Quote:
Originally Posted by Sloniksp
I have to ask a question here,
Is it not the Federal Govt. priority to protect its citizens no matter what country you live in?
If ( in this case Louisiana ) did not have money in its budget to rebuild levee's shouldnt the Govt. step in and help out? In this case not only did it fail to help, but instead made things worse by reducing the funding which was already inadequate.
The funding was reduced to pay for the war which the current administration started. So in this aspect, who does the blame lye with, if the the already inadequate funding was reduced further by the federal govt., which being fully aware that the potential repercussions of such a decision, went ahead with this decision anyway?
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Slava,
I think you meant state, instead of country, but that's okay.
Simplistically, as the Federal government was originally setup to function, it was to deal with foreign governments (treaties, wars, etc) while the individual states were to handle the day to day problems facing the local states. If need be, the federal gov't was to step in and settle disputes between the states. The Federal gov't relied on tariffs and similar taxes to fund itself. As time went by, the laws against direct taxation by the federal government were eliminated, allowing the federal gov't to intrude into what traditionally was the realm of the states and the addition of the 17th Amendment meant that US Senators were no longer beholding to the interests of the state governments, as was originally intended.
There are lot of US citizens with a independent streak in us who do not like someone in Washington telling what to do. We have found that when they show up bearing gifts, there are strings attached that will come back and bite us on the butt down the road. Southernser and those in Rocky Mountains and Plains States are especially suspicious of the gov't in Washington.
As far as Louisiana and levee maintenance is concerned, the money has been there, but misappropriated. My best friend's wife has a father who lives down there. Several years ago, the local politician there had eveyone's drive declared a street so that they would be paved. Each driveway dutifully had a stop placed where it intersected with the road. This was out in bayou where driveways are long and usually dirt, mud when it rains. He did it to buy votes and succeded. I can only wonder if some of this money should have been spent elsewhere.
It galls me the amount of money New Orleans asked for when compared to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and the coast was absolutely destroyed-entire cities...gone.
New Orleans' problems were a large part their own making, why should I spend money to help them when very likely it will be misused again? The levees need to be rebuilt, not for New Orleans sake but to keep the Mississippi River open. It is wanting hard to change its course north of the city and the Corp of Engineers has been fighting this for years. The east part of New Orleans used to be swamp.
Does this make sense to you and have I explained adequately?