Katrina lessons

Jogging home from the gym last night a thought occurred to me: Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath encapsulate absolutely everything that is screwed up about our government. Possibly the country. In the days and weeks following the hurricane the argument quickly broke down -- for the most part -- into whether state/local officials or the federal government were to blame.
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This completely misses the point. A disaster of this magnitude -- and I'm talking about everything here, the looting, the Superdome mess, the levee failure, alles -- doesn't unfold simply because a few officials forgot to issue some directives. No, this was a mess years -- decades -- in the making.
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The first, and perhaps most significant culprit, highlighted by Katrina is the failure of the welfare state. As Thomas Bray notes:

Among the pictures from New Orleans were lots of heart-rending shots of displaced mothers and children, but few of fathers and husbands. Liberal critics say Hurricane Katrina ripped aside the veil on America's extreme poverty. What it really ripped aside was the veil over the collapse of family, particularly among inner-city blacks, that lies at the heart of poverty.

Absolutely. Who needs a husband when the state will give you a welfare check? With no father figure to teach them right from wrong children learn their values on the streets. Compounding this error the poor are then placed into public housing projects that are basically ghettos.
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Indeed, I remember reading an interview with Lil' Wayne -- who is from New Orleans -- several years ago in which he said he wished he could buy the projects and run them himself. While he admitted he hadn't the first clue how to run a housing development he figured he couldn't do worse than the government. Now, I'm not even sure Lil' Wayne has a high school education, but it was even obvious to him how bad the situation was.
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Meanwhile poor kids are condemned to attend shoddy public schools, lacking the means to attend private schools. Rather than offering them vouchers the teachers unions urge that more money be spent -- to no discernible effect.
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When these factors are added together the result was completely predictable. Looting. Shooting at those workers sent to help. General societal breakdown.
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There has been a lot of talk, as Bray notes, of how Katrina exposed poverty in America. John Edwards says that it is a validation of his campaign theme of 'two Americas'.

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Yes, we have poverty in this country. But what's crazy, what's really significant, is that there is no justification for it. Really. We don't have poverty because we're such a poor country. We don't have poverty because there aren't any jobs out there. We have poverty in large part because people make bad choices. If you want to solve poverty you have to figure out why that is. Throwing more money at the problem is not the solution.
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But let's not get too far off topic. Another reason why the hurricane was such a disaster is because of the levee failures. Well, why weren't the levees up to snuff? It certainly wasn't for a lack of money. Problem is, the money was misallocated. As George Will notes:

[The Senate] just passed a transportation bill whose 6,371 pork projects cost $24 billion, about 10 times more than the price of the levee New Orleans needed. Louisiana's congressional delegation larded the bill with $540,580,200 worth of earmarks, one-fifth the price of a capable levee.

The Washington Post also pointed out the following:

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

So before Katrina even hit we had all the elements of a disaster in the making, and as this report notes, it wasn't much of a state secret either.

New Orleans is more vulnerable today than ever. Development and levee construction have put 500,000 acres of nearby coastal wetlands under water since 1965, eliminating buffers against the wind-fueled spikes in water levels known as storm surges. Even a Betsy-like Level 3 storm, which has winds of up to 130 mph, is now more likely to trigger storm surges in the Mississippi River or Lake Pontchartrain that could spill over levee walls. The resulting flood could take months to drain. "You're talking about creating a refugee camp for a million homeless residents," says van Heerden.

Speaking of development, why were so many people living so close to the water? According to John Stossel, much of the blame can be placed at the feet of federal flood insurance. Given cheap insurance, why not build on the water? After all, if you get flooded Uncle Sam picks up the tab. Government is perverting people's decision making.
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Then we have the actual response. And boy was that a doozy. Let's start with that of local officials. Here's one summary, and it's just the tip of the iceberg, not even mentioning the Superdome fiasco or all of the buses that were available to help evacuate people. And then there are of course the legendary screw-ups by FEMA.
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Now, in the aftermath of Katrina, government is attempting to compensate for its initial incompetence by falling all over itself to spend money. Over $50 billion as a "down payment." As much as an additional $150 billion more on the way. Meanwhile signs are already appearing that the whole exercise is a sham, just spending money for the sake of spending it with little idea where it is going.

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So, there you have it. Government played a massive role in creating the conditions for the mess, screwed the pooch on the response and is now attempting to compensate by spending money it doesn't have. In fact, as far as I can tell the only government organization that did a respectable job in responding to Katrina is the military, which is why President Bush has talked about an expanded role for it in disaster relief (a bad idea).

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The biggest winner to come out of Katrina? Quite possibly Wal-Mart.

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Interestingly Wal-Mart and the military are two of the organizations most despised by the radical left.

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If considering all of the above won't make you a proponent of limited government, what will?