A Repost of some clas­sic TfK.

I missed the Bush speech the oth­er night, and from the cov­er­age, I can’t say I care. The idea of mak­ing No Man’s Land an “enter­prise zone,” like the idea of auc­tion­ing off “sur­plus” fed­er­al lands, only jus­ti­fies the fears expressed by some locals that the wealthy would be tak­ing over the for­mer homes of the (black) low-income res­i­dents of New Orleans. It’s bad pol­i­tics and bad policy.

It’s indis­putably true that we have to think twice about how the new New Orleans will be built, but plan­ning to inte­grate low-income hous­ing with mid­dle class homes and com­mer­cial activ­i­ties is a bet­ter solu­tion than let­ting the wealthy buy up land. This isn’t a case where dereg­u­la­tion is the right solu­tion. We know that part of the prob­lem in No Man’s Land was that pover­ty kept many peo­ple from suc­cess­ful­ly prepar­ing for the flood­ing and from evac­u­at­ing the area. A plan that does­n’t specif­i­cal­ly account for the greater pover­ty in New Orleans than in the nation at large will fail.

I’ll also say that the idea that we can spend bil­lions on rebuild­ing Iraq and the South with­out rethink­ing the idi­ot­ic tax cuts of the ear­ly Bush years is pro­found­ly wrong-head­ed. Now’s the time to re-instate the estate and gift tax and to freeze future tax cuts. Now is the time to impose a small hike in gas tax­es to pay for recon­struc­tion, reduce gas con­sump­tion while Gulf refiner­ies and oil rigs are rebuilt, and free up resources for the recon­struc­tion. Now is not the time for addi­tion­al tax cuts, espe­cial­ly not for the very rich­est Amer­i­cans.

There’s a cer­tain Cas­san­dra syn­drome in the left side of the blo­gos­phere. Just as we pre­dict­ed that the inva­sion of Iraq would be quick and suc­cess­ful, but the recon­struc­tion would be a dis­as­ter, I’d hate to be right in say­ing that the Bush plan will fail the peo­ple most at risk.

Gov­ern­ment exists for one grand pur­pose: to insure against the unlike­ly cat­a­stro­phes and the vagaries of dis­hon­esty. Rush Holt said “The essen­tial role of gov­ern­ment is to pro­vide for its cit­i­zens in their time of need.” I’d say that’s pret­ty apt. I think we can gen­er­al­ize and say that the role of gov­ern­ment is to bring out the best in human nature. The Bush pro­pos­al fails that.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic plan (pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed here) focuss­es on help­ing the peo­ple with the fewest resources to devote to rebuild­ing their lives.

I think it’s clos­est to the Amer­i­can ide­al, the spir­it of neigh­bors bor­row­ing a cup of sug­ar, or grab­bing a buck­et and run­ning to help when they see smoke com­ing from a neigh­bor’s house. The gov­ern­ment does best when it inte­grates the actions that pri­vate cit­i­zens would take if they could.

Some time in the next week, I’m going to start pimp­ing Habi­tat for Human­i­ty. I start­ed out focussing my efforts on the Red Cross (if you haven’t yet, drop some cash with the link at the right). They do great work clean­ing up the after­math of these sorts of crises and get­ting refugees set­tled quick­ly. The time is get­ting close when we have to start think­ing about rebuild­ing, and that’s where Habi­tat comes in.

The gov­ern­ment needs to do the same thing. Shift from the respon­sive mode and start real­ly plan­ning. Any­one who’s read The Death and Life of Great Amer­i­can Cities by Jane Jacobs knows that city plan­ning is best when it respects neigh­bor­hoods that grow organ­i­cal­ly. Plan­ning rarely works as well as ad hoc com­mu­ni­ties, which is why, even though No Man’s Land is a rel­a­tive­ly clean slate, we’d do best to use the old lay­out as a start­ing place and change only in accor­dance with the advice and con­sent of the peo­ple in the neighborhood.

There’s a place for exper­i­ments in con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy, and there’s a time for wild and poten­tial­ly flawed ideas. Bush got those chances with Iraq, with Medicare, with failed tax cuts, with No Child Left Behind. Maybe now is a time for sen­si­ble, mod­er­ate and con­sen­sus dri­ven pol­i­cy. How’s that for a new direction?