The point that has to be made is that national disasters are, in the aggregate, predictable, and we can budget for them, ... Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disasters in America.
Anybody looking at the evidence could see this coming.
The truth is that Congress has lacked the political will to enforce it. The federal governmental stepped in and said we're going to subsidize your insurance in return for certain things, but the other part of the bargain often hasn't materialized.
[As Theodore Steinberg argues, God is getting a bum rap.] This is an unnatural disaster if ever there was one, not an act of God, ... If the potential for mass death and destruction from extreme weather existed anywhere in the U.S., it existed in New Orleans.
The reason that these [congressional relief measures] are always done as supplemental appropriations is the idea that these are unpredictable acts of God ... we need to overcome our collective denial about natural disaster and we need to budget for it and prepare for it, and if we did, we'd have a more civil and just society.
The social conditions were ripe; it was in the context of the '60s. It was a time when there seemed to be a consensus on the idea that the federal government could use its vast financial resources to advance the common good.
Levees are a double-edged sword; they give people a false sense of security.
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