Sunk costs

A normal person's observations on the lessons of Hurricane Katrina might note (a) insufficient public expenditure on New Orleans' levee system and (b) the failure of the city's poor to have gained much from 4 years of Dubya's tax-cuts. Such normalcy would thus disqualify you from working the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, whose insane lead editorial in Tuesday's paper (subs. req'd, but here's a free link) speaks for itself. Two basic messages -- forget about rebuilding the city, put the people who brought us the Iraq fiasco in charge of more stuff, but certainly use the opportunity for more tax cuts:

If FEMA can't now handle the diaspora out of New Orleans to Houston, Baton Rouge and other cities, the political retribution will be fierce ... Though the military is normally barred from domestic law enforcement by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, Defense officials have been doing a lot of creative thinking about what they can do and what the public now expects post-September 11 ... If he ever fires anyone, Mr. Bush could do worse than find a few more Donald Rumsfelds as replacements ...

... clearly there is an issue of how much federal money to pour into a city that is below sea-level and would still be vulnerable to another Category Four or Five storm.

... Economic leadership also means instructing Americans on the link between tax cutting and the economic vitality needed to fund both Katrina relief and the war on terror ... Republicans have been far too defensive on tax cuts, and Katrina is an opening to explain their necessity and to push for making them permanent.

The deaths were not for nothing, then.