Crisis in New Orleans: What Lesson to Learn? - Page 3

One can certainly challenge the budgetary wisdom of the Bush administration, as well as the pork-barrel tendencies of Congress. For example, Fournier notes that the recent $286 billion transportation bill included $231 million to fund a bridge to a "small, uninhabited Alaskan island." As he puts it, "How could Washington spend $231 million on a bridge to nowhere - and not find $42 million for hurricane and flood projects in New Orleans?"

If we ignore the heated politics of the moment, that may well be the question to ask. References to the cost of Iraq notwithstanding, the sad truth is that if there had really been a desire to find the funds necessary to improve the New Orleans levees, it would have found its way into the transportation bill somehow. It simply wasn't considered as politically important as the Alaskan bridge to nowhere.

The New York Times proclaims that "[T]he hard lessons of this week must be learned and incorporated into the nation's plans for future emergencies, whether these come in the form of natural disasters or terrorist attacks." But what are the hard lessons?

Many will focus on partisan politics in response to that question, and there are undoubtedly partisan issues to explore. But I fear that in doing so we may well ignore an underlying systemic flaw which might deserve consideration and correction.

In her book Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, wrote of her fears that we stand on the brink of a new dark age, and face the potential of a cultural collapse. She pointed to several social pillars she thought were eroding. Among them, she listed community and family; the effective practice of science and science-based technology; self-policing by learned professions; and finally, "taxes and governmental powers directly in touch with needs and possibilities."

There may well be significant political fallout from Hurricane Katrina; it may well be that the weak response to the crisis will galvanize critics of the administration and lead to a shift in political power, perhaps as soon as next fall's mid-term elections. But unless that final point raised by Jacobs is adequately addressed, I wonder how much that shift in political power will actually effect local crisis points.

Article Author: W.E. Wallo

W.E. Wallo is a book and movie junkie whose writings have appeared in a variety of print and online publications.

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