As a former resident of Louisiana and a current resident of Mississippi, I must agree with the authors that Barbour's performance is overrated, and also that Mississippi has gotten a better deal from Washington than Louisiana has.

There has been rebuilding on the Gulf Coast, but most of the activity is casino reconstruction. I do not have anything against casinos, but the long-term effect of Katrina on the MS Gulf Coast looks like it will be a conversion from a mixed economy of fishing, recreation, and small businesses with casinos into a 100% casino community. Barbour's first act after the storm was to push regulation through allowing casinos to build on land. Prior to the storm, all casinos had to be on boats or barges. This change resulted in a flurry of gaming investment, but it obliterated the intent of the boat-casino law, which was to protect the towns from becoming nothing but casino towns. I hardly consider this an achievement.

It is not true that Mississippi got more money than Louisiana. Louisiana got $59 billion of the original $110 billion relief package, which is more than any single state. However it is quite true that on a per capita basis, Mississippi got much more.

The biggest problem with the "relief" package is that there was very little relief in it. Most of the money Congress "generously" gave was money it had to pay out anyway. The federal government had billions in property losses from Katrina. There was an Air Force base in Biloxi and an Army base in New Orleans. There was a $2 billion stretch of I-10 near New Orleans that is federal property and had to be fixed. The Feds lost Post Offices, military hospitals, national park properties, and many other federal assets. The repair costs for all these loses are included in the $59 billion.

The Federal government is also the financer of the Federal Flood Insurance Program. This program paid out $20 billion in Louisiana after the storm and this money was considered "relief" by the Bushies. The people in that program paid premiums for years and had up to date policies. They were due that money by contract, and it is ridiculous that these billions have been repeatedly called "aid" by GW Bush.

Mississippi got about $3 billion in bloc grants for housing reconstruction. Louisiana got $7 billion, even though it had at least four times as many affected residences.

The article is absolutely right in its assertion that the government requirement that states pay 10% of the cost has been a huge problem. In the place I lived in before the storm, St. Bernard Parish, 20,000 homes were destroyed. Only 6 buildings in the entire parish (county) were not flooded. St Bernard has had enormous problems coming up with its 10%. How do you come up with millions of dollars when 99.998% of your housing stock has been destroyed?

Bush gleefully waived the 10% requirement for New York, one of the richest cities in the world, after 9/11. How will Pearlington Mississippi manage what the Big Apple could not? Gov. Barbour is resistent to pushing to have this requirement waived because he has been puckering up to the Bushies for too long. If anyone gets this gravely needed concession, it will be the Louisiana delegation to Congress, and Kathleen Blanco.

Funny how the much maligned Blanco may be providing more help to the folks in Pearlington and Waveland than their hypocrite of a governor.

I understand that it is foolish to argue that "you can't spend too much money on defense," as many folks argued in the 1980s, but there are clear benefits to a strong military. Several times in U.S. history (WWII is the classic example) our country was caught flat-footed with and underfunded military when we really needed one.

I am absolutely a Bush-hater, but the neocons are right about one thing. When war comes, we won't have time to raise an army. And Mr. Dreyfuss leaves me confused. While I have no reason to doubt his numbers, he starts off his comparison of budgets using constant 1996 dollars, which is very helpful, but I think he slips back into 2007 dollars when he discussed the current budget. Does he? I can't tell for sure.

As memory serves, in 1989 Bush the First deployed 600,000 troops to Kuwait. It is my understanding that we do not have that many combat ready soldiers today. We are maxed out in Iraq with 150,000. This would imply that our military is substantially smaller in terms of active combat troops than it was in the 1980s, and I believe this is indeed the case.

We are spending more money and getting fewer troops. This is because the government likes to buy junk instead of hiring people. They would rather have a remote controlled Sidewinder missle with color 3D graphics than a human being who wears an Old Glory patch on his sleeve, speaks fluent Arabic, and represents our country with honor. Soldiering may not be for everyone, but its a living, and the health insurance is better than a lot of civilians get.

In short, I am good with more troops, fewer stupid wars, and less money spent on space age junk that doesn't work anyway. I suspect almost every penny spent on "homeland security" is wasted on technology we don't need. The way to defend our nation from terrorism at home is first, to efficiently and rapidly erase terrorist groups that attack us (and that means quality troops), and second, to be good world citizens and become too respected by all to be attacked in the first place.

Any chance of that happening any time soon. Nope.