Should residents living on fault lines, mountainsides, and wetlands bear the financial burden of rebuilding after earthquakes, avalanches, and floods? Or, should this be every citizen's burden to bear through federal tax dollars? We know how Davy Crocket would answer this question. Another congressman, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, has caught flak for raising a cautionary flag about the manner in which New Orleans is rebuilt. "Maybe some parts of the city shouldn't be rebuilt," echoes RightWingNews. "Call that insensitive if you like, but a few tough questions today could end up saving 50 billion dollars and thousands of lives a few years down the road..." Are the House Speaker's comments, coming just a few days after a hurricane submerged New Orleans in water, insensitive? Or, is rebuilding parts of New Orleans neither prudent nor your responsibility?

I find it interesting that the same people who back what is essentially a rebuilding effort in the Middle East question the validity of rebuilding our own homeland.

they should re-build it with their own "dam" money elsewhere. They will call it New New Orleans and federal tax dollars should not be used for it.

If I were King of America, I would be very tight and selective about what publicly funded largesse I showered on the citizens and abroad.

But reality dictates that if we can use our federal dollars to spread around whenever foriegn country X needs aid for the catastophe du jour (and even when they don't), we've got to take care of our own and fund clean up and re-building efforts especially due to a natural disaster. Don't we?

There is no question that we Americans must all share the burden in rebuilding New Orleans. We have all contributed to rebuilding Iraq, so therefore it should not be an issue in our own country. The people of New Orleans have suffered enough. Americans must step up and open their wallets for this unprecedented catastrophe.

Since we ignore the constitution and rebuild foreign countries we might as well ignore it and build domestic cities? I say follow the law in both affairs.

The question is not if the people of New Orleans have suffered enough (they have) but under what authority does the fed's have to use money from Wisconsin to rebuild LA?

This isn't about authority, but rather simple human decency. Never before has a major American city been so thoroughly destroyed. The costs of rebuilding New Orleans are going to make 9/11 look like a drop in the bucket. How can you expect that shattered region to come up with that kind of money? What if this happened where you live and you lost everything you had? And then, to add insult to injury, you were told that only you and the other fellow victims had to foot the enormous bill yourselves? Who wouldn't be outraged in that situation? We are a country, after all, and in dire straits are when people are supposed to step up and help others.

The difference between MoJorisin-RidersOnTheStorm24 and me. We should stop talking past each other and start addressing the same issue.

I stated a legal fact.

You stated your opinion that I happen to agree with - that national resources need to be used to help LA (millions of dollars are being donated as we type.)

But address the issue of constitutionality. If you have never read what Dan posted in this post regarding Davy Crocket I suggest you do so.

I will only ask this one more time - where does the constitution permit the federal government to force me to contribute to this disaster? Please do not confuse this question on whether I think people from around the US (and world) should contribute to the relief effort.

Good post mojorisin24, and i agree. but i have a question for you. if this was a rich conservitive area that got wasted, would you still feel the same way?

mojorisin,

Actually, there are a whole bunch of examples of very complete destruction of various American cities in our history. Chicago, Atlanta, San Fran, and other places have been leveled, or mostly levelled, at different times. The whole Dust Bowl phenomenon that sent (what?) hundreds of thousands of families migrating west was another sad time.

But that is just a quibble, the issue addressed in this post is whether or not any rebuilding should be done by free choice and charitable giving of the American people, and others, or through the coercive arm of the state. Of course, this question is an idle one since we have no say in the matter. Our government has given us an 8 trillion dollar debt. Like others point out above, we spend billions rebuilding things we blow up in Iraq why not spend money fixing NO? This isn't a good argument, it is just a sighing shrug of the shoulders at a fait accompli. And there is no response to it.

I don't see any going back, just ever more progressive decline. (Vico was a smart dude.)

I say: Kayne Wst must be smoking crack; in fact he probably does.

Indeed, our response system is WAY too slow, but does anyone really believe the gov't has sat back and said: "Let's deliberately make the system slow, so we can hurt certain segments of our Republic"? Please. But if this idiot believes that's the case, I say: "Prove it, smart boy; where's your evidence?!"

