J'accuse!

John M. Barry, who knows about such things (he's a visiting scholar at the Tulane-Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research), plays the NOLA blame game in a NYT op-ed, and he's not letting the cosmic muffin take the rap...

"As it turns out, much of the destruction resulted not from an act of god but from human error. "

Nope, Barry makes it very clear. It's the fed's fault.

"...if the levees had performed as they were supposed to, the deaths in New Orleans proper, the scenes in the Superdome and the city's devastation would never have taken place.

Who is responsible? Many accusations, some of them valid, have been hurled at the Orleans Levee Board, a local body. But these accusations are irrelevant. The levee board did not design or build these levees. That was entirely the responsibility of the federal government, through the Corps of Engineers.

Just as a surgeon who improperly sutures an artery is responsible if the suture ruptures and the patient bleeds to death, the federal government is directly responsible for the loss of life and property in most of the city."

(my emphasis)

There it is. We, the people, have assumed the liability of as yet unknown billions of dollars because of the malpractice of the Republican government. There may be a morsel of merit to the argument that at least some of the responsibility should be shared by previous administrations that might have done more. It's inevitable, though, that the greater burden falls upon the party in power, the last with the opportunity to act. It's fitting, too, in this case, since Bushco™ responded to urgent warnings with reckless cuts.

The whole piece is well worth your while.