In the days before Katrina hit and then for about four years I kept almost a daily blog on Hurricane Katrina. More than 1,000 posts. It was a labor of love. I am going through and mining all the posts I made where Republicans (but also some liberals) said why rebuild a city that is below sea level? FEMA sucks, we shouldn't fund it. I could talk for hours about the inability of us to fund basic levees, which I like to call "earthen mounds." Or that we are losing something about the size of a football field a day in wetlands, that used to serve as a buffer to storms. Or that you can see from space the chemicals creating "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico.
If you think I am making up that last statement, here is the NASA image.
But I want to focus more on all the "political elite" and "thinkers" (even here if we don't have short term memories) that said why rebuilt the city. Will those same people in say DC, NYC, NJ that love their beach front homes come out and say we shouldn't help them rebuild?
I used to live in DC. At the time it seemed like the center of the Universe. But then I moved far away and I quickly could see why folks didn't like government, or should I just say the "elites" so much.
The the last few years within 200 miles of my house these things have happened and the coverage a fraction of this storm:
4.0 earth quake. 5.2 in 2008.
17 days of 110+ temps this year and a historic drought:
Just so you know "feed" corn is closer to 8-10 feet high. This ain't how corn is supposed to look.
A flood that put large areas here underwater, include a major city 8-12 feet underwater. Here is Cedar Rapids:
A tornado that almost wiped a mid-sized town (Joplin, MO) off the face of the map:
I don't mean to belittle the crisis of this storm, but I will come back to my first point. Will these same people that, like Paul Ryan did, want deficit cuts for aid to my area, want the same for the rich folks on the East Coast? That New Orleans should not be rebuilt cause it is below sea level, give up their vacation homes on a beach?
I don't REMOTELY want to seem heartless here.
But I want to say this early, early in the game. I know without a doubt the response we hear in the editorial pages of the WSJ and on Fox Noise will be 110% different then it was for things that happened by me when we really, really needed help.
And finally I want to point this out, I realize I am preach to the choir. We're all liberals and like with health care, we want everybody to have help and support.
You hear the phrase "fly-over" country. Note what I've said and realize why that phrase makes us want to punch you in the face. Like we are second class citizens.