However, I do disagree with one item on your spending wish list: “The government could rebuild Katrina-ravished New Orleans and Gulf Coast … three and a half times.”

Not even in my worse nightmare would I send one more federal dollar to the New Orleans area. Never before in all the destruction I’ve covered in my life have I seen so much bad judgment, corruption and out right theft.

Better then half the property owners took the initial clean up/demolition money from FEMA and fled the area leaving New Orleans holding the bag with an incredible number of blighted properties. In some cases, entire blocks and neighborhoods were abandoned.

Now the city and outlying parishes, with even more financial assistance from you and I, are having to go in and condemn the properties and demolish them. They attach the bill to the property and then seize it for taxes after the requisite legal steps.

But there are no buyers when the property comes up for public auction. The taxpayers are still left holding the bag.

Of course the federal government, under serious prodding from Rep. William Jefferson is not going to pursue the people that took the $10 thousand to $25 thousand clean up money and ran. As hard as it is to belief Rep. Jefferson successfully argued that his constituents did not understand that money could not be spent to relocate. (He did not address the large screen TVs, new cars, etc…)

But in any case, be it a natural or financial disaster, we the US tax payers should not be underwriting every mass loss in the United States. That is why someone invented insurance, common sense and personal responsibility.