Forget the Big Dig---Welcome to the Huge Kluge

Rebuilding New Orleans by throwing cash at corrupt politicians:

If you think the government's initial response at all levels to Hurricane Katrina was incompetent wait till you see the tidal wave of ineptitude, cronyism, irrationality, waste, and thievery that's guaranteed to be involved in the clean-up and rebuilding.

"It's gonna cost whatever it costs," explained President Bush, sounding not unlike someone who's used to spending other people's money, and not too worried that he was already operating, pre-Katrina, at the bottom of a fiscal hole that was gushing out nearly $1 billion per day in new red ink.

The first price tag we're hearing for reconstruction is $200 billion, or approximately $2,000 per U.S. household. Explains Stephen Moore, a senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal: "When President Bush announced that the feds would take the lead role in the reconstruction of New Orleans, he in effect established a new $200 billion federal line of credit. To put that $200 billion in perspective, we could give every one of the 500,000 families displaced by Katrina a check for $400,000, and they could each build a beach-front home virtually anywhere in the United States."

Or if Moore is underestimating and it turns out to be a million displaced households, that's $200,000 each for a free house, enough for a place a few houses back from the beach.

In any case, President Bush is promising a resurrected New Orleans, "even better and stronger," but still below sea level, combined with higher levels of "racial healing" by the government and a new war on poverty, one that's more incentive-based and capitalist than the one in the 1960s.

This obviously won't work.

Instead of throwing cash at New Orleans, why not simply wave all taxes for one year for anyone who lives full-time in the city for the next 3 years?

The federal and state governments could offset lost revenues, and this pro-business, pro-growth tax policy would lead to lightning quick rebuilding of the city. When the American frontier was settled, it was done so thanks to a lack of government intrusion and the natural yearning of Americans to live free and build their own futures.

Does anybody really believe the Nanny State foisted upon us by the neo-Bolsheviks among us has succeeded in killing the American spirit?

Let's hope Dubya drops the central planning crap and pushes for a successful policy to rebuild NOLA.