Asymmetrical Information

Dude, Jimmy Carter would've.

I am utterly convinced that if most of the residents of New Orleans were white---this tragedy would never have occurred. The politically correct leftists did not hesitate to accuse detractors of the city’s black political establishment of being racists. Prudence dictated that one look the other way and mind their own business.

Not to mention, his unwillingness to sign Kyoto, which caused the nasty hurricane in the first place. He's going to get us all killed.

I can't wait for some left wing site to link to this as PROOF that GW is responsible for the NO Disaster.

Sarcasm is lost on some people.

Hey, come to think of it, maybe I should head over to Kos...

Gee, you mean the underlying problem wasn't:

"It is an outgrowth of the campaign against "big government" that helped propel Ronald Reagan to the presidency 25 years ago. And it was fueled by uglier motives, including a latent fear of cities, a myth of the city as a breeding ground for immorality."

How the City Sank; By Nicolai Ourossoff; NYTimes; October 9, 2005

You are way overboard in your criticism of GW Bush.

You are way overboard in your criticism of GW Bush.

Comic Book Guy to Professor Frink: "Sarcasm detector? Oh, now there's a useful invention."

Sarcasm detector: beep beep beep-beep-beebeeBEEBEBEBBEBE--- KA-BOOM!

Gee...another failure of government? What a surprise....

Check this out..

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/flood.html

Think about reading this (out this month), a work by Almighty God for the salvation of our nation’s souls: Our country’s falling into the Abyss of Misery faster than the Indy 500, faster than a fully-loaded-747. But, yet, our novel has a plethora of extremely helpful insights; engrossing wit, sardonic satire; and basically straight-forward-Jesus that’d make anyone realize this is only a test of our Finite Existence (WE alone decide which eternity to go to because WE alone have free-choice. God Almighty respects U.S. because sHe loves US).

We talk of a Heavenly Scent, an ardent desire with the whiff of a definite locale, while we bolster the Great Beyond with the passion of a magnanimous madman: Full of some gorgeous, panoramic, tall-true-tales that’ll make U.S. yearn and sigh for Heaven Above. A novel of short-stories, quotes, prayers, poetry, heartbreaking/hardcore hilarity, aggressive conundrums, and a collision substantial from a severely-head-injured-Catholic. At the risk of sounding too verbose, friend, far beyond any sinful mortal, I use the personal pronoun ‘WE’ because I didn’t write this. I only held the pen.

Read our novel, America. Then, you’ll be able to see with enough vision to find your Way outta the stagnant hole mosta U.S. have dug ourselves into. What you’ll find in our wonderful, fruitFULL, dynamic novel is a treasure, unlike any other. If you decide to read this indelible script, here’s the next step: Get in touch with my CPA, Edward Foree, at 1-800-266-9111.

MAY GOD BLESS YOU WITH DISCERNMENT!
Long Live Christ the King!

-Fido
[FI = Latin prefix for ‘FAITHFUL’;
DO = Japanese for ‘WAY’ or ‘PATH’]

Yep. Cause if one thing's not W's fault, then nothing's W's fault.

He did a heck of a job.

...so NOBODY living in New Orleans or Louisiana bothered to monitor the condition of 'critical' levee's ???

It was all left in the hands of disinterested Federal bureaucrats {...whose paychecks look the same whether the levee's hold --or not} ?

Katrina was a hard lesson to the New Orleans/Louisiana students -- but I doubt they learned anything other than begging-skills enhancement.

But not very good sarcasm. That was about as subtle as a toilet seat.

I agree ... it was Bush who is to blame ... he was careless in reviewing the core samples ... gore would have read the samples correctly

It is about time you recognized the truth.

Why did it take you so long?

Well Jane if he wasn't going to do any of that at least he could have appointed someone competent to do so, or is that too much to ask?

Well Jane if he wasn't going to do any of that at least he could have appointed someone competent to do so, or is that too much to ask?

Let me try to follow that -- "Is it too much to ask that Bush appoint someone a priori Katrina to discover a fundamental flaw in the levee construction that had gone right over the heads of two engineering firms AND the Army Corps?"

So is that question rhetorical on your part? Or just dense on your part?

GT - The mistakes made on the levees predate the Bush Administration by several years. Is it the job of each incoming administration to review ALL the work done by all prior administrations?

