The sad reality of New Orleans is turning into a story of how governments make decisions now…and it’s not the way that the United States used to do business.

But governments—state, local, national—knew a lot of what to expect. Check out the study done at LSU—two years into a five-year study using New Orleans as a test case—and it was dead on in most of its predictions.

The Times Picayune covered this extensively back in 2002-2003.

Folks who were in a position to keep an eye on these things had this information—and made decisions that diverted funds from preparedness and levee reinforcement and other decisions that will make a difference.

“It’s possible to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane,” said a Corps of Engineers guy in this 2004 article. “But we’ve got to start. To do nothing is tantamount to negligence.”

Yes, it is.

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