Viver perigosamente...é para quem pode

Uma das facetas do problema parece também passar pela forma como os diques foram construidos e mantidos (New Deal, esse grande passo para a invasão do socialismo - e a subversão do modelo Federal- na América). O natural seria os diques serem privados ou pagos pelo Municipio (a partir de um orçamento financiado por impostos municipais). Claro que sendo um cidade empobrecida, os diques serem um programa federal, dirão, faz sentido. Mas não fez.

Se a própria existência de uma cidade (cujos habitantes recorrem desproporcionadamente a Estado social) fosse posta em causa pela realidade económica dos seus habitantes não poderem sustentar os diques e a sua localização abaixo do nivel do mar numa zona de furacões...ela - a cidade - nem sequer existiria de todo, pelo menos com a acutal dimensão.

É assim, a falta de realismo económico (ou liberdade económica), que em última análise contribuiu também para que um local de pobreza (relativa) tenha sido tão atingido. Os que estavam, era porque queriam estar... e porque podiam estar...

"Until Katrina! Mother Nature has a unique, and sometimes deadly, way of reminding us of the penalty for defying her will. New Orleans, geographically, can best be described as an historical mistake. It would be unthinkable to construct a city in such a location now. Even if private developers wanted to do it, the political environmental lobby existing in America today would never tolerate such a violation or exploitation of the Mississippi River’s wetlands. For decades governments have restricted or outright forbidden any sort of habitable development of America’s wetlands. America’s wetlands have become "sacred ground" to be preserved in perpetuity by the force of government edicts.

So what’s going on in the aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans? Governments are about to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to reconstruct a city in a geographical depression below sea level next to an ocean subject to hurricanes. To describe the land area of New Orleans as merely wetlands is the ultimate understatement. Much of the city would be part of the ocean but for the levees! In fact, the whole of Louisiana from the existing site of New Orleans south is slowly returning to the sea. Virtually everyone knows the entire area is a high-risk area to both hurricanes and continual flooding from the Mississippi River. If nothing habitable existed there today, nothing ever would under existing governmental edicts protecting wetlands. So, why is government about to expend tens of billions of dollars to do something which they would forbid any private developers to even consider doing now?

Nobody is asking that question, let alone answering it. Even to ask the question subjects one to criticism for not being compassionate toward the refugees evacuated from the cesspool which once was New Orleans. Guilt is imposed upon anyone who would selfishly suggest it’s an insane idea to rebuild another city in an ocean. And yet it is! Why build a government-funded city where it can only survive until another failed levee again returns it to the sea? Why build a government-funded city below sea level when dry land exists all over America not exposed to flooding or hurricanes? And finally, why should Americans be taxed billions of dollars to build an "American Venice" facing annual hurricane risks?

Perhaps the most serious question which must be asked is why anyone would choose to live below sea level next to a high hurricane-risk ocean?" Why? by Robert Anderson