Forty percent chance of heavy pain . . . schools, public office, and hospital closings will scroll beneath the post

Seven years ago  Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.   For an hour or two it seemed that the Big Easy would withstand the storm's fury with less wind damage than expected.  But then, within hours, the word came that the pump and levee systems were failing, and the Crescent City was flooding.  Soon tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people were stranded because of man-made failure.  Nearly 2000 people died, hundreds of thousands were displaced, and about half the population never returned. Millions of dollars were spent on disaster relief as a result of Katrina.

In the past seven years the government has spent about fifteen billion dollars to construct a new system of levees, pumps, and flood gates to protect most of the city and surrounding parishes from the heavy water surge and massive rainfall.

And just in the nick of time as Hurricane Isaac made initial landfall tonight.  Officials are confident that the new system will handle the resulting flood of water.  I pray they are right.

Fifteen billion dollars.  And some people say that at least that much more is needed to adequately protect New Orleans from future Katrinaesque storms.

There is a bit of irony in the path Isaac took to get to New Orleans.  It first had to pass the city of Tampa, where the Republican National Convention has convened to officially nominate Mitt Romney to be the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

And it passed by Tampa and the Republicans without slowing up.

If Mitt Romney is elected president, it is likely Isaac will not be the last hurricane to get by the Republicans.

If one believes what Mitt Romney now claims to be his budget proposal, the federal government will have little or no money for such frivolous things as new pump and levee systems, comprehensive weather forecasting, and national disaster response and relief.

Mitt Romney has said he will increase Medicare spending for the next ten years.  Medicare presently represents fourteen percent of the federal budget.

Romney says that he will not cut defense and security spending.  Defense and security spending presently represent twenty percent of the federal budget.

Romney says he will not cut Social Security benefits. Social Security spending presently represents twenty percent of the federal budget.

So, Romney has promised to not cut, in fact to slightly increase, fifty four percent of the present federal budget.

But Romney also promised to make some dramatic cuts in spending right?  Yes he did.  He promised to cut 7 trillion dollars from the federal budget over the next ten years, or an average of 700 billion dollars per year.

So here's how that would look if you used the 2012 federal budget.  The total 2012 federal budget was 3.8 trillion dollars.   Romney has pledged not to cut anything off of 54 percent of the budget, which amounts to  2.05 trillion dollars.   That leaves 1.75 trillion from which to cut 700 billion.

Or to put it simply, nothing will be cut from social security, medicare, defense and security.

Everything else must be cut by forty percent to make Mitt Romney's proposal work.

Like hurricane forecasting, new levees and pumps, and disaster relief.

And medical and energy research. Medical insurance for children and the poor. Disaster relief. Education.  Public Safety, NASA, infrastructure . . .

It doesn't matter how nice a levee and pump system are, if forty percent is missing, you might as well forget the whole thing . . .

Maybe that's the whole idea.

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