New Orleans was spared the worst of Hurricane Gustav, and most importantly, while the storm surge topped the levees to the west of the city, they held. Mayor Nagin is cautioning that the city is not yet prepared for residents to return.
While the storm was not as bad as Hurricane Katrina, Nagin and the Bush Administration, who bungled the hurricane response in 2005, deserve credit for being much better prepared this time around. But all of this emphasizes how important it is to have an effective and responsible federal government, not one whose goal is to destroy itself to prove the ideological argument that government can never be effective. This is especially true in the wake of reports of how extensively victims of Katrina have been defrauded by contractors while trying to repair their homes.
–A. Serwer
