Kennedy money. Should we ask the poor to drop their integrity and morals? the Kennedy money was stolen over the blood of hundreds. Joe, Sr. was more a criminal than any of his kids.

I think if teddy wanted to find who his dad killed and give them retribution- god bless, but you can't ask a clean person whose only crime is poverty to touch that filth money, can you?

If I was poor I would take their money. Hell I would take their money now.

I think Kennedy really cares. He may be a pig, but he is a pig that does care about the less fortunate. Is there really any evidence to show he is corrupt. I don't think he has ever gained financially from his public service.

Am I wrong?

Delay = RINO
 

What use is there in posting evidence if you are going to misread it in this fashion?

And I thought you might bother to read The Economist.

Has he used his office to gain monetarially. i would hope not, he's already wealthy beyond reason. Did he use his office to get out of a murder/negligient homicide charge? you decide.

My point was the family money came from crime.