Posted by Dinah on December 5, 2005, at 21:01:13
In reply to Dinah, I posted to you on Social, posted by ClearSkies on December 4, 2005, at 21:42:14
> Dinah, do you think that this is the kind of issue that might get attention by sending letters to our local representatives, members of Congress, and Senators?
I honestly think that's our only hope, Clear Skies. It's too big a problem for us to handle even on a statewide level. We're not that rich an area, or state, and we're in even worse state now, with less money coming in. I know the country is afraid to turn over money to our politicians, and I can't blame them. But we do need help, whoever holds the pursestrings.
If there's a groundswell from the American people, I think the Congress and the President will feel urgency to do something. Otherwise we're in huge trouble, and our very existence as anything approaching the city we were is in jeopardy.
One of our problems (in addition to the incomprehensible number of people who have lost everything and need personal help) is that companies and people are waiting to decide what to do until they hear about plans for protection from this happening again. Because this wasn't the big one, the one we all feared. It was the result of catastrophic failure of poorly designed and even more poorly constructed floodwalls designed and maintained by the Corps of Engineers.
Someone emailed me a site that has an email campaign going on that.
http://www.democracyinaction.org/GRN/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=1521
The other problem is so enormous that I don't know where to start. I know a lot of the problems are caused by bureaucratic slowness. But a lot of it is pure tragedy. People not having flood insurance, or being underinsured. There are some proposals that people be allowed to buy into the flood insurance program retroactively by paying ten years' premiums, but there is a lot of resistance to that for fear of starting a bad precedent. The Red Cross has been great, but when your house, your job, your neighborhood, and the houses, jobs, and neighborhoods of your friends and family all go under at once... I don't even know where to start. People have lost so much. Mile after mile of devastation in parts of the city. People being discouraged from rebuilding their houses, because they don't want isolated homes among tons of blighted homes. But this is all people have... There is also some legislation, the Baker Plan, I think, being proposed to buy people out and put the land in a nonprofit development corporation so that people don't only have a ruined home, but a ruined home with a large mortgage that still has to be paid whether or not the home is still there (unless they declare bankruptcy).
It is just so overwhelming. And to make matters worse, New Orleans is a city with one of the largest percentage of people who were born here and lived here all their lives, often in the same neighborhoods. This is all we know.
poster:Dinah
thread:585532
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20051121/msgs/585922.html