One season - It could be us

[rapunzel]

>3. Lots of new houses (but we want them to look old like the ones we lost)
>4. We need schools and hospitals rebuilt

"for pete's sake, build above the lake" - there are already many established new businessess starting there who are now safe - the 'new bourbon street' area is looking more promising every day - and the decor is superb old quarter - it is a fresh new start (with an old design) instead of wringing out old plaster

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/11/18/60minutes/main1056304.shtml

1 -- There are already things above the lake. They are called Mandeville, Covington, Madisonville, Slidell. People own homes and businesses there. I think zoning laws and infrastructure issues prevent us from just building in their front yards.

2 -- Rebuild with what? Insurance companies are telling me and everyone I know that they are not responsible for our losses from water. Flood insurance? I think I will get $28,000 at some point. FEMA? I detailed that nightmare earlier. Perhaps apply for a loan? Oh, but I have no job. And none of the hospitals are hiring -- they're not reopening. And then there is the mortgage on the rubble that I still have to pay, how could I take on another? A year and a half ago I put my life's savings and proceeds from the sale of my previous house down on this house, and all that is gone, too.

3 -- Where shall I live while I rebuild north of the lake? There aren't a lot of builders looking for projects to start on right away and savings only go so far. Every financial planner tells you to have 3 months of salary in savings for emergency. I, unlike most Americans, did that. That's why I said I was lucky. Unfortunately, I wasn't prepared for an emergency that lasted for more than a year.

Listen, I have no deep and undying attachment to New Orleans. I moved there for a job two years ago. It was an interesting and culturally rich city. I think it would be a great loss to this country to not rebuild it. However, it was President Bush who stood in Jackson Square with some dramatic backlighting and said there could not be an America without New Orleans, and pledged to rebuild it higher and better. If instead we need to be moved and relocated en masse, beautiful. Help us do it. Don't leave us twisting in the wind, with no levees and no aid. Protect our credit, not the banks, so we can restart somewhere else. Make insurance companies pay our claims...sure, the houses were only insured for the value of the home not the lot (which is now worthless), but it would make moving on possible for many.

I really don't mean to get on a soap box. I just wish people would not assume everything is so simple, it's not. And instead of justifying doing nothing (or supporting a government that does nothing), I wish people would just realize there but for the grace of God go I.

I just wish we were a swing state...or had elected Neil governor. Or someone besides that Edith Bunker impersonator.

 

[WaltonUndercurrent]

Unfortunately, New Orleans imay be paying the price for its colorful and quirky past. I've found that everyone has an opinion about it - you either love it or hate it and your feelings about the hurricane and what should be done will probably reflect how you felt about the city in the past.

911 effected a lot of people and several square blocks of New York City, but the sympathy and support that the world felt for the city after it happened simply isn't there for New Orleans. After 911, we were all New Yorkers. After Huricane Katrina, it doesn't appear that many feel like New Orleanians. The hurricane has dislocated hundreds of thousands and been responsible for almost as many deaths as 911.

It may be that our flag wasn't attacked by the storm or that the legacy of the Longs, Mardi Gras and public corruption have hardened peoples hearts. It may also be that the country's political environment is so emotionally divided that those who love the President need to blame the Democrats in New Orleans for their own hard luck.

People don't deserve to be abandoned just because they took a job in New Orleans or were born there or simply liked it there - no more than those who took jobs in the nation's tallest building should have been abandoned. It may have been safer to work in a lowrise in Gary, Indiana, but it still isn't their fault.

You also can't compare it to those who live on the Gulf. Many gulf front residents have primary homes in other locations and the income or holdings to spend millions on a second home with fantastic views. Most of the people of New Orleans displaced from the storm weren't living in million dollar homes, I assure you.

If it goes to need and not waste, I do think that it's a national shame that the Gulf states don't get matched minute for minute in attention and penny for penny in dollars with that spent on other countries, including Iraq.

If rebuilding an American city - a city older than America itself actually - isn't a national priority, helping those whose city we refuse to rebuild, find new lives and places of business should be.

