Are You 'Third World And Damned Proud Of It' Now?

As a friend of mine said the other day, "Louisiana politicians are corrupt and incompetent -- and that's their good qualities." This Washington Post article seems to back him up.

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.

For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast.

Of course, anyone who's ever been to New Orleans for more than a three-day weekend in the Quarter could have told you the mismanagement of federal funding at the hands of local and state politicians. That would exclude the media pundits who have tried to lay all the blame at the feds' feet.

And then there's this tidbit ...

But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.

Money is never the complete answer. You also need integrity and common sense. The people of Louisiana deserve better from their elected leaders. But only they can hold the politicians accountable, and in the past, they haven't. Instead, they vote for legacy politicians like Mary Landrieu, whose qualifications consist of not much more than a famous last name.

Perhaps this will wake up the voters of Louisiana, who for so long have laughed about their inept politicians and their third-world image.

It's not very funny now, is it?