The media is playing up Katrina but as long as Nagin is out there bloviating it's a lost cause. They've gotten bazillions of dollars and all he can do is cry racism.
It's corruption, plain and simple.
I had the pleasant opportunity to educate the young man who was the cashier at Trader Joe's, a local, sorty hippie grocery store, the other day. He is a bit of a 'crunchy'; long hair, sandals, etc. Anyway for some reason I mentioned we were moving back to MS, and that got us to talking about Katrina. He said that he'd heard something awful the other day, that New Orleans had asked for money to fix the levees for years, and was denied the funds.
I let him know, that what he heard was WRONG, that Louisiana had been getting money for years to fix the levees, and that it was the fault of corruption that the levees didn't get fixed. There has been plenty of money, but the levee board members have made sure that they each got a piece of that Fed. money pie for their own districts, leaving the levees in New Orleans poorly maintained.
I don't know if he believed me or not, but at least I was able to offer some food for thought.