To those of you that continue not to understand the situation in New Orleans, I encourage you to read Bob Marshall's editorial in the 12-08-2006 edition of the Times Picayune, viewable at http://www.nola.com/. But even if you don't take the time to read the whole thing, check out this excerpt:

Here's an example that is typical. I have a friend who owned a $200,000 home in Lakeview. He had $14,000 left on his mortgage, and only $40,000 of flood insurance because it had never flooded. He might end up with $100,000 from Road Home. So he pays off his old mortgage and spends another $15,000 having his home torn down.

But the builder says it will cost $325,000 to rebuild the same size house. So, at 55, he will have a $250,000, 30-year mortgage. He may never be able to retire.

He's left in this situation after the richest nation in the world admitted it destroyed his home [referring to the U.S. Corps of Engineers, who have admitted the levee failures in New Orleans were not a result of the natural disaster itself, but for their negligence in building the levees] but refuses to pay for the damage. And he's lucky. There are many retired people who can't get the $300,000 mortgage to rebuild their homes destroyed by an agency of the government. They'll spend their remaining days in small FEMA trailers.

I wish more people knew stories like these. America spends more money rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq than it does to fix one of its own cities. The reason Americans put up with this Administration's excessive privacy and civil rights violations and spendthrift spending is so that they can feel safe. Americans wants to be protected. But when given the opportunity to make things right because of its own failings, it has repeatedly failed to step up to the plate and do the right thing and help the people of New Orleans: inexplicably refusing to spend on this one project.

Consider this, if the U.S. Corps of Engineers were a private company, they would be subject to a 500,000-1,000,000 person class action lawsuit for approximately 100 billion dollars. Yet, they are not a private company. As a governemental entity, they are completely shielded from all liability. And when the people ask if the 10 billion thrown at New Orleans isn't enough, instead of nodding your head, ask if it is fair that the people of New Orleans pick up the slack on the other 90 billion of damage that was caused by the failure of the federal government.