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Politics : A Neutral Corner -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Constant Reader who wrote (229)	9/18/2005 5:18:23 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2253

I hope the objective is to find people places to live ASAP, help them locate jobs ASAP, get their children back into schools ASAP, help mitigate the additional costs incurred by impacted localities and states because of those efforts Me, too. The fastest (ASAP) way to do that is to place them in available schools, homes, and jobs. Which is what is being done in places like Houston and Phoenix. If you wait for buildings to be built in NO, kids will lose a year of school. At the same time, you sometimes seem to be arguing that we ought to just abandon the area because its too dangerous. I don't advocate abandoning it. I oppose subsidizing economic decisions in a way that discourages people from moving on. I think the French Quarter, which is what I think of when I think of New Orleans, will toddle along just fine. And the convention centers will do great. They'd do even better if the rest of the city, the part that's under water, were turned into a park or a lake. You could add a Disneyland and it would be a great destination city. Spend the money on shoring up the port facilities, from which the country benefits, so they will not be so vulnerable, not on building houses below sea level, which the country is better off without. As for the rest of the Gulf coast, remember that I'm a survivor of Camille. I've seen the Biloxi coast flattened twice. The coastal area below the storm surge level would make a great national seashore and recreation area. You could put up some casinos along the edge and the area would thrive. The initial response was directed at your objection to altering tax treatment of new construction in the area. People beyond the high water level will be able to rebuild with insurance money because their homes were damaged by wind. People whose homes got washed away and the ones we're paying to go back. Makes no sense to me to do it at all, but even less sense to make it a budget priority in light of everything else we're doing. As for the question I was posing, I'm asking what the objective is in doing that? Is it some knee-jerk notion that anything that was destroyed has to be restored? Is it to make people whole? Is it to increase the gross national product? What? If the objective is what you laid out, then go back to paragraph one. If encouraging building with fifty or one hundred percent tax breaks really accomplishes your objective, I can't see how.

To: Constant Reader who wrote (229)	9/19/2005 12:57:48 AM
From: Geoff Altman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2253

Reader, that's a great idea to preserve downtown New Orleans as a tourist area and move the rest up river. I have serious reservations as to just what they can save though. Once a wooden structure is water logged it's almost impossible to dry out especially in an area that's as humid as it is there. How are they going to deal with all the mold problems....the spores from some types of mold are toxic to humans and can cause permanent damage to ones nervous system.