An Open Letter to New Orleans Residents

[Fyacin]

Originally Posted by manasecret

The fact is New Orleans is able to be protected. And the cost of building a system of protection for New Orleans is a literal drop in the bucket, about $10 billion.

Am I the only one that thought this sounded weird? How is ten billion a drop in the bucket? Why does the federal government have to pay for levees in New Orleans? If you care so much about the people in New orleans, do something about it yourself, start a charity, or go help with relief or somethng, don't stand there and go "Awe shucks, the government should really go throw some money at New Orleans" Why should my tax dollars go to something like that?New Orleans should raise it's own money for the levees, and then build them, not stick out their hand and expect the government to take care of them because they decided to live there. If it's such an important port, then sure the buisnesses of that area can afford to protect their investment? This is the attitude of a socialist mindset, that it should be the governments concern to take care of people. Let the New Orleans community figure it out themselves. Now, during the fact, yes the government should help, but after the hurricanes over, it is not the government's responsibilty to rebuild for people. Sure it's a shame and all, but do you see us in the midwest crying for credit cards and trailers and billions of dollars in new housing whenever a tornado comes through?

[manasecret]

Originally Posted by Fyacin

Am I the only one that thought this sounded weird? How is ten billion a drop in the bucket? Why does the federal government have to pay for levees in New Orleans? If you care so much about the people in New orleans, do something about it yourself, start a charity, or go help with relief or somethng, don't stand there and go "Awe shucks, the government should really go throw some money at New Orleans" Why should my tax dollars go to something like that?New Orleans should raise it's own money for the levees, and then build them, not stick out their hand and expect the government to take care of them because they decided to live there. If it's such an important port, then sure the buisnesses of that area can afford to protect their investment? This is the attitude of a socialist mindset, that it should be the governments concern to take care of people. Let the New Orleans community figure it out themselves. Now, during the fact, yes the government should help, but after the hurricanes over, it is not the government's responsibilty to rebuild for people. Sure it's a shame and all, but do you see us in the midwest crying for credit cards and trailers and billions of dollars in new housing whenever a tornado comes through?

Read up on your history of what happened before you respond again. It was a failure of federal system of levees. Yes, responsibility should and IS taken by the local government, businesses, and people. To say otherwise is naive and shows your lack of any idea of what is going on in New Orleans today. But when a federal system FAILS, I also expect the federal government to take responsibility. IF the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had spent the original around $5 billion correctly, they would not have had to rebuild it, and the federal government wouldn't have had to spend many more billions of dollars to make up for the failure and all its effects.

And yes, I think $10 billion is a drop in the bucket when we spend $3 trillion on a war overseas and pour billions of dollars into Iraq to rebuild that country.

I'll have to respond to the rest later, because this is really taking up all my work time.

[Fyacin]

If the federal government failed the first time, why would you ask them to do it again?

I don't get why you keep bringing up the war.