What they're really saying in Louisiana

OpinionJournal wrote If you're wondering what citizens of New Orleans make of the plans to aid their city, try looking on nola.com, the Web site affiliated with the city's Times-Picayune. The paper's electronic edition and other services on the site have been a major destination for locals desperate to read and talk about the hurricane and its aftermath. Most important, nola.com has functioned as a lifeline. Since New Orleans and the communities dotting the delta below it began to flood, people have posted messages and directions there for potential rescuers. The subject lines say it all: "Elderly sisters may be in attic in Belle Chasse." "Injured woman, child need to leave Kenner." "Trapped In Plaquemines." "Missing on Seagull Lane." These days, you see fewer new notices like those and more reports of rescues. Yet alerts of all sorts still go out. A poignant S.O.S. this week came from Plaquemines parish, south of New Orleans: "Thousands of dogs, cats, goats, horses, cows, & other livestock are dropping dead or stumbling around everywhere. . . . Dogs, many of them beagles, healers, and other hunting or herding types of dogs, are wandering around helpless. . . . They keep trying to jump into the military trucks and go with the soldiers."

Also on nola.com, there is a large category of angry posts about the situation of New Orleans and its environs.... What's interesting about the angry messages is the choice of targets. The majority aren't about President Bush and the slow pace of federal assistance, for instance. Writers seem to be furious chiefly about the performance of local and state officials, specifically Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Messages blasting them for ineptitude during the crisis outnumber those about federal authorities.

They are right. FEMA did not do a fantastic job, but the big problem was that Gov Blanco did not anyone else to be in charge of anything, even though she was incapable of doing anything herself, and she was still mad at Mayor Nagin for supporting her opponent in 2003, and she wanted to punish him.

Then again, FEMA is not popular, in part because it represents the kind of bureaucracy that nobody likes even in good times and that Louisianans are wrangling with now. Indeed, suspicion of big government pops up in a number of posts, despite the federal largess that is about to rain down on the Gulf Coast. A generic lament on this subject seems to be: We need help, but a lot of it is going to be wasted and lost through corruption.