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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (139689)	9/20/2005 1:50:42 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 794397

It's not about "givens"; it is about whether we wish to spend taxpayer money to rebuild a hurricane protection system so that a similar calamity is avoided in the future. I agree avoiding future calamity. And the simplest way to avoid a similar calamity is not to rebuild. Like, duh. I'm not saying that to advocate that option but to make the point that it is, indeed, about givens. For you rebuilding is a given, ergo you do not consider any other options for achieving the objective of obviating future calamities. But there are other options. You and the rest of us may, in the end, reject them, but they are still options. If there are no other options, then what you have left is, by definition, a given. I assume this is your position as it follows logically from your stance on NO. I don't think you understand my position. But in response to your question re 911, are federal taxpayers paying to rebuild the towers? If so, I missed that. The owners of the towers were insured, although I think the payout is still tied up in litigation. Since you strike me as a bright fellow, I also assume that your home in NO is insured. As is my home. Insurance and the pooling of risk is an excellent paradigm. Your "nostalgia" is someone else's living history I understand the emotional draw. And I also understand that you are caught up in it and, while I have a fondness for the city, it can't compare with the emotional pull it has on you. I think I have the cooler head in this case. If all the monuments in DC are destroyed or damaged in a terror event Monuments are different from houses and grocery stores in terms of nostalgia and in terms of rebuilding. We didn't rebuild the Arizona. We built a memorial atop her. If we lost the Statue of Liberty, I don't know that I would favor rebuilding it. A copy is not the same as he one given to us by France. It might even make a more effective memorial in a crippled state. It's a tough question. I certainly don't consider it a given either way. The Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials have flooded. They're on low ground. But then they're made of stone so it hardly matters. If they were destroyed, I suppose rebuilt ones would be good enough for future generations, but for people alive at the time of their destruction, they wouldn't suffice. At least not for me. As for NO monuments, what monuments does New Orleans have? Jackson's statue? Anything else? Yes, the French Quarter is an icon, but I don't think it would be one were it not old and dilapidated. Would we rebuild it to look dilapidated or new? The former would be like a movie set, the latter boring. Anyway, I am not aware of NO monuments that were destroyed by Katrina. One last point. Terror events are not the same as natural disasters. You really can't compare the two in terms of the national role given that military defense of the country is the primary federal role. You also can't compare national monuments with local monuments. it's affordable, it's what government does, and NO deserves a reconstruction as much as any city devastated by a 100+ year calamity. I won't argue that it's not affordable. Anything we want badly enough is affordable. I would argue that it's less of a priority than other projects of national interest for which we have not chosen to appropriate funds. That something is affordable is not a criterion upon which we make a determination to proceed. That a project is not affordable is a stopper, but the converse is not the case. We don't do things just because they are affordable. As for "deserves," wow, does that open up a can of worms. The country is full of people who think they deserve more than they get. Just ask any interest group or identity politician. And they all have excellent reasons, as is yours. Politics has already gotten too much into picking winners and losers in the "deserving" category. I, for one, don't want to go there. Having said all that, were Congress to pass a law making the feds the insurer of last resort for 100 year and beyond natural disasters, I wouldn't object. We'd need that kind of bright line, though, to obviate the problem of creeping or no criteria. Predetermined objective criteria for extraordinary natural disasters.