If you happened to pick up a copy of today's issue of USA Today, you could find a story entitled "Katrina claims stagger corps". You could find the same thing if, as happened to me, you saw it on a newswire, and thus didn't have to trouble yourself with purchasing the paper, with its sometimes-difficult-to-stomach format and voice. (n.b. - not it's opinion voice, but the clipped, short attention span voice they seem to choose for their stories, often resulting in news that, while it's neither more nor less accurate than anywhere else, didn't get the name "McNews" for nothing)
The story's key points are a bit breathtaking - New Orleans is seeking $77 billion in restitution and Louisiana's attorney general wants $200 billion.
New Orleans and Louisiana, swamped when the city's storm protections failed during Hurricane Katrina, demand the federal government pay a damage bill that is more than double the entire cost of the massive Gulf Coast rebuilding effort.
So many claims have been filed against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the agency needs at least another month even to tally the floor-to-ceiling stacks, spokesman Vic Harris says.
{...}
Those two alone are more than double the $110 billion Congress approved for Florida and the Gulf Coast after Katrina and two other hurricanes struck in 2005.
(ellipsis mine) Ouch.
The story, having specifically listed the amounts above sought by New Orleans and the state itself, goes on to elaborate:
New Orleans and Louisiana seek broad requests for costs after Katrina but don't list specific damages.
The great thing about suing for damages, from a defendant's point of view, is that the damages do have to be enumerated. In addition, any mitigation already provided will have to be taken into account, and surely the federal government's $110 billion so far approved must have contained some funds which have been applied against such damages.
There's also the sticky matter of shared responsibility. Particularly in the case of New Orleans, the actions taken and omitted by Mayor Nagin and his government in the aftermath of the hurricane would imply competence at some small fraction of anything the Corps might have exhibited. In any event, it's going to be a royal mess to sort out.
Luckily, there's an attorney involved, so don't you worry; this should all end up right as rain:
Homeowners could seek damages of an additional $200 billion or more, says Jerrold Parker, a lawyer whose firm is trying to organize a class-action suit against the corps.
"Just looking at the place, it's clear that there's tremendous damage," he says. "The fact is, everyone knew the protections were inadequate."
{...}
The corps must either pay or reject each of the claims. Those whose claims are rejected can take the agency to court. Parker says his firm represents more than 3,000 people who want to sue.
(ellipsis, again, mine) For the record, “Just looking at the place, it’s clear that there’s tremendous damage” doesn't count as "enumeration of damages". He also presumes, of course, that his 3,000 clients' claims and the contingent fees he hopes to glom from them are all in addition to the generous amounts sought by the various government agencies. This doesn't even pass the "red face test", let alone the "giggle test".
Left undiscussed in the story is the rationale by which the government and its agencies are liable for failing to provide absolute and flawless protection for flooding in, say, New Orleans.
A city that lies "5-10 feet below sea level". On the same page linked just left, you will see that...
The Army Corps of Engineers verifies that the New Orleans area has 325 miles of Congressionally authorized hurricane protection including: Westbank (66 miles); New Orleans to Venice, La. (87 miles); LaRose, La to Golden Meadow, La. (40 miles); Grande Isle, La. (7 miles); Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity (125 miles).
...but Mother Nature doesn't pay much attention to the Army Corps, let alone (just like the rest of us) to Congress.
Bad things happen to good cities. They also happen to New Orleans, which is not now, nor has it been in the past, a "good city". It's a truly unique city, and a very interesting one, but neither of those connotes goodness. While less, or at least differently, so than in the past, due to the effects of the hurricane, it's still a bit of a cesspool.
It's cops are notoriously and blatantly corrupt. They've had more than their fair share of murderers wearing the uniform, too. And, aside from the murder, that's just the cops - the elected politicians are no better. William Jefferson, he of the refrigerated cash, is a stellar example of this breed, but hardly the only one.
But it doesn't stop there. From the Autumn, 2005 issue of the City Journal:
The second job is less obvious. New Orleans’s immutable civic shame, before and after Katrina, is not racism, poverty, or inequality, but murder—a culture of murder so vicious and so pervasive that it terrorizes and numbs the whole city.
In 2003, New Orleans’s murder rate was nearly eight times the national average—and since then, murder has increased. In 2002 and 2003, New Orleans had the highest per capita city homicide rate in the United States, with 59 people killed per year per 100,000 citizens—compared to New York City’s seven. New Orleans is a New York with nearly 5,000 murders a year—an unlivable place. The city’s economy has sputtered over the past generation partly because local and state officials have failed to do the most elementary job of government: to secure the personal safety of citizens.
And then there's the race card, described in the same article:
In the aftermath of the storm, hand-wringers wondered why they hadn’t noticed before that so many American blacks live in Third World conditions—supposedly only because they’re black. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer voiced white America’s knee-jerk best: “You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals. . . . So many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor, and they are so black,” he mused on the air.
But Americans didn’t notice this before because it’s not true. Despite the president’s rhetoric, and despite those indelible images from the Superdome and the Convention Center, New Orleans is just as much a black success story as a black failure story.
Yes, New Orleans has a 28 percent poverty rate, and yes, New Orleans is 67 percent black. But nearly two-thirds of New Orleans’s blacks aren’t poor.
Yes, it’s true that nearly 25 percent of New Orleans’s families live on less than $15,000 a year, according to the 2000 Census. But 19 percent of New York’s families live on less than $15,000—and it’s much more expensive for poor people to live in New York, making them poorer.
New Orleans itself, its attorneys, and their clients, even more so than the state of Louisiana, appear to be trying to make their myriad problems those of all their fellow U.S. citizens. Simultaneously claiming poverty and race-based neglect from the federal government along with dismay at how wretched the city is now, ignoring that it's pretty much always been wretched, they're going for the gusto.
Or trying to.
It seems unlikely that, once the mess of layered claims, some bogus, some inflated, and some already addressed by insurance or other government single- double- or triple-handouts, is parsed, the extent of damage related to the breach of the levee system might be anywhere near crystal clear.
Add to that the absurdity of expecting guarantees from anyone, government or not, of protection against the weather, it becomes easier to hazard a guess as to what the outcome of this might be. I expect that the Army Corps, and by extension, all U.S. taxpayers, will be absolved of the imaginary financial responsibility that the plaintiffs in these cases are trying to foist off onto us.
(also posted at issuesblog.com)
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