Anyway, let me ask you this: Would you be willing to give up your home in the fight against corruption?

The Andy Axel school of debating 101, change the subject.

And what about TVA's rehabilitation of the entire Tennessee River Valley and all it's tributaries? You realize, of course, that many of these dams have outlived their expected lifetime, and the government hasn't kept up the funding to keep them safe and viable.

Andy had a good post on that a few weeks ago. Yes, it is very similar.

I would not live below a dam in Tennessee, but not everyone thinks about things like that. When we the people do not hold the government responsible for its basic functions were share the blame.

Paging Bob Corker...

But the situation with the levees in New Orleans was much much worse than the TVA issues. It was also known about for much much longer.

This should be a two way street, those that are enraged about Haliburton, where is there rage about the condition of the levees?

If you ask me I would rather see the dam in Nashville Andy wrote about fixed before I see a new Pre-K program. Kids don't need Pre-K if they are during the backstroke down a flooded river.

I've been arguing from the beginning that much of New Orleans' population and industry should be relocated to Lafayette in conjunction with the rerouting of the Mississippi River. A structure already exists that controls how much of the Mississippi flows into the Acadian Basin and through New Orleans and how much flows into the Atchafalaya Basin to the west. It is called Old River Control, and it is one of the most audacious engineering projects ever attempted. It sits right in the elbow of Louisiana.

The river wants to change course through its delta, as all such rivers do. We built a massive gate to prevent this in the early 1960s, and it's not going to last forever, just like the TVA dams. There will never be another opportunity this good to let the river have her way. There will be another opportunity. The only question is whether it will come about by virtue of Old River Control suffering a catastrophic failure or because we rebuild New Orleans and another hurricane does what Katrina did or worse.

Abandoning the most vulnerable parts of New Orleans does not mean the city and its culture have to disappear. It just means the rebuilt city is more modest and better protected. We can start from scratch building a new river port near Lafayette and avoid the thousands of tiny mistakes, some attributable to corruption, others to engineering compromises, others to engineering arrogance, that put so many people in harm's way.

It doesn't surprise me that it might take risk-analysis experts like insurance companies to force us to reconsider how New Orleans is rebuilt. Insurers will likely be the impetus for our pansy-ass duopoly finally getting off its ass on global warming too, if it ever gets off its ass. I think both parties are most content when their diaper is full and they are sitting in it spreading it around.

How about them reneging on flood policies based on "wind-driven water damage" exclusions? How would you feel if you'd been paying your entire life for flood coverage, only to find you weren't going to be paid? Unjustifiably screwed, perhaps?

I think the insurance companies that have done that are guilty of fraud. Why has the City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana not filed legal actions against those companies? Where is the State Attorney of Louisiana?