Katrina Aid

After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush Administration and the Congress got an incentive program going to award tax-free bonds and other benefits to help businesses recover. Care to guess who has been raking in the money from that?

Here's a hint: It hasn't been the businesses around New Orleans.

But five years after Congress passed the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005, more of the tax-free benefits have gone to the state’s powerful oil industry than to development in hard-hit areas. New Orleans has so far received a total of $55 million in bonds shared between eight projects—or less than 1 percent of the more than $5.9 billion issued statewide. None of the bonds issued for New Orleans projects went to development in hard-hit and still-struggling areas like the Lower Ninth Ward.

Louisiana is a corrupt state that would be a joke even in the Third World. That the state's politicians have siphoned off those redevelopment funds to benefit an already rich and powerful industry, while screwing the people of New Orleans in the process, just reeks of graft and payoffs.

But you won't see a single politician from the Confederate party even raise a hint of outrage at this. Because, after all, Louisiana Governor Bobby "Anchor Baby" Jindall is from that party.