Another New Orleans post is up at ReasonOnline. It covers two points I have been making for a while now.
First, if anybody is ultimately to blame for New Orleans' problems with Katrina, it's the French:
"As one scientist said after Katrina, "A city should never have been built there in the first place."
And second, there is precedent here for how things may well play out - that of Galveston and Houston:
"Historian Douglas Brinkley, writing in The Washington Post, fears the Bush administration is trying to do to New Orleans what was done to Galveston, Texas, after a terrible 1900 hurricane. "Galveston, which had been a thriving port, was essentially abandoned for Houston, transforming that then-sleepy backwater into the financial center for the entire Gulf South," he says. "Galveston devolved into a smallish port-tourist center, one easy to evacuate when hurricanes rear their ugly heads."
Which means, I guess, Baton Rouge has a very bright future.
