Death of an American City

[spurster]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun1.html

Death of an American City

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a major American city.

"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.

Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.

The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.

If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.

Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Iraq doesn't have anything to do financially with New Orleans.

I have a friend who used to live in NO. He always said if a major hurricane ever hit there, that would be the end of New Orleans. That it would take upwards of 100 years to rebuild. Looks like he was right.

Attempting to link it in some way to Bush and the war in Iraq is flat out stupid. Whether you're the NYT trying to rally the liberal troops, or some dork on a Spurs board quoting the article and bolding passages to trash Bush.

[boutons]

"is that he was right and should keep to his word"

dubya never keeps his word, "Promiser in Chief", when spending money is involved. He only delivers when its tax cuts for the rich and corps. He hasn't spent the money in Iraq and isn't spending the money on NO, the two fatal disasters that will stain his presidency.

He does his Mission Accomplished fly-boy bullshit, then he does his I-will-re-build-NO in front of the cathedral bullshit.

A lot of us never believed his bullshit.

After 5 years of bullshit, a lot more aren't believing his bullshit, and he's got 3 more years to spew his cynical, lying bullshit and turn off more people.

[SA210]

^^^ hence, Mission Accomplished

[Nbadan]

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives

Remember. that's an estimated $32 billion, compared to $200+ billion we've already spent in Iraq. There are no good excuses for not rebuilding the levees to with-stand a CAT5 Hurricane.

[Nbadan]

Iraq doesn't have anything to do financially with New Orleans.

I have a friend who used to live in NO. He always said if a major hurricane ever hit there, that would be the end of New Orleans. That it would take upwards of 100 years to rebuild. Looks like he was right.

Attempting to link it in some way to Bush and the war in Iraq is flat out stupid. Whether you're the NYT trying to rally the liberal troops, or some dork on a Spurs board quoting the article and bolding passages to trash Bush.

Tax cuts during a war are stupid. What have any average American consumer sacraficed for this war? Nothing. No, instead let's act like immature jackasses and pass the bill for this stupid endeavor on to our kids, and our kid's kids. Fuck them.

[boutons]

If the economy, at the macro level, is so damn strong, why aren't households seeing their incomes increase? There is always some lag between an GDP upswing and household income upswing, but the lag now is much longer, maybe non-existent, meaning the companies are making more money, but salaries are stagnant.

No matter matter what happens, count on the Repugs to cut taxes for the rich and corps, while cutting spending that helps low-income people.

The Repug social program: "We're rich by gaming and corrupting the system to enrich us, the rich, and the corps. Fuck all of you who aren't up here with us."

================================

House Passes 3 Tax Cuts, Plans a 4th

By Jonathan Weisman

The House passed three separate tax cuts yesterday and plans to approve a fourth today, trimming the federal revenue by $94.5 billion over five years -- nearly double the budget savings that Republicans muscled through the House last month.

GOP leaders portray the tax bills -- for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, affluent investors, U.S. troops serving in Iraq and taxpayers who otherwise would be hit by the alternative minimum tax -- as vital to keeping the economy rolling.

"Our economic policies have done the trick," said Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio). "We are in the middle of one of the strongest economies this country has ever seen."

But some budget analysts say the flourish of tax cutting badly undermines the recent shows of fiscal discipline. Last month's budget-cutting bill would save $50 billion over five years by imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, trimming the food stamp rolls, squeezing student lenders and cutting federal child support enforcement.

"I don't think it makes any sense to go through all the difficulty they just went through with the budget-cutting bill, then give it all back in tax cuts," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group. "If they want to cut taxes, fine, but they are going to have to cut spending by at least that much to help the deficit, and clearly they are not willing to do that. They have to start looking reality in the face."

Under rules reserved for the least controversial bills, the House yesterday approved three tax bills in rapid succession. The first, at a cost of $31.2 billion, would slow the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system designed to prevent the rich from dodging taxation but that increasingly has affected the middle class.

The next, at a cost of $7.1 billion over five years, would provide an array of tax breaks to create President Bush's proposed Gulf Opportunity Zone in the region ravaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Businesses could write off much of the cost of new structures and equipment, while the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would be granted tax-exempt bond authority for their own rebuilding.

