It seems to me that they all got moved, to free quarters in trailer parks. Of course that was after the fact. Right now the problem is that they want to go back to living below sea level, at the rest of the countries expense. I agree that it is the job of FEMA to rescue those who have been made homeless by natural disaster. But it is not the job of the federal government to put them back in harms way again, or to spend huge amounts of money on levees that will assuredly fail in the huge hurricanes that will be with us for the forseeable future. The greatest beneficiaries of the federal largesse after disaster are the middle class and above, who have a sense of entitlement for living close to a beach, and disaster. I am quite sure that the crocodile tears being shed for the poor are a red herring designed to distract us from the politically well connected, who want to be be fully recompensed for their losses. Those are the people who should be paying the true risk costs of living in hazard voluntarily. The best thing that could happen to the Gulf Coast is for a category four to sweep it clean again this summer, and put an end to the foolishness of living in harms way. No one should be allowed to live within five miles of that coast, without assuming all the financial risk themselves.

Forty years ago, when I learned to fly, I read an article about African nations starting airlines. Of course they wanted their own nationals to be the airline crews. In the US it takes an average of eight hours of instruction to solo. The author of the article, a flight instuctor, complained that the Africans typically took over 100 hours to solo, and were unable to take criticism. The students, of course, were the elite members of the society. Was this difficulty due to their culture, or some inherent lack of ability? Political correctness demands that we blame it on the culture, but whatever the reason it needs to be studied and understood. Flying requires the ability to concentrate while being constantly aware of everything going on, skills that might be required for doing lots of other productive activities.

Uhhh, G.W. Bush for all his stupidty and other failings learned to fly in the normal American amount of time.

It has always appeared to me that Africans (and Arabs) would rather turn their excess production into more children, instead of infrastructure. Arabia gets away with it because of all the oil revenue, but sub-Saharan Africa, except for Nigeria, has little oil. And Nigeria, even with oil, still is totally screwed up. I think it has something to with the lack of omega-3 in the diet of most Africans. Corn, their main staple is all omega-6, which is not what brains are made of. Most Americans are getting stupider for the same reason. Fast food is definitely not brain food.

The wealthy, upper middle class, and coastal developers want the rest of us to insure them against the risks of coastal living. Until about 100 years ago no one but the poor would live on the coasts. The well-connected are using the poor as their stalking horses to get us to assume their risks. For the next 30 years the Gulf and East Coasts will be battered by hurricanes. Louisiana pols used the levee money in the past to enrich their cronies and buy votes. What has changed? They are still a bunch of crooks. If the well-to-do want to live high risk lives, let them, without subsidy. But we can't allow the poor to return to homes that are below sea level.

New Orleans will not disappear. Those who can benefit from living there will live there. The areas most hit by the floods were where the poor lived. The Feds should pick up the tab of relocating them and allowing the low-lying areas to return to nature. I believe that the plight of the poor and dispossessed in New Orleans is being used to make sure that any area hit by hurricanes will be made whole again at the expense of the rest of us. There are many coastal areas that are so prone to hurricane damage that no one should live there, poor or well-to-do. It's a lot less costly to relocate the dispossessed poor of New Orleans than to pick up the tab to rebuild million dollar houses along the Gulf and East Coasts. Motherwell, do you live in a large expensive at-risk house on those coasts? Are you using the poor as your stalking horse?

Utah and Arizona looked the other way while many of these families lived on welfare. Many of the "husbands" never worked a day in their lives, unless you call selling magazine subscriptions "work". After all when you have a dozen wives to service there is precious little time or energy for anything else.

When we lived in Pennsylvania Dutch country in the late 60's and early 67's the German language was commonly used, especially at the weekend farmers market. However, the ancestors of the people who spoke it had emigrated to the United State (actually the colonies, then) in the 18th century. Their English was none too good. But we learned to "outen the lights", and other interesting turns of phrase. My wife taught school and got used to the children rushing to the bathroom as they arrived at school. The school had a heated bathroom and their homes had cold outhouses. But we never did make it to the goat dancing festival.