Jack Grant has a good post on priorities today. I left a comment there but wanted to elaborate a bit over here. As frustration and anger and despair mounts, blame will be meted out with as much focus as a

It’s obvious that there has been years of negligence, and the current administration and Congress will have to deal with their share of the blame.

As like just about everything else, though, the story isn’t a simple as I would like it.

Turns out, at least from this account that the portion of the levee that gave way had just been upgraded:
No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was “along a section that was just upgraded.”

“It did not have an earthen levee,” Dr. Penland said. “It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick.”

For worse, always, we take action usually only after tragedy hits us.

Maybe now at least we can have Congress come to its senses and repeal the Highway bill.