Bowing to pressure from Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) and other social conservatives, GOP leaders exempted casinos, country clubs, hot tub facilities, liquor stores, massage parlors, golf courses, racetracks and tanning salons from the tax breaks, exemptions the administration initially opposed.

Finally, the House passed a modest, $153 million tax break that would extend a provision allowing members of the military to use their combat pay to claim the earned income credit.

The three measures passed overwhelmingly, with virtually all Democrats voting with Republicans, and with hardly a mention of their impact on the deficit, which is projected to reach $331 billion in fiscal 2006 and remain above $300 billion a year through the end of the decade, when most of Bush's tax cuts are set to expire. The Senate has already passed similar measures, indicating that all the measures are likely to become law.

The House voted 414 to 4 to spare 17 million individuals and families from paying the alternative minimum tax next year. Democratic Reps. Jerry F. Costello (Ill.), Collin C. Peterson (Minn.), Martin O. Sabo (Minn.) and Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (Va.) voted against the measure.

In a highly partisan atmosphere, tax cutting without regard to the growing federal debt appears to be one area that both parties can agree on, said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "Everybody's losing credibility right now," she said.

Debate will be considerably more rancorous today, when the House votes on a $56 billion tax package, the centerpiece of which would extend the 2003 cuts on the tax rates on dividends and capital gains through 2010. Those provisions alone would cost the Treasury $20.6 billion through 2010 and nearly $51 billion through 2015, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Some moderate Republicans have expressed misgivings about those cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit affluent investors, especially as Congress moves to cut programs for the poor in the name of deficit reduction. But House GOP leaders expressed confidence yesterday that the tax cuts will pass, saying that the cuts would add to the tax revenue by generating more economic growth.

"By cutting taxes, you grow the economy, and you generate an enhanced flow of revenues to the Treasury," said Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee.

Although the federal tax revenue has grown since the passage of the 2003 tax cuts -- from $1.9 trillion in 2004 to $2.1 trillion in 2005 -- the tax revenue measured against the size of the economy remains below the 2002 level and well below the level of 2001, when the first of Bush's five tax cuts was passed. "The argument that tax cuts will grow the economy and pay for themselves is very attractive, but it's just not true," MacGuineas said.

Today's vote on the capital gains and dividend tax cut extension promises to bring out the deficit-reduction rhetoric that was absent yesterday. In 2003, Congress lowered the tax rate on dividends to 15 percent from as high as 38.5 percent. The rate on most capital gains was lowered to 15 percent from 20 percent.

Democrats have long charged that the cuts overwhelmingly benefited the affluent. The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Tax Justice says that the richest 1 percent of Americans, with an average income of almost $1.3 million in 2009, would enjoy 53 percent of the value of the extension that year, while 78 percent would receive no benefit.

A recent study by economists at the Federal Reserve concluded that the dividend tax cut had no real impact on the stock market and prompted "only muted gain in total corporate payouts."

In contrast, Americans for Tax Reform maintains that dividend payouts among the largest companies have jumped 59 percent, while the number of firms offering dividends soared after the tax cuts.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

======================================

Tax Illogic

LET'S GET THIS straight. The House of Representatives, committed as it is to fiscal discipline, has made the tough choices and agreed to savings of $50 billion over the next five years from mandatory spending programs. A good portion of this amount comes from programs for the poor. Painful, perhaps, but necessary, you might argue. Except -- and this was no surprise to anyone who's been watching this masquerade of budgetary responsibility -- having muscled through these spending cuts, the House, in the space of two days this week, passed $95 billion in tax cuts. Overall, the House has approved $108 billion in tax cuts this year. Just because it keeps doing so in slices doesn't mean it doesn't add up to one expensive pie. Because lawmakers are simply slapping another one-year Band-Aid on the alternative minimum tax rather than addressing the underlying problem of its growing and unintended impact on middle-class taxpayers, the real five-year budget drain is apt to be bigger.

So let no one be fooled by the rhetoric of fiscal toughness: Rather than reducing the deficit over the next five years, the House proposes to widen it. Listen to Andrew Samwick, President Bush's former chief economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, after the president's speech Monday calling for the cuts on dividends and capital gains rates to be extended. "I find this whole discussion to be disheartening," Mr. Samwick wrote on his Vox Baby blog. "The first order issue with tax policy is that we are not raising enough revenue to match our expenditures. Making the lower tax rates permanent just makes sure that we will permanently not have enough revenue to match our expenditures, unless we decide to lower expenditures by even more."

