Two Differerent Worlds

On the one hand, you have one in which the federal government is slow-walking on the issue of compensating homeowners in the Katrina-flood disaster. More than six months after federally-built floodwalls and levees failed, homeowners have yet to learn what, if any, compensation they will get if they rebuild, and if they can't.

Meanwhile, as the newsreaders like to say, there's the planet on which the Pombo bill proposes to compensate developers whose plans run afoul of the Endangered Species Act at the full market value of the proposed development. Public Radio's "To the Point" discussed the Pombo bill today, but what would be more helpful to this confused observer is some attempt to connect the two worlds--the one in which people's homes have been destroyed by federal incompetence and compensation may never come and the one in which they can be compensated for their property and yet retain it intact.