It is two years after Hurricane Katrina and what has become President Bush's emblematic war on the poor and black of New Orleans.

The anniversary is remembered by Walter Mosley, writing in The Nation:

We are coming up on the two-year mark since the Katrina debacle in Louisiana and Mississippi. I hesitate to call this date an anniversary because the word implies, in some way, a celebration, a birth. What we are scratching on the calendar is more like a notch on a raw gravestone, a count of the days and years that have passed without a reckoning for those who died, those who lost loved ones and for a city that is still in critical condition.

Not only did our government fail to answer the call of its most vulnerable citizens during that fateful period; it still fails each and every day to rebuild, redeem and rescue those who are ignored because of their poverty, their race, their passage into old age.

UPATE: Thursday MSM links after the jump.

You can help focus this issue politically . The Jewish Funds For Justice has created a website with a ten-point program for responding appropriately to the challenges posed by Mr. Bush and his Hurricane; easiest among them: sign an epetition here to help presidential candidates focus on Katrina failures and the future. Also good reading don't miss it. See also the articles and resources posted by the Campaign For America's Future including a worth-the-click video of the decider-in-chief and his trail of broken promises.

There are some worthwhile Katrina reports in the mainstream media: Newsday, for example, leads with a story on the Katrina-impact on
children at risk with video clips and a thoughtful op-ed by Douglas Brinkley which points out the modest gains and significant failures in rebuilding (Homeland Security left town). The NY Times has a dramatic interactive video here and a report on how Gov. Kathleen Blanco explains that Louisiana was not to blame for Katrina nursing home deaths here.

What we face here is the flat refusal of Mr. Bush & his employee to rebuild New Oleans. As the Jewish Funds For Justice points out:

Washington set aside $16.7 billion for Community Development Block Grants, one of the two biggest sources of rebuilding funds, especially for housing. But as of March 2007, only $1 billion — just 6 percent — had been spent, almost all of it in Mississippi. Following bad publicity, HUD spent another $3.8 billion on the program between March and July, leaving 70 percent of the funds still unused.

The other major source of rebuilding help was supposed to be FEMA’s Public Assistance Program. But of the $8.2 billion earmarked, only $3.4 billion was meant for nonemergency projects like fixing up schools and hospitals.

Louisiana officials recently testified that FEMA has also “low-balled” project costs, underestimating the true expenses by a factor of four or five. For example, for 11 Louisiana rebuilding projects, the lowest bids came to $5.5 million — but FEMA approved only $1.9 million.

After the failure of federal levees flooded 80 percent of New Orleans, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received $8.4 billion to restore storm defenses. But as of July 2007, less than 20 percent of the funds have been spent, even as the Corps admits that levee repair won’t be completed until as late as 2011

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Did you want to read another good Katrina riff with links to even more? Click here for Annie Clark's post on the DMIBlOG.

Can we make Mr. Bush and the Republican Party pay for this evil war on the poor?