At first glance, the President’s “urban homestead” idea elicits a halfhearted yea, if only because it could be a lot worse.
Degaussing a hurricane magnet like New Orleans requires repositioning levees. This will necessarily leave many historically broke neighborhoods underwater. Consider someone who lived in a crack house (currently under ten feet of water) and made $6,434 last year. He probably isn’t going to be living there again unless he grows gills. He also probably isn’t going to be living in a new loft with all mod cons when Leviathan finishes the new Mardi Gras-theme city.
This poses a problem for liberals, who want their welfare plantation back, but it also presents a political problem for the Administration, which will be blasted for racism the minute it looks like the city won’t have the same racial percentages as before. There isn’t enough federal land near New Orleans for a meaningful giveaway, even with creative land swaps, but they will try. Of course, it will end up being a huge mess, but for now it’s a good idea, I guess.
