by the Times-Picayune; the paper reported about the consequences of
budget cuts on the levees in June 2004:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509020001

There are people dying in the streets of New Orleans -- people
without food, without water, without shelter, without medical
attention; thousands of people suffering, in the richest nation in
the history of the world; people suffering, in part, because funding
for levees that could have lessened the devastation, people
suffering, in part,because days after the hurricane struck New
Orleans, neither food, nor water, nor medical supplies, nor
evacuation vehicles have arrived. People are suffering and
dying because a nation that can send a man to the moon can't send
doctors and food and water to New Orleans -- but the people in New
Orleans don't need news conferences. They need food, they need water,
and they need medical treatment.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan pretends everything is
OK, claiming, despite all available evidence, that "[t]here are ways
for them to get that [food and water] help." That doesn't seem to be
the case, no matter how much McClellan and the Post want us to think
things are going smoothly.

Rich Lowry and his colleagues at National Review Online's group The
Corner, seem to get it:

Right now, the entire country is watching a great American city
collapsing into hopeless devastation, and if there IS a Federal
response going on it is barely visible. Government has got to move
here.