Ever since the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina's destruction in New Orleans and the Mississippi coast became clear, the political left has been in heightened outrage mode. First it was the Bush administration's callous budget cuts to flood control and levee projects in New Orleans. Unfortunately, these sorts of federal funding decisions are fundamentally political -- and not just at the presidential level, Congress shares some blame too.

Levee and flood control projects are long-term and time-consuming in normal times. Even five years are often insufficient for all of the planning and environmental studies (not to mention lawsuits over the environmental studies) for projects of this type -- nevermind the actual construction work. So, maybe we ought to take a glance back at the previous administration's attitude toward these types of projects. Thankfully EU ROTA has compiled quite a few stories from the Clinton administration demonstrating similar "devastating cuts" to the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for levee and flood control projects for New Orleans. In fairness, while there have been several tormer Clinton administration officials eager to blame President Bush (most notably Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal), President Clinton himself has been much more honest and refrained from crass politicization of the tragedy.

On Friday, I wrote that state and local officials were going to have to answer for their actions and inactions. Well, if President Bush looks bad, then New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Governor Kathleen Blanco look even worse. Check out these three posts from the Junkyard Blog with pictures of the Ray Nagin Memorial Motor Pool. And this post by Bill Hobbs. To briefly summarize what you'll find out in much more detail at those sites: First, Bush had to practically beg Gov. Blanco to order a mandatory evacuation before Katrina hit. Second, Mayor Nagin failed to use hundreds of school and metro buses to evacuate the poor from the city, as ordered in the city's emergency management plan. Once the shock has worn off, I think the majority of the public's ire is going to be directed at Blanco and Nagin.