Gore would never have put up with this risky soil scheme that will blow a hole in the levee. And Kerry, bless him, would have had a plan.

What gets me is the quote "This is something the corps, Eustis, and Modjeski and Masters do all the time."

We can forget about running Bush out of town today; where are the rails, tar, and feathers for Eustis, and Modjeski and Masters?

I'd bet they get the contract to rebuild.

You can bet that I will NO LONGER be using the recently completed tunnel under Boston - a government run and funded project, that seems to be leaking.

if he wasn't going to do any of that at least he could have appointed someone competent to do so, or is that too much to ask?

Actually...there were a number of scientific models that showed exactly what would happen to New Orleans in such an event as Katrina. The problem is that the socialist central planners in the FedGov have no real incentive to be overly concerned about such remote contingencies... They have to focus on job #1, which is getting re-elected, by doling out special benefits and welfare goodies to the more powerful political constituencies.

See this great article:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/flood.html

Sarcasm is a simple method to turn off your brain and ignore solutions to future problems.

The question is not whether George Bush personally flooded New Orleans. The question was whether the Bush Administration did what it should have for New Orleans before hurricane came. The answer is obviously no. For example, in FY2005, the Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for flood control projects around Lake Ponchartrain, but the Administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provded $5.7 million. Now, after the hurricane, they already authorized $60 billion. You can't square one with the other, because a billion is a thousand billions. They were spending as if Katrina would be a thousand-year event, which it clearly wasn't. It was a 40-year event, at best.

So what are the decisions for the future? For one, Sacramento is a top-rated flood risk for the nation. It too is protected by some dilapidated levees (as well as some better, newer structures). Is the plan to make wisecracks about Bush's non-culpability, and dole out cash hand over fist to Louisiana; or is the plan to handle this other case properly?

I meant to say, of course, that a billion is a thousand millions.

One other thing. The reason that "everyone missed it", the "it" being the fact that the levees weren't properly anchored, is that not very many people were looking. You have to pay people to examine and re-examine the work of contractors. That is the exactly the kind of bread-and-butter government work that is treated with indifference, if not outright contempt, in Washington these days.

We've heard that the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to spend more money around NOLA.

Do we have any reason to believe that it would have made a difference? Does anyone want to argue that the amount spent significantly exceeded what it would have taken to do the job right? If not, why would the $30 million at issue have made a difference when the previous hundreds of millions didn't?

For example, in FY2005, the Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for flood control projects around Lake Ponchartrain, but the Administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provded $5.7 million. Now, after the hurricane, they already authorized $60 billion.

Didn't read your own article, did you? It specifically pointed out that this is the history of New Orleans -- wait for a Big One to hit, discover the real scope-of-need for strategic improvements in levee and related flood-control measures, reinforce. Wash, rinse, repeat (literally) every 20-40 years.

Moreover, what would a case-by-case analysis of that $27 million reveal? "Flood control projects" is far too vague a phrase to be trustworthy, especially in the context of a mere newspaper article. If I were a politico who had a shot at "flood control project" money in a constituency around Lake Pontchatrain, I can see lots of ways to make it fit the bill without accomplishing anything that would have prevented the post-Katrina flood damage.

I also like these little gems (from the article):

Even if the projects had been funded at the highest amounts, Strock said it might not have changed the situation in downtown New Orleans. He said the levee near the 17th Street Canal, where one of the breaches occurred that emptied water into the city, was fully completed.

Contextualized by

A corps plan to shore up the levees began in 1965 and was supposed to be finished in 10 years but remains incomplete. "They've never put enough money in to complete it," Parker said. He said the corps' budget has been regularly targeted by the White House because public works projects are perceived as pork and aren't considered "sexy."

....

Joseph Suhayda, an emeritus engineering professor at Louisiana State University who has worked for the Army Corps of Engineers, said the corps simply didn't have enough money to build the levees as high as the designs called for.

"The fact that they weren't that high was a result of lack of funding," he said, noting that part of the levee at the 17th Street Canal--where one of the breaches occurred--was 4 feet lower than the rest. "I think they could have significantly reduced the impact if they had those projects funded. If you need to spend $20 million and you spend $4 or $5 million, something's got to give."

Supposed to be finished in 1965? Delayed by a lack of funding ever since? In other words, we have a long-standing and persistent problem that relates to how Washington operates. Attempts to pin this on Bush, just because the Really Big One came during his presidency, smell suspiciously like partisan axe grinding.

You can't know whether the $27 million that the Army Corps of Engineers wanted would still not have led anyone to notice that the levees were poorly anchored. Since they didn't know of the mistake, there is no way to say how they might have found it.

This is not directly the point. The point is that even the $27 million that they requested is absurdly small compared to the liability now. They have already appropriated 2,000 times that amount. It's like spending $10 on the brakes of a $20,000 car. What message does it send if your superiors tell you that $10 is really too much to spend on car brakes; how about $2.50 instead?

If the car does crash from brake failure, it is easy to claim that even the $10 job would not have prevented it; therefore the extra $7.50 really was unnecessary.

This is not directly the point. The point is that even the $27 million that they requested is absurdly small compared to the liability now. They have already appropriated 2,000 times that amount. It's like spending $10 on the brakes of a $20,000 car. What message does it send if your superiors tell you that $10 is really too much to spend on car brakes; how about $2.50 instead?

Not quite. Your argument, in your own words, was

The question was whether the Bush Administration did what it should have for New Orleans before hurricane came. The answer is obviously no.

Meaning, hindsight is 20/20, so now let's play pin the blame on the scapegoat. You can argue that Bush made the same mistake that the White House has been making for nearly fifty years (to wit: treating the precarious condition of N.O. as secondary), but that's a pretty meaningless quibble in the context. Especially given the multitude of other pressing distractions that have faced the present administration.

> The point is that even the $27 million that they requested is absurdly small compared to the liability now.

That's the point only if the $27 million would have addressed the liability. Let's see some evidence that even an additional $270 million would have done so.

> They have already appropriated 2,000 times that amount. It's like spending $10 on the brakes of a $20,000 car.

In this case, it's more like spending $10 on fuzzy dice. (FWIW, not every part of an expensive car is significantly more expensive than the comparable part on a cheap car. In some cases, the comparable parts cost exactly the same.)

> What message does it send if your superiors tell you that $10 is really too much to spend on car brakes; how about $2.50 instead?

If you're wasting the money, it tells you how much money you have to waste this year.

You're all ignoring the obvious problem with New Orleans: all that flood control on the Mississippi (starting in Minnesota) made the effects of Katrina much worse, by destroying thousands of square miles of wetlands that would have absorbed much of the impact of Katrina.

Now the gov't insists the it will rebuild New Orleans, in the face of overwhelming evidence it should not be.

How stupid are we?

anony-mouse: I completely agree that neglect of levees is a long-standing government problem. I certainly don't think that this problem is all or even mostly Bush's fault.

But I do not agree that it is some kind of "meaningless quibble" that Bush could do something about it. The man has been president for nearly five years and he has had plenty of time to appoint a competent FEMA director. Any competent FEMA director would understand that the federal government has taken on an enormous, unaccountable flood liability. Not just in New Orleans, but in a lot of places. FEMA can respond to that problem in several different ways. What the FEMA director should not do is go through the same old motions as most of his predecessors.

It is a convenient theory that Bush's time is simply Too Important to think about flood control, even to the minimal extent of delegating it to a good FEMA director. But the theory is wrong. Bush found time to personally visit Florida four times last year during hurricane season while he was running for re-election. He had plenty of time for this business when votes were at stake.

As I said, Hurricane Katrina ought to be a message about flood control elsewhere. Sacramento is near the top of the list of national flood liabilities. Much of Sacramento is only rated for 100 years of flood protection. Given the value of capital plant in the region, a 1% risk of catastrophic flooding per year is pretty high. Is the plan to skimp on flood protection, then to hug the kiddies if disaster strikes?

To GT and Greg Kuperberg:

Let's posit your point: the Administration was derelict in preparing for this the New Orleans disaster. They should've done this, they should've done that...etc.

So...please enlighten us. What - precisely - should they be doing now to fend off the next disaster? Should they be checking soil samples somewhere else, and if so, where? Putting California on rollers, to preclude earthquake damage? What about the New Madrid fault in Missouri? Maybe we should put St. Louis and Memphis on rollers instead?

Bear in mind we can't afford to do all of these things, so just tell us the one thing that we'll need to have done to avoid disaster.

Thanks. And if you've got any stock or racetrack tips, they'd be welcome too.

GT and Kuperberg: why not hold folks in Sacramento or NOLA responsible for fixing their problems? Is it too much to ask that people with the most to lose take the lead in identifying and resolving looming crises?