It's not. And I think it's shameful.

 

[Travel2Much]

Here's the other side to the some say biased 60 Minutes story hyperlinked above:

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1132643996247910.xml

 

[Mermaid]

I actually sort of do. I think the NYT's editorial is dead-on right that America is responsible in ways for what has happened and will happen, and needs to deal with it responsibly. I know from personal experience that it is not being dealt with responsibly by the federal government (or the state or local, but that is not the issue here). Far too often there is a tenor of "that's their (new orleans') problem and fault". So, turn about would be fair play in a grotesque application of the golden rule.

When the Panhandle has been hit, New Orleaneans have never "tsk, tsk'ed" those who live here (including myself). I am shocked by how much there is going the other way from people on this Board. No one has ever suggested that Pensacola, Tampa, or Miami be abandoned, but oh the choruses regarding New Orleans.

I am sorry you feel that way. I have relatives in New Orleans whose lives have been dramatically atltered by Katrina--loss of home, loss of business, yes! it's not other, anonymous people but my family I'm talking about--and I assure you that not a one of them is wishing their misfortunes on anyone. They're too busy trying to rebuild their lives and get on with it to waste their energy on anger. It would eat them up if they felt the way you do, and there's simply too much work to be done. They already know that life is unfair.

 

[Travel2Much]

Nothing is eating me up, and I am intimately involved in the recovery effort at the basic level which works out whatever excess energy I have. I am actually probably marginally better off post-levee breach than I was prior. In any event, it is not an abstraction for me, either. The position of some on this Board appears to be that they have no responsibility for or to the city or its residents (or, indeed, that the residents are irresponsible). Well, then, let that be the rule, then. When Walton gets whacked (hopefully after the federally-funded beach restoration project is completed), I will remind people of that rule. I won't chortle it though.

 

[Beach Runner]

I don't think I can respond to this thread until I start breathing again. :shock:

 

[southof30A]

Quite easy to say if you are not being foreclosed upon or evicted, liable for the deficiency, have lost your life savings and are living out in your car. (And, those are the lucky ones).

Maybe you should go dissect a fish or take a water sample or whatever it is you do and are presumably competent at. Like I said, from what you say you appear to have no clue about what is going on in New Orleans.

Also like I said, perhaps the Army Corps of Engineers could build levees that meet accepted engineering standards, like they were required to do according to the legislation that authorized the levees in the first place that induced much of the building you are deriding.

I will happily chortle the next time Walton County gets whacked. See ya then.

I was following your logic and somewhat supporting your position until you made the idiotic crack "I will happily chortle the next time Walton County gets whacked. See ya then." Now I just feel sorry for you for being such an ignorant slimeball.

 

[Travel2Much]

Fine. feel that way. Truth hurts.

 

[southof30A]

Fine. feel that way. Truth hurts.

Yes, in your case, I guess the truth does hurt.

As soon as possible after the storm, I opened my home in SoWal (at no charge) to hurricane evacuees. Through our church, we organized and executed relief efforts from Denver, CO. I supported these efforts because people needed help and I knew it could have just as easily been us in SoWal. We all gotta work together here on the big ball.

Why would you wish what happened to NOLA on anyone else?

 

[Travel2Much]

Actually, I do not wish what has happened to NOLA on anyone. I have not said that. Mermaid has accused me of that, but I have not said that. So please do not accuse me of that.

However, I have only wished to suggest the point that Walton County is, when it is all said and done and everything is stripped bare, in the same boat as NOLA. People want to keep on making themselves not as naked as they are. (I will just give you a list: We are rich. They are poor. They are corrupt. We are insured. They are welfare cases. We have high elevation. Oh, just go on and on).

What started this was the incessant use of the term "idiots" over and over again. Well, we can rationalize that and say it was not intended as it seemed or whatever. I am someone who for the last 15 years has stated that NOLA are not quite up to intellectual snuff. But, I know what is going on in the city right now and what is being said on this to such effect is not right.

I have only suggested a (in my view) ruthless application of the Golden Rule. Why be angry about that?