Medary.com

It was Mississippi, not Louisiana, which took the direct hit from Katrina. Why aren't we hearing much about the hurricane recovery efforts in Mississippi? I humbly suggest two reasons:

1: New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen.
if you build a city below sea level in a hurricane zone, you should expect to have it catastrophically flooded every once in a while. Building levees to Category-3 hurricane levels in a world where Category 5 hurricanes exist was foolish in the extreme. We now reap the bitter harvest of that decision.

2: Mississippi's leadership is more competent than Louisiana's.
I don't know how else to say this. Do you even know the name of the Biloxi mayor? How about Gulfport's? Has Mississippi governor Haley Barbour entered full-bore CYA mode like Louisiana Governor Blanco and New Orleans mayor Nagin?

Put point 1 and point 2 together, and you have a "perfect storm" of governmental failure.