Campaign for America's Future Memorandum: Katrina Sto...( WASHINGTON Aug. 30 -- The follow...),Health

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a memorandum to editorial writers and columnists:

FROM: Toby Chaudhuri, Campaign for America's Future Communications Director

SUBJECT: Katrina Storm Warning

On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are struggling to rebuild their lives after one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Disaster often strikes suddenly and with too little warning. Communities mobilize to save lives and limit the damage. They then look to the federal government to join with state and local authorities to help in the rescue and the recovery. We join together in assisting those who were hit because we are part of one country. This is a measure of our patriotism, our sense that we are all in this together.

In New Orleans, the federal government -- too often aided and abetted by state and local incompetence -- has failed. With an appalled country watching, it failed callously in the rescue of those displaced. And in the past 2 years, it has failed the survivors. This failure is not an accident. It is a choice. It is a reflection of the conservative policies and perspectives that scorn government, outsource government responsibility to the private sector, perpetuate cronyism over professionalism and sacrifice the fate of American citizens for political gains. In New Orleans, the French Quarter thrives, but the Bottoms lies in ruins. The federal government is now furthering the urban removal that Katrina's fury began.

THE POLITICAL STORM

With the country appalled at the Bush administration's callous incompetence in the rescue of Katrina's survivors, the president belatedly traveled to New Orleans to stage a dramatic press conference where he promised that New Orleans would be rebuilt, and that the nation would begin to address the urban misery that the storm had exposed. That promise has been broken. Once more conservative pol
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