I think my (and probably other's) feelings on this issue are being misinterpreted.
I DO feel sympathy for those good people who stayed and lost everything. you can't be human and not recognize their sorrow and loss.
However, I CANNOT accept them or anyone else placing the responsibility for their situation on the cops, the city, the feds or Bush's mom.
There are choices people make for a variety of reasons, sound or otherwise that turn around and bite them. In any event, the chain of responsibility for the individual never stops anywhere but at the individual.
By allowing folks to falsely blame "society", "the gummint", "white (or black) people" or whatever, we participate in a lie that leads down the primrose path to dependence and a lack of personal responsibility. It leads to adults behaving like spoiled children when this hard life we lead turns "unfair" on them.
If they stayed because they lacked resources to leave, that isn't "the gummint's" fault. If they stayed because, against all common sense, they believed the levees would hold, that too isn't "the gummint's" fault.
We need to hold people to higher standards, if we don't, people will settle for the easy road of dependence.
So, we give the minimum help to save their lives, figure out the minimum amount of assistance necessary (as individuals, not some vague "flood survivor" class) to get them moving forward, and set them on their way.
At no time do we let them indulge in "blame everybody else" idiocy. It's that kind of indulgence that got them (and us) to this point already.