Hello All,
A great article showing just two more examples (there are so many it's hard to
keep track) of Government
failure and Private sector success (once again there are so many it's hard to
keep track).
This time discussing the Ground Zero site and New Orleans.
Worldstage
By Harry Mount in New York
(Filed: 23/08/2006)
Comment on this story Read comments
Ground Zero and New Orleans suffer government's dead hand
Two days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I went to the Beau
Rivage Casino in Biloxi, 70 miles farther east along the coast. New Orleans was
merely flooded; Biloxi, in the eye of the hurricane, was obliterated by 140mph
winds, and its casinos took the brunt of them. Mississippi casinos have to dip
their toes in running water to obey laws that date back to the old gambling
riverboats, so they're ranged along the seashore.
The winds flung casino barges 150 yards inland and tore a 100ft gash in
the hull of the pirate-themed galleon casino 10 yards out to sea.
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Cash registers were scattered along the shoreline, spitting quarters as
they rolled along the spongy earth. The floodwaters sucked children's coffins
from their mausoleums, and dead alligators, washed out of the bayous, were
tossed into seaside Baptist churches. Next Tuesday, on the first anniversary of
Katrina flattening the Gulf Coast, the Beau Rivage will reopen. The same goes
for all the major private businesses along that coast - Harrah's Casino by the
Mississippi in New Orleans has been open for months. The local Wal-Mart - the
New Orleans outlet of the much maligned hypermarket chain - opened within weeks
of the hurricane.
But while private business has flourished, public works have failed
miserably. Schools are only just opening. University departments have been
closed for good. Courtrooms don't have enough judges to deal with the
renaissance of America's murder capital.
The city's narrow "shotgun" houses - their rooms open into each other in
a long line from the front door, so that the winds off the Mississippi, and
bullets, can pass through unimpeded - remain ripped from their moorings,
squashed alongside or on top of each other. Their innards - sofas, photo
albums, prom dresses - rot away on the kerb. The scent of mildew is
overpowering.
This mismatch between private and public has nothing to do with shortage
of public money; after Katrina, President Bush promised £58 billion in federal
aid for the victims. New Orleans and its crooked ways are partly to blame. Only
this weekend, a pair of Bobcat excavators worth £50,000 were stolen from the
Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest-hit areas of the city, where they were
being used to build a memorial to the victims of Katrina.
But the chief culprit is a federal government clogged with bureaucracy
and indecision, incapable of spending money even when it's got tons of the
stuff.
The American government can just about arrange an orgy in a brothel -
fraudulent applications for Katrina aid were spent on champagne and prostitutes
- but it is hopeless when it comes to large-scale federal construction projects.
The same mismatch can be seen at the World Trade Centre. In the five
years since September 11, one building, 7 World Trade Centre, the third and
least-known skyscraper to collapse that day, is the only one to have been
rebuilt.
At 7 WTC, the site's leaseholder, Larry Silverstein, worked unencumbered
by the attentions of government. As a result, the £350 million, 52-storey tower
went up this May without a hitch.
A couple of hundred yards from 7 WTC, Ground Zero is still a great big
empty concrete tub.
Mr Silverstein owns the lease to the Ground Zero pit and the rights to
rebuild all the space lost within it. But, while 7 World Trade Centre is
outside the pit and entirely under his control, construction inside the pit is
run by government, principally George Pataki, the outgoing governor of New York
State.
Mr Pataki is keen to run for president in 2008 and the new World Trade
Centre was supposed to be his calling card. It should be his knell.
Inside the pit, building has been subject to a lethal combination of
government bureaucracy and rows between designers.
The first plan for the Freedom Tower, the replacement for the Twin
Towers, was discarded because government security advisers thought that it was
not robust enough.
Then Mr Pataki and several other politicians got into a long,
unappetising row with Mr Silverstein over the building's financial terms, which
delayed construction for several months.
At the same time, the plans for the ultra-simple memorial to the dead of
Ground Zero spiralled to an unfeasible £500 million. And that was only after
another row over the arts centre on the site, which some thought might show
anti-American works.
All the while, the biggest bronze bas-relief in America was erected to
the 343 firemen who died that day, at the nearest fire station to the World
Trade Centre.
No fuss and no committees were needed to create the stirring sculpture of
firemen heading into the burning towers. It cost only £275,000 to build. And
who paid for it? The 1,200 lawyers of a nearby law firm, Holland & Knight. One
of the firm's partners, Glenn Winuk, was a volunteer fireman who died that day.
If lawyers can spend money sparingly, and to beautiful effect, it's a
shame the government can't emulate them.
Comment on this story
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