Guns, Butter, and Led Zepplin

[Brother Laz]

I'm European. I often don't get American politics. But why why why didn't anyone predict that 'gee, a poor city in a poor state, and all we do is tell them to leave... could it be that not everyone can do so?'.

Priority number one: get the people out. To hell with levees, even if they held there were going to be victims, billboards falling on people, houses collapsing etc etc. Things like storm-proofing the city to minimise property damage are afterthoughts, something you decide on after you make sure that the people are safe.

So 30K people were stuck in New Orleans? Wow, that's about 50-100 planes. Of course, the US gov't is so poor they can't afford to charter 100 planes to save lives. Of course, those 250 million taxpayers surely did not generate enough revenue to pay for 500-1000 buses. Or trains. Or even ships.

Those who want to leave but [gee] don't have a car or money for a hotel or family in another state should have been evacuated and if necessary crammed into a Superdome in New York or Chicago or Peru or anywhere else safe or into cheap hotels.

Even if the levees held, even if all buildings confirmed to Category-One-Proofing regulations, and even if there were no loose objects to be found in the whole damn city, there were going to be casualties. Knowing that people are going to die, being able to do something about it and not dropping everything and doing so is criminal.

Find out who had the power to charter those planes and didn't, before throwing mud about stupid levees.