Porkopolis (Unfortunately) Vindicated: New Orleans Is a Disaster-Relief and Now Ongoing Quagmire

SOB Alliance member Porkopolis was surely among the first to predict that Katrina relief for New Orleans would be an unconscionable boondoggle. Go to his drop-down near the top right for the sad history contained in his plethora of posts.

Larry Kudlow has the eye-popping numbers, appropriately harsh sentiments, and an important implication (italics are his, bolds are mine):

….. everyone seems to be saying New Orleans needs more cash.

Here’s a pop quiz: How much money has Uncle Sam spent on New Orleans and the Gulf region since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart?

I’ll give you the answer because you’ll never guess it. The grand total is $127 billion (including tax relief).

….. Huh?

This is an outrage. The entire GDP of the state of Louisiana is only $141 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. So the cash spent there nearly matches the entire state gross GDP. That’s simply unbelievable. And to make matters worse, by all accounts New Orleans ain’t even fixed!

….. Perhaps all this money should’ve been directly deposited in the bank accounts of the 300,000 people living in New Orleans. All divvied up, that $127 billion would come to $425,000 per person!

….. Meanwhile, according to an article by Nicole Gelinas at the Manhattan Institute, New Orleans has earned the distinct honor of becoming the murder capital of the world. The murder rate is 40 percent higher than before Katrina, and twice as high as other dangerous cities like Detroit, Newark, and Washington, D.C.

Think of this: The idea of using federal money to rebuild cities is the quintessential liberal vision. And given the dreadful results in New Orleans, we can say that the government’s $127 billion check represents the quintessential failure of that liberal vision.

….. Right from the start, New Orleans should have been turned into a tax-free enterprise zone. No income taxes, no corporate taxes, no capital-gains taxes. The only tax would have been a sales tax paid on direct transactions. A tax-free New Orleans would have attracted tens of billions of dollars in business and real-estate investment. This in turn would have helped rebuild the cities, schools, and hospitals. Private-sector entrepreneurs would have succeeded where big-government bureaucrats and regulators have so abysmally failed.

This is the real New Orleans Katrina story. It’s a pity that the mainstream media isn’t writing about it.

What Old Media is writing instead is exemplified in this horrendously biased Financial Times article about how “the federal government has not fulfilled its promises.” Zheesh.

Kudlow hyperventilated a bit when he went into his $425,000 per-person rant, and areas outside of New Orleans were also devastated. Nevertheless, somebody, anybody, please tell me –

• If what is surely an amount that is still over $100 grand per affected person (not household) isn’t enough, how much is?
• When will state and local leadership in New Orleans and Louisiana start taking responsibility for completing the recovery?