Reply #44: You seem to do a great job of picking and choosing your examples about cities and regions to [View All]

reinforce your own biases about what should have happened to New Orleans.

Tornadoes in the Midwest have kept Kansas City, Omaha, Oklahoma City from growing as the major subsidized places like Boston, Erie, Buffalo, Pittsburgh? Such ignorance is really rather appalling.

I've lived in the Midwest and the times that Omaha or Kansas City have been hit by tornadoes as devastating as the flood that hit Nashville or the last hurricane to hit your state are not even within memory, because they're such rare and relatively small events. None of them compare to the cost of subsidizing your rustbelt, Northeastern cities which should be allowed to shrivel away.

The most devastating event in OKC was a man-made disaster.

IF we WERE like the Dutch, we would have spent the billions of $$$ in funds for the Big Dig so that people could move more easily about the City of Boston, which should be allowed to shrivel away, on protecting New Orleans. The NOLA port provides a venue for actual exports of American goods and services. One of the few ports in the U.S. where we actually EXPORT stuff. And for the oil industry, which continues to subsidize the existence of people in those cities of the Northeast and rustbelt that should have begun to be abandoned during the energy crises of the 1970s.

Instead, we built the MrGO Canal to greatly reduce the protection for the City. Unlike the Dutch, who spent 45 years working on their flood protection systems.

And that stuff about the viability of the cities of Europe? I've traveled in some of the agricultural regions of Europe--the backwaters in which the Parisians hold the locals in the same contempt as you do the residents of New Orleans. Your "viable cities" have the same problems--they're largely just closer to their agricultural heartlands than in the U.S.

I'll stand by my NIMBY observations. The good people of Massachusetts seem quite content for our Gulf to be befouled to provide fuel for their horrendous winters--but they couldn't stand to have their picturesque views obstructed by wind turbines.