POLITICS - New Orleans, Katrina, and Rebuilding

From what I read and numerous interviews of scientist and historians on this subject, I have come to the following conclusions.

1. Historically; New Orleans being built where it is was a long-term mistake. Come on, build a major city which is below the level of the Mississippi?! But how were the city founders to know that it would grow into the major city it is today. In the end, this is "split milk" but we need to remember that is was a mistake.

2. More importantly, the development of New Orleans has ignored Nature, to its peril. Development built over Nature's natural controls for flooding, the surrounding swamps or wetlands. These are the buffers that could mitigate the damage caused by hurricanes. They slow down the flood waves, decreasing the damage they cause.

3. The levies are just not designed for this location, especially for hurricanes like Katrina. If we were serious about protecting New Orleans we should be looking at Holland's dikes, at how they're build.

4. Today, New Orleans is important to the area's, and the USA's, economy.

Having said that, what to do about rebuilding New Orleans?

We should recover some of the natural protections, the swamps and wetlands surrounding New Orleans.

Also, we should recover the swamps that separated areas of New Orleans in the past. This has been suggested (not rebuilding specific neighborhoods) but has been put down as racism. Why, most of these areas are now poor neighborhoods, populated majority black. But we need to remember that Nature knows nothing about racism and doesn't care. Why did these areas end up populated by the poor? Would you build your multi-million dollar home in areas that were swamps and are still below river level? Rhetorical question, so such property gets regulated to the poor.

WHAT BEING DONE WRONG NOW:

In a nut shell, the White House's plans for rebuilding New Orleans.

Are we bringing back displaced citizens of New Orleans and giving them much needed jobs rebuilding their own city? Not much that I can see, but we are bring in workers from across the broader to do this work. No Bush "Executive Order" requiring hiring of New Orleans citizens first to help rebuild.

Did Bush want to pay decent wages to workers to do this job, especially those who were residents of New Orleans? No. He tried, and (at last word I heard) failed in trying to use "Executive Order" to bypass the law requiring wages at least equal to the wages before Katrina.

Has anyone pushed for a serious scientific study on how to rebuild New Orleans so this does not happen again? Yes; but lets see if, and how, the New Orleans commission's recommendations are implemented.

Then there's who got the first contracts. It's no surprise the Halliburton was at the very top of the list. Oh, of course it just cannot be that a former officer sits in the VP's chair, right? If you believe that one, I got a bridge..... Luckily that seems to have falling through and is being investigated.

Having said this, you can come to your own conclusions on how to rebuild New Orleans, and have residents gotten a fare shake.