After Hurricane Katrina, FEMA instituted policies to get money into victim's hands quickly. These policies were immediately overruled, with the reason given that FEMA needed to thoroughly review the requests to make sure they weren't fraudulent. But those reviews did nothing to stop the fraud, which produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams and bungles in modern history ($2 billion and counting). The other effect is that low-income housing is not getting rebuilt in New Orleans, to the point that many agencies have stopped their attempts. New Orleans will be less black. A commentator feels this matches conservative philosophy quite well: People who are better off are better people. The poor got that way because they are bad people. It is their own fault. Helping them only reinforces their badness and takes money away from the good people. Can the government help people? Yes. Should it? According to conservatives, no, it shouldn't. Therefore conservatives make sure that it doesn't help them, even though it can. Thus the Katrina response is a success. Quite a contrast to what I understand of Christianity. For the record, my Christmas card photo was me on a Katrina work mission.
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