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please see www.nola.com/t-p/
for an important presentation about the history of the geology of the Mississippi River Basin and how man has destroyed what nature took 6000 years to build in 75 years of "civil engineering". Our decentralized government has been our strength for 200 years, and no one doubts that it is a brilliant system, but a strength, under certain circumstances often becomes a liability. That is what is happening when we have regional disasters where there is no system in place for a stronger, more centralized decision making process. In a disaster, whether it be natural, man made or terrorism, there is no time for local factions to debate and argue for 10 years. For Southeast Louisiana, the politics and lack of process to solve regional problems in this country, will literally SINK NewORleans. Please see the presentation and maybe through Gore's work, we can find a way to learn to deal with large regional catastrophes before the country sees another one.

As long as I lived in Louisiana, people who promoted themselves for selfish reasons, such as to turn New Orleans into a "chocolate city" never made a real difference other than destruction of something. Somebody needs to run for office who is extremely politically aggressive, and uncaring about what methodology it takes to get the right things done. The drawback is that when you get someone like that, the turn out to have really bad things happen along the way, like Huey Long and Edwin Edwards........