Word: safe
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...safe bet for an analyst trying to predict outcomes using limited information is to assume the status quo will prevail. But sometimes history can veer off the beaten path in cruel ways. The possibility that Kim Jong Il's death could make things worse for the benighted North Koreans is unpleasant to contemplate. Then again, North Korea under the Kim family dynasty has been a singularly cruel place...
...question is, is it safe? Historically, someone wanting to pilot a passenger jet tended to start on small planes and move up, a process that might take two or three years, perhaps longer. The Air Transport Pilot's Licence needed to captain a passenger jet requires extensive flying experience: at least 1,500 hours in countries like the U.S. and Australia...
...task will be defending New Orleans, which was betrayed during Katrina by badly designed and constructed Corps flood walls as well as by a misguided Corps navigation canal called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, which intensified storm surges. The Corps has pledged that by 2011, the city will be safe from a 100-year storm--the level of protection that was required but never provided before Katrina. It has already repaired or improved 220 miles (350 km) of flood walls and levees and installed floodgates that during Gustav helped keep surges from Lake Pontchartrain out of the city's drainage...
...million Morganza-to-the-Gulf levee that Congress approved last year would include Dulac, but it would also cut off 135,000 acres (55,000 hectares) of wetlands. Scientists believe it would make the coast even less safe by ravaging storm buffers, amplifying storm surges and encouraging complacency. And a preliminary Corps analysis suggests that building the levee to real 100-year standards could cost $10.7 billion, a 1,200% increase. Before Gustav, Jindal had convened a science panel to review Morganza-to-the-Gulf, and momentum has been building for an alternative alignment that would protect Houma without cutting...
...honest assessments about where defense is possible and where retreat is necessary. The president of low-lying Plaquemines Parish declared after Gustav that "one home lost in Plaquemines is one home too many"--which is not a realistic standard. Politicians can make promises, but they can't make Dulac safe. And those politicians need to focus on protection instead of pork; before Katrina, the Corps was spending more money in Louisiana than in any other state, but it was wasting most of the funds on navigation boondoggles that had nothing to do with hurricane defense. Louisiana's political establishment...