"Especially given the multitude of other pressing distractions that have faced the present administration."

That brush won't clear itself, after all.

Occam's Beard: I can't tell if your post was a real question or just a load of sarcasm, but I will take it seriously. As I said, everyone understands that FEMA has accepted excessive flood liability. Time and again some part of the nation has some colossal flood crisis, usually from hurricanes, but sometimes also from hurricanes. That is the real problem to solve.

The Bush Administration, among others, was derelict in preparaing for Hurricane Katrina, among other large flood hazards. I'm not going to take the bait of oversimplification in your question.

So what should FEMA do? It (or the higher administration) could do two things better. First, it could use both positive and negative inducements to get people not to build up flood-prone property. It could buy up inexpensive real estate near rivers, and it could demand flood insurance money from more expensive real estate.

Second, the Army Corps of Engineers (which I think answers to FEMA) needs more independence from politics. It is carrying a lot of water for powerful Congressmen. The Administration should steer the Army Corps away from "bridges to nowhere" and towards the nation's worst flood liabilities. New Orleans was one of them; Sacramento is another.

Certainly one issue is that Louisiana was reluctant to pay its share of levee renovation, either because it didn't have the money or because it did't want to part with it. But the flood risk is so great that the federal government should have played ball somehow. I don't know if it should have played hardball or softball with Louisiana, but it should have done something. Simply wishing responsibility onto Louisiana did not actually rid Washington of the liability.

mckinneytexas: It would be just fine with me if the federal government held New Orleans and Sacramento responsible for their flood risk. But if you want to hold them responsible, then hold them responsible. The abstract principle of local responsibility is no excuse for ostrich behavior. Washington has to hold them responsible ahead of time and make sure that they do strengthen their levees. For both logical and illogical reasons, Washington was forced spend an enormous fortune on New Orleans after the fact, enough to pay for any conceivable levee system ten times over.

If I lived in NOLA, the last person I'd want responsible for ensuring that the levees were properly designed and maintained is someone who's going to be a plane ride away when it starts raining. Why would this ever be a federal government function? And what, precisely, is state/local government for if not this? Running the buses.... wait, wait, they're not really too good at that. Conducting emergency evacuations.... shit, they don't do that either. Well I guess that if I'm in NOLA, I'm fucked, since I'm paying taxes to the Feds, who bear actual responsibility if anything happens, as well as the locals, who apprently draw a salary for nothing.

Sacramento is next to rivers that can overflow their banks in the winter. It's a flood risk, but it's not below sea level between a river, a lake, and the ocean, in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane alley. I think residents of the Sacramento area are more serious about buying flood insurance than New Orleans residents were. But more importantly, Sacramento and California have competitive politics and aren't run by corrupt and incompetent political machines.

junyo: Now that Washington pushed through a $60 billion emergency appropriation for Hurricane Katrina, it is really too late to wonder why the federal government is involved. The basic logical reason is interdependence of the national economy. You cannot wipe an American city off of the map, even a decrepit one like New Orleans, without national economic consequences. There is also an illogical reason, namely the flood of national sympathy in response to seeing the events on television. Whether it's logical or illogical, the federal liability is real.

Even President Bush, who still calls himself Mr. Limited Government and Mr. Local Responsibility in his official biography, signed a blank check after Hurricane Katrina and begged for public forgiveness. That proves that you can't just wish away federal liability with libertarian theorizing. The federal government could (and should) reduce its flood liability, but only with hard work.

None of this sarcasm excuses the fact that Bush appointed a complete and total ignoramus as FEMA head and sat in Crawfor with his head lodged up his ass, as he usually does when there is a crisis.

What exactly was wrong with the federal response?

The reincarnation of Eisenhower, a logistical/bureaucratic genius, could have been made FEMA chief in 2000, and it wouldn't have made much difference at all, in terms of property damage or lives lost.

'sat in Crawfor with his head lodged up his ass'

Other than your own bias what gives you any indication that Bush did this? I think it's pretty well documented that he was in constant communication with Blanco and Nagin prior to and during the hurricane.

So, how would libertarians handle flood control in New Orleans?
Easy: Let every homeowner build a 15-ft high wall around their own house, and let those too poor -- excuse me, I should have said too irresponsible -- to build a wall drown.

"So, how would libertarians handle flood control in New Orleans?"

