The Big Easy vs. The Big Dig

There isn't anyone in the entire country who could have watched the suffering along the gulf coast without wondering why our government didn't respond sooner than it did. The good news is that once it responded, it did so magnificently. The bad news is that people died during the 24 hour delay. There is plenty of blame to go around between the Democrat Mayor of New Orleans, a total zero; the Democrat Governor of Louisiana, clueless; and Republican George Bush, who, for reasons known only to him and God, flew to California for a fund raiser and speech on Iraq while New Orleans drowned.

Much has been written about the failure of the government to build the levees so that they could have withstood the storm. In the blame game, that discussion will probably not be as intense as the one surrounding the 24 hour delay, but will figure prominently in the debate over how to rebuild New Orleans. Adjectives I have heard on the issue so far are short sightedness, cheapness, pork spending, and insensitivity. I suppose there is a tad of each in the decision to build the levees to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, barely, when everyone knew a Category 5 was inevitable. But in the real world, where there are limited financial resources, don't tell anyone in Youngstown, Ohio, that they can't have their 711 freeway connector because they need a levee in New Orleans.

Which brings me to the point of this discourse. In the discussion of the New Orleans levee issue, I hope someone points out while the government couldn't fund a life and death project in New Orleans, it was able to fund The Big Dig in Boston. The Big Dig was a freeway boondoggle pushed by the Massachusetts politicians. You see, Boston had an elevated freeway that cut off the north end of Boston from the rest of the city. So Ted Kennedy and his cronies decided that it would be nice to tear the freeway down and to build it underground so the north end could be reconnected with the rest of the city by nice pedestrian mall. Yes, the freeway was congested, but at the end of the day, the Big Dig would simply move the congestion from above ground to underground.

The original cost of the project was $2.6 billion. Last estimate to completion was an astounding $13.6 billion, as of the year 2000, and still counting. The entire project was filled with graft and corruption of the worst sort. It reached the point where Congress actually voted to stop funding the project. I don't believe that has ever happened in this country. And after part of it opened, it turned out that the portion of the Big Dig that went under the river leaked and had to be shut down until they could determine if any of the project would be safe to use at all. They concluded that it was, but you wouldn't catch me driving in it.

So when the levee debate begins in earnest, and you begin to hear about government pork barrel projects like the YSU Convocation Center, or the 711 Connector, ask Senator Kennedy about the Big Dig. Do you think the citizens of the Big Easy would believe that connecting the north end of Boston to the rest of the city was more important than the lives lost in New Orleans because of inadequate levees?