No one who's watched this president and Congress operate over the past five years, and no one who understands the tidal wave of costs about to hit with the retirement of the baby boomers, believes that expenditures are about to decline. As Mr. Samwick put it, "I would be much happier if the President spoke about which expenditures he will cut . . . with the same specificity that he talks about which tax cuts he'd like to make permanent." Don't hold your breath.

Some of the tax measures -- extending some noncontroversial expiring tax provisions, alleviating the impact of the alternative minimum tax -- make sense. And, yes, tax cuts can help stimulate economic growth; if paid for, lower rates on capital gains and dividends could be beneficial. But if you asked us the best use of $108 billion -- even the best use of $108 billion in tax cuts -- this wouldn't be it. The economy has improved, but not as much for those at the bottom as for those at the top. Why, then, move to extend the cuts on capital gains and dividends, at a cost of $20.6 billion over five years? These provisions don't expire until the end of 2008 in any event, and the benefits flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest Americans. Nearly half of the benefits of the capital gains and dividend cuts would go to households making more than $1 million annually. It's up to the Senate to resist this tax spending spree.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

"is that he was right and should keep to his word"

dubya never keeps his word, "Promiser in Chief", when spending money is involved

Hey fucktard, every politician is that way. Singling out Bush for keeping up with the status quo is spiteful and moronic. On second thought, go ahead and keep bitching, it fits you perfectly :lol

[Extra Stout]

I don't think spending $32 billion would be so bad if we had assurance that we would get a project that actually protects New Orleans.

However, in order to get that, we must have a federal takeover of New Orleans. It is not feasible to work with local and state officials there. They are incapable of self-government there.

[SWC Bonfire]

I don't think spending $32 billion would be so bad if we had assurance that we would get a project that actually protects New Orleans.

However, in order to get that, we must have a federal takeover of New Orleans. It is not feasible to work with local and state officials there. They are incapable of self-government there.

Pretty much true.

Here's the problem: rebuilding the city below sea level again is about like taking a bath and then putting the same dirty clothes back on. It's stupid. Once your house gets flooded away, they restrict development in that area (which is now considered in the floodplain). Why would New Orleans be an exception to that?

They should concentrate on rebuilding the city in areas that got little to no water and areas of economic and historic importance. I'm sure this excludes the lower income areas; but it is not worth it creating another problem for the future. Money would be better spent developing other places for lower-income housing.

[DarkReign]

Oh cmon....this has nothing to do with Dubya or Iraq.

It was a bad city design. By current city-planning methods, NO would never be approved for the very reason it probably wont be rebuilt. Cannot definately say it wont be ravaged again.

Its horrible, its a shame, its a history lost...but it was also inevitable.

Deal with it. My apologies to those who lost their homes and business'. I am not a cold-hearted bastard who thinks you should have moved. Its a real tragedy. :depressed

[xrayzebra]

I wonder, why can't they do as they did in San Antonio, below the Olmos damn.
Buy the people out and let them move to other areas. Or rebuild their homes
with the expressed knowledge that this is one and only time they will get any
assistance to helping them rebuild and they do so at their own peril.

[Extra Stout]

Money would be better spent developing other places for lower-income housing.
Money would be even better spent acclimating the displaced poor into their new cities where there are things like opportunities and jobs.

[Crookshanks]

I work part-time at the Wurzbach and IH-10 HEB, and I've met many people from New Orleans. I haven't had one person yet tell me that they are going back. These are people who lost pretty much everything and they said they have no reason to go back. They like San Antonio and want to build a life here.

It's very sad, but I believe New Orleans will never be the city it once was.

[Nbadan]

i've met lots of people who say they want to go back to nawlins

but i've also met lots of people who say they will never go back

I think people will always have a natural affinity for certain areas. Oh sure people relocate to different parts of the country all the time, but they always call they're birth-place home. So will be the future of NO. It stands to become the first 21st century city in the U.S., but we gotta spend some money first.

The Las Vegas of the SE beckons.