Railroaded

Glenn Reynolds has a Porkbuster's post up hammering Mississippi Senator Trent Lott for wanting to spend $700 million to relocate a rail line already rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina at a cost of $250 million dollars.

Lawhawk has a post up defending the relocation of the rail line (Reynolds has related thoughts here).

Read both entries and draw your own conclusions.

My church sent mission teams originally to Gretna, Louisiana, and has sent repeated mission teams to Waveland, Mississippi to help Gulf Coast residents recover from the storm. As they drove in and out of the area affected by Hurricane Katrina, they shot hundreds of photos showing immense devastation on a scale few can fathom.

This photo is probably that of the rail line in question. It was shot in coastal Mississippi or Louisiana (it was hard for outsiders to tell which, with all landmarks and road signs destroyed) directly after Hurricane Katrina. The massive damage to the rail bed is obvious.

I don't think that I have a problem with eventually rerouting the railroad to a safer inland path, but I have to ask: why couldn't they have done this before spending the first $250 million dollars?

No matter how you slice it, hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted.