Not Our Problem---So Don't Ask Us to Pay

If you choose to build your city below sea level, then you ought to pay for fortifications, protection, and the consequences of nature smashing through, not the rest of us. This is ridiculous.

AP: Feds to Rebuild New Orleans Levees---

WASHINGTON - President Bush will request $1.5 billion more to help rebuild the levee system in New Orleans, Donald Powell, the top federal official for reconstruction, announced Thursday. "The levee system will be better and safer than it's ever been before," Powell said at the White House.

Officials dodged the question of whether the levees would be built to a Category 5, using broader language instead to promise that the city's citizens would be safe and the levees would be "stronger and better."

"The federal goverment is committed to building the best levee system known in the world," said Powell. "It's a complicated issue."

The announcement came after Bush met in the Oval Office with Powell, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers.

Katrina, a Category 4 storm, surged through the city's levees at numerous points when it struck on Aug. 29, killing more than 1,300 people in Gulf Coast states. Gov. Kathleen Blanco and other Louisiana officials, as well as businesses and homeowners, have argued that the levees must be improved to protect against Category 5 storms if the New Orleans metropolitan area hopes to persuade people to return.

Nagin thanked Americans for the money to rebuild New Orleans and told former residents of the city to come home.

"It's time for you to come back to the Big Easy," he said. "This action today says come home to New Orleans."

Nagin said the levee system will be stronger than ever.

"These levees will be as high as 17 feet in some areas. We've never had that," he said. "We will have the holy trinity of recovery _ levees, housing and incentives."