Katrina victims lose in appeals court

[Dr_LHA 3]

I am in favor of federal disaster relief. That is one of the functions of the federal government. Despite what the media coverage might have shown I think we did a good job of helping the victims of Katrina. Some of the responsibility for the perceived lack of a response must be shouldered by the people themselves. They were warned that a huge storm was coming and they didn't leave. Some should also fall on the local and state governments. "school bus" Nagin had the means to get people out and he didn't do it. The federal government shouldn't be the first, last and only solution to a problem. The local government should take that task on and turn to the federal government when it gets to much for them. I am really sickend by the way this whole thing was politicized. Somehow it turned into Bush's fault when in reality the local and state government made things as bad as they were.

While I'll agree that some of what you say is true (specifically about the lack of evac and Nagin's complicity in that), the fact is that FEMA did a shitty job with Katrina no matter how you look at it. Like it or not the Federal government does have the task of this sort of disaster relief, which is why FEMA exists. Sadly at the time it was suffering from 2 things: Being run by an incompetent (Mike "Heck of a job Brownie" Brown) and having had recently been put under a whole new level of red tape by being absorbed by Homeland Security. Katrina exposed how useless FEMA was and Brown lost his job over it (even though Chertoff was as much to blame IMHO).