Kanye West, like others of his ilk, such as Jesse "The Racist" Jackson, Al "How Does My Hair Look" Sharpton and many others are a problem because they are dividers; dividers who front themselves as uniters. The truth is: Unity would put these idiots out of business; and they don't REALLY want that. Actually, if they could get socialist/communist unity, they'd probably would take that.

Anyway, may God Bless ALL the victims. Each of us should do whatever part we can to help them and DEMAND a much better response capability for the future. This will cost $$, but I wonder: Wouldn't cutting ALL the PORK spending (for ALL of those bull crap programs) our Congressional leaders advocate, merely for votes, help us "find" the necessary funds? Of course it would.

We should DEMAND OUR Congress OUTLAW pork spending. GREAT idea!

My two cents...

New Orleans ought not to be rebuilt. It is rapidly sinking it. Rebuilding it is a hopeless endeavor, and there is no point doing it just to watch it get knocked over again someday.

This flood and tragedy has gotten me curious about Holland. I did just a minor search and see that 50% of the country is protected from flooding by dams and dykes. A large amount of the land is reclaimed sea bed. Clearly they are not in a hurricane alley but I still would like to see comparisons of New Orleans to other places like Holland. N.O. was such a gorgeous and old city it would be a shame if it becomes unsalvageable and uninhabitable.

I agree with others views here, though, that if it is rebuilt the onus is on the citizens and property owners of the region, not the general American populace.

Yes I agree with Davey Crockett that ideally government should not be doing 99% of all the things its doing. Hell I'm sure over half the refugees in New Orleans were already on welfare. However, given that we have no problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars blowing up and then rebuilding Iraq, giving 300,000 dollars to each Israeli family that gets relocated out of the Gaza strip, I find it hard to beleive that we can't give some money to rebuild one of the greatest cities in this country.

I lived in New Orleans briefly, and it had some of the most vibrant culture, beautiful architecture, and not to mention important history as any city in this country, and it would be a shame to just leave it. I'm sure if whatever 1 cow town district in Illinois that Hassert represented was destroyed, he wouldn't be saying it shouldn't be rebuilt.

Although, this isn't the most pressing issue given the size of tragedy, New Orleans has some of the greatest treasures of the Confederacy and the black run government that has even renamed George Washington high school (he was a slaveowner) of course has done everything in its power to destroy them. For example, there was a monument in honor of the Battle of Liberty Place that was removed by the city. After the city was sued and forced to re-erect the monument, they simply put it behind a Wal Mart parking lot, that now has been looted. I'm sure they will do their damndest to make sure that no confederate monuments that were damaged be fixed.

Like I said, this is hardly my top concern at the moment, but it's worth bringing up now, as I guarentee you that the city will do everything in its power to tear down Lee Circle, The Museum of the Confederacy etc. once the city is rebuilt.

The local citizens and residents of New Orleans have the legal right to decide their own destiny.
It is an intergrated communitty of wealthy and impoverished, well educated and under educated.
I am sure the people of New Orleans can rebuild with or without aid. I for one would like to help them.

Hey, Rob "I will only ask this one more time:" Get a life. I don't care about the constitutionality of the New Orleans mess. I never intended to debate that with you. And don't take yourself so seriously that you issue ultimatums over a computer. It makes you look pathetic and small.

Why don't they just move the people of New Orleans To Texas?
They've got plenty of empty space there.
Bring Jimmy Carter in to help them build their own houses. I'm sure between Ross Perot, George Bush and assorted other wealthy individuals, they could come up with enough undeveloped real estate to give the people of N.O. who have nothing a place to start over.Put them to work on a new oil refinery or something.Only the residents with money will be able to go back anyway.The people who rent(all of the poor)will have nothing to go back to until owners rebuild.Unless we want to turn this devastated city into a huge
Government Project, we're going to have to find somewhere else for these people to live. economies aren't built overnight; but they can literally come to an end overnight. Though it must be tough to leave a place as beautiful as N.O. was, all but those with the wealth to rebuild will have no choice but to live somewhere else-at least for the foreseeable future.