First, Colin, thanks for mentioning that great quote about Bush and how he could have spent that money to fix New Orleans. Also, your repeated reference to the disaster tours is welcome.
I don't disagree with the intent of the Bush quote. I'm not 100% in favor of the Iraqi conflict, and if he had asked me, I would have said, "Don't go." But George didn't ask me.
I want to offer you a different thought about the disaster tours. Yes, indeed, some folks are being trotted out for a "poor little me" dog and pony show. But most of the houses on the tour are abandoned. See, the area in question isn't coming back well because of infrastructure issues plus insurance plus they are elsewhere and too poor to come back to N'Awlins.
We WANT the world to remember that we were devastated. We WANT the world to remember that relief on that scale is hard to manage. People like Anderson Cooper (CNN), Oprah Winfrey, and Brad Pitt (yes, the actor - he's very civic-minded) are doing their best to push New Orleans into the eyes of an uncaring public who don't understand the magnitude of the disaster.
For instance, in St. Bernard Parish (adjacent to Orleans Parish on the east), only 3 homes were NOT flooded. It was a major suburb of New Orleans. Think about that for a moment. Only 3 homes were NOT flooded. Water got over 15 feet deep in some areas after the levees failed.
The most recent estimates on homes flooded by Katrina and Rita (3 weeks apart) comes to something like 106 THOUSAND homes. The government knows that money is needed to rebuild. The insurance companies have shown their true (craven) colors. The emergency management folks have shown their incompetence.
"Dr. Oz" on the Oprah show made a comment that is chilling - and truly important to hear and understand. Right now N'Awlins is going through a major crisis of health care. Doctors who lost their homes moved away to start new practices. Those who remain are overwhelmed. The city's Charity Hospital use to treat indigents. But Charity was flooded badly enough that it was overcome by mold and mildew. It is unusable. And the city therefore has no health care for the indigent. Dr. Oz said something like, "Watch the health care crisis in New Orleans. This is what will happen in your area after a major disaster if you don't take steps to assure that critical health care resources are available after that disaster." I misquote but that is the gist of it.
I could do nearly a dissertation on the issues of insurance companies and their fiduciary irresponsibility. But others have already started the lawsuit that will push this topic into the court system. While many reasons are contributors to the Crescent City's problems, I have to say that foot-dragging and outright refusal to pay up by the insurance companies are a bigger contributor than many other possible issues.
Colin, one of my cousins visited two months ago and took one of those tours. Yes, there is commercial exploitation on the part of the tour bus companies. But you know what? When people come by and see that in two years, we still have a ghost town in large parts of easter N'Awlins, it is a shocking, almost nightmarish wake-up call. A wake-up that a country that once prided itself as one of the richest countries in the world cannot take care of a medium sized city like New Orleans.
