<p>Unfortunately, so much of the money that’s been spent on the rebuilding efforts went to layers of bureaucracy that did no practical good to anyone, other than to funnel money to out-of-state cronies.</p>
<p>Take the FEMA trailers. We had dealers that had plenty in stock and were willing to sell at a good price. The feds preferred instead to buy from their crony contractor, who in some cases had to buy them from the local people, and jack up the price accordingly. I think the Feds ended up paying double the market rate. </p>
<p>Debris pickup? There were four or five layers of contractors/subcontractors between the feds and the companies that actually did the work. Much, perhaps most of what was spent went for this bureaucratic bloat, rather than for actual debris pickup. And in the parish where I live, some of the out-of-state middlemen disappeared into the night with the money that was meant to pay the local companies doing the work. Guys were left holding the bag and had to mortgage their houses to meet payroll.</p>
<p>There is story after story like this. Some companies that got huge contracts didn’t even exist until a day after the storm, were housed neared DC, and were paid millions up front. The government then had to turn around and hire someone else when they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. But the contractor got to keep the money.</p>
<p>There was looting all right, all through the chain.</p>
<p>Yes my son called today too. The tornado touched down a block from his house just off the Tulane campus (Tulane abuts Loyola for those of you who have never been to NOLA). I told him it was FEMA’s doing and that George Bush planed it because he hates <fill in=“” the=“” blank=“”> and won’t do anything about Global Warming. Now we are waiting for Coco Nagin to say something both ignorant and profane to be follwed by Governor Blanco babbling incoherently and crying at the same time. The stat’es congressional delegation will then ask for $200 trillion dollars to rbuild.</fill></p>
<p>A one time investment of $14 billion to protect the coast?</p>
<p>That sounds like alot…until you consider that just in the years between 2002-2006, the feds earned $15 billion from oil and gas revenues on the Outer Continental Shelf. In 2001 alone, the federal OCS revenues were over 7 billion, more than half what it would have taken. </p>
<p>Louisiana is involved in producing and transporting 80% of the nation’s OCS revenue producing oil. Even assuming federal OCS revenues don’t rise as projected by the Material Management Service–just hold steady at $5 billion a year–the feds will get the money back from us from our oil revenues in just 4 years, and will continue to make money from that investment year after year. </p>
<p>It would be penny wise and pound foolish to give up an income stream like that simply to avoid a much smaller one-time investment to restore the damage it took to create that income stream.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, despite the financial benefit to the rest of the country, there isn’t much we can do about the people who think we shouldn’t rebuild because they disapprove of our culture. Ironically, those were probably the people complaining the loudest about the long waits for gas and high prices when production was shutdown after Katrina and Rita. Imagine what they’ll be like when the price of food skyrockets because it costs too much to bring it to market.</p>