Umm, they probably wouldn't build a city there. And they might let the Mississippi river change course and build a city wherever the natural mouth of the river was.

Gary K,

"You have to pay people to examine and re-examine the work of contractors."

Or you can pass a False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. §3729 et seq.) allowing people to sue dishonest contractors on behalf of the Government and collect a bounty on any recovery. That generally works wonders in getting disgruntled junior associates to come out of the woodwork and blow the whistle, at least when outright falsifying of information is concerned.

It's a tougher call when there's only been a mistake in calculations or judgment. It's simply not economical or possible to continue re-checking professionals' work over and over again indefinitely. Generally, you'd think three levels of review would be enough to catch any errors -- unless, of course, the incentives are wrong, in which case nobody bothers to catch errors no matter if you have three, five, or twenty layers of review. "Looks good to me. (check) Back to Free Cell."

I've noticed that the folks who claimed that it was Bush's fault because he didn't budget an extra $27M for NOLA haven't bothered to argue that spending that $27M would have made a difference.

Did I set the bar too high by asking why that $27M would have done something that the previous hundreds of millions didn't? Or is it that the stated basis for their position isn't actually relevant to it?

"...they might let the Mississippi river change course and build a city wherever the natural mouth of the river was."

OK, Sebastian, and how would they control flooding there, keeping in mind that all of southeast Louisiana is a flat, low-lying plain made of mushy soil deposited by the river itself?

Seriously, I'd like to know. I've been hearing entirely too much bullshit about how New Orleans is not worth rebuilding -- as if the US could abandon one its greatest ports -- and should be relocated -- where, exactly?

It's not as if we stupidly built a city below sea level when there was high ground right around the next bend. Any port city at the mouth of the Mississippi will have exactly the same problems when the water begins to rise.

Andy Freeman: Yes, if the Army Corps of Engineers had been given more money, they would have had more flood protection and the region would have suffered less damage. The money that they did spend did prevent a lot of other damage that no one talks about, because it didn't happen.

There is no telling how much less damage there would have been from the extra $27 million. Let us estimate, very conservatively, that there would have been .1% less damage, i.e., one tenth of one percent. That amount of protection would have been so small that no one would have noticed it. Nonetheless it would have been $60 million, enough to pay for the expenditure twice over.

> Let us estimate, very conservatively, that there would have been .1% less damage

Why is that estimate conservative? Does t have any basis other than the lowest % that generates a positive return? (The 0.1% argument reminds me of a "it's a $10B market and we plan to get 1% of it" dot-com biz plan.)

Specifically, where was the $27M going to be spent?

Note that a levee can't fail 1% less. The damage would have been the same if the hole was 50% narrower.

Note that there are lots of projects that would like more money and the vast majority will have no return at all. Feel free to tell us where we should spend the next $27M because we can't afford to hit them all.

I know that libertarians don't like government interference, but surely an exception can be made when the government will end up paying for mistakes. So here's a suggestion - why don't we require everyone that owns property in New Orleans, or at least anyone with anything built on that property, to buy flood insurance?

Don't make them buy coverage from the government. Let insurance companies compete and (presumably) take the likelihood of flooding in specific locations into account. But require everyone to have flood insurance. Then it might even be in the interest of locals to keep an eye on local politicians and demand that effective flood control measures were taken, since it might lower their insurance premiums.

So here's a suggestion - why don't we require everyone that owns property in New Orleans, or at least anyone with anything built on that property, to buy flood insurance?

Don't property owners already have an incentive to insure their property?

The problem with your suggestion is that it implies that the _natural_ state of things is that the government is primarily responsible for cleaning up these things.

Most of the property owners down there already had insurance... The only reason why the Fed is going to spend 80 gajillion dollars is to show they "care"...and to releive insurance companies of their contractual obligations.

If we as a society embraced an ethic of personal responsibility, and limited government, we wouldn't need to be throwing around suggestions like this.

Most of the property owners down there already had insurance... The only reason why the Fed is going to spend 80 gajillion dollars is to show they "care"...and to releive insurance companies of their contractual obligations.

That's a pretty extraordinary claim, especially given that a not-insignificant section of NO was relatively poor. Corresponding extraordinary evidence, please?

> But require everyone to have flood insurance.

What are you going to do to them if they don't?

If you're not willing to take their property and throw them in jail, some folks aren't going to do it.

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