National Rebuilding Day 2024 is on Friday, April 26, 2024: Why is Every National Disaster Always Compared to Katrina?

Friday, April 26, 2024 is National Rebuilding Day 2024. Happy National Rebuilding Day! National Rebuilding Day!

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Because Katrina is the largest national disaster that has occurred in any of our lifetimes, it is used as a benchmark to compare to other disasters.

The answer to all your other questions is "ignorance". People that have never been to New Orleans, or know nothing about NO, are simply ignorant of the facts about the city. Yes, parts of the city are at or above sea level, but as you can see, some people even refuse to acknowledge that fact. One even said, "Being at sea level isn't a good thing. So I guess that means that we need to relocate, or refuse to rebuild *any* coastal city that faces a catastrophe. If being at sea level isn't a good thing, why do developers keep building condos, etc. in places like Miami and other coastal cities that are at sea level?

People hear rumors and spread them. Many people only hear the negative things about NO, and forget that it is one of the oldest cities in the country, and is a major port city that MUST be rebuilt. Too bad most of the rest of the nation's citizens don't realize that many of the things that are in their homes and on their dinner tables, come to them thru OUR port, The Port of New Orleans.

Edit: :) Some people have apparently forgotten about Hurricane Floyd in 1999. If the "big one" hit in NYC, I'm willing to bet the people wouldn't think twice about sending aid and rebuilding everything, STAT. I bet it wouldn't take Pres Bush 4 days to take notice, either.

Outsourcing, National Debt, Who do we owe?

The great majority of our current national debt was accumulated under Republicans, in fact just last three Republican presidents, Reagan and the two Bushes.

In previous decades (before 1980), Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility. Reagan's main issue when he ran for office was deficit spending and debt. Our debt, he said, was unacceptable. Even if it was for defense, he said, it was bad because no country could truly be strong with such a big debt. The debt in those days was under a trillion dollars.

But Reagan believed we could balance the budget by spending -more- and taxing -less-. Tax cuts, he promised, would stimulate the economy so much that they would more than cancel themselves out.

Understandably, this idea was very popular, sort of like one of those fad diets where you can lose all the weight you want by eating nothing but chocolate and Mexican food.

But in practice it was a disaster. In his first term, Reagan more than doubled the entire national debt! He blamed this on the Democrats in Congress, of course, but the president proposes the budget every year and Reagan never proposed a balanced budget. In fact the Democratic Congress often spent less money than Reagan's budget called for.

Well into his second term Reagan was still insisting that his tax cuts would balance the budget!

Next came Bush (GW Bush's dad). In the election of 1980 Bush had called Reagan's plan 'voodoo economics'. But now, of course, he endorsed it. Bush also promised he could balance the budget in 3 years, but never even really tried.

Clinton was the first president who really did try to balance the budget. He did something no Republican since Reagan has done, he sent a spending bill back to Congress to have them cut down spending. This led to a battle between the Clinton and the Republican Congress, which Clinton won. Clinton had us on track to a balanced budget. Surplusses were not actually created but forecast.

Then GW Bush came to office. Almost the first thing he did was to cut taxes again, saying that since there would be a surplus, he should give that money back to the American people. Then he began spending like there was no tomorrow. Even not counting the War in Iraq, Bush is the biggest spender in history. Bush sold a trillion dollars worth of America's future to the Chinese. We are so far in debt now that the dollar is beginning to lose its value. But Bush's Sec'y of the Treasury actually said that if the deficits rise high enough, we will have to cut taxes again!

The real problem is that presidents can spend money but the bill won't come due until they're out of office. Sometime it seems like the Bush people are just trying to prop up our economy for another year, and then it can collapse like a house of cards and they can blame the next president.

And this happened once before in recent times. In the 1970s we had a terrible wave of inflation and high interest rates. The reasons for it were (1) we had just fought a long, expensive, unproductive war and had a ton of debt from it and (2) there had just been a sudden doubling of the price of gas, which raised the cost of everything in the US that was shipped by truck (which is just about -everything-!) Now think about that--long expensive war, sudden rise in the cost of gas--sound familiar?

To this day the Republicans insist on blaming Jimmy Carter for this because it happened on his watch. But as you can see the real roots of the problem go back to presidents Nixon and Ford.

Whats the difference between a team thats rebuilding and one that just sucks?

There are several factors. One is Honesty. How long ago was the team any good? If it was a long time ago (Pirates), then they just stink. If it wasn't that long ago, and all the veterans from their glory days are old or retired, but they have some really good prospects, then they are rebuilding (Giants). Of course, some teams can go from 'suck' to 'rebuilding' (Nationals), and others can go from 'rebuilding' to 'sucky' (Royals). If a team SHOULD be good, i.e., is good on paper, then they just stink (Mets).