This isn't a Pontification Diary, it's a request for information. About Katrina, the Gulf Coast states, and the effects of Bushista budget cuts. Please see below.
OK, we all know the City of New Orleans and nearby parishes in LA are underwater. I have read further that there were large amounts budgeted for a number of projects that would have made NO, a major, below-sea-level city, less vulnerable to extensive damage and fatalities if hit by a CAT 3 or CAT 4 hurricane.
I have read, too, that amounts earmarked to repair the levees, upgrade the pumping system, or whatever were cut by the Fuehrer and taken instead for his high crimes and misdemeanors in Iraq -- that you can pretty much trace the cuts, or most of them, dollar-for-dollar, and that over a period of many months the NO Times-Picayune and various elected officials pleaded, pleeze Mistuh Preznit, we're right here on the coast, and if a CAT 3+ comes, we're gefucked . . . and Monkey-Boy blew them off.
My inquiry, and I'm not asking anyone to hit the library or anything, but IF YOU KNOW, are there reasonable arguments that property damage and/or fatalities occurring not in LA, but in MS and/or AL, were caused/magnified/exacerbated either by the aforementioned cuts (where, if I read correctly, the money was actually going to be spent on public works in LA) OR by additional cuts that (1) as with the LA example, represented monies taken away from flood disaster prevention measures and spent instead on the Iraq War; and (2) as to which MS and/or AL authorities pleaded in vain for the restoration of the funds?
Any info, references etc. will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.