Recently, predictably, the press front-paged the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with pictures and stories featuring New Orleans—mostly with tales about individuals with persisting problems: primarily bemoaning government bureaucracy, depressing conditions and lack of ready cash. To be fair, one article in The Philadelphia Inquirer gave hints of "hope in a region haunted by memories."

It’s haunting, too, that we haven’t seen much written accounting for the billions of public dollars that have poured into that pumped-out Lake Woebegone and how funds from the federal pipeline are being spent or, more probably, misspent.

While reading an Associated Press article reporting Census Bureau estimates that the poverty rate dropped a tad—also front page, but much less prominent—I wondered. Is there a connection? Did the poverty rate drop because of all the taxpayer money that has been sent to the Gulf Coast? I don’t have any figures to show a relationship and the short AP story gave no breakdown of statistics, but a case might be made. There’s another reason to suspect that Katrina helped reduce poverty.

In July 2005, the month before Katrina, the population of Orleans Parish was nearly 455,000. Apparently only 60 percent returned because in July 2007 the population was less than 274, 000. Most of those who returned are rebuilding; probably with federal funding, which, I assume, is reportable income. And could it be that those who didn’t return found work and got out of poverty? One can only speculate.

Typically, little actual work sustains a poor family in America: only about 16 hours each week. With one adult working 40 hours weekly, "nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of poverty," according to the Heritage Foundation.

Many poor New Orleans residents were probably single mothers subsisting on government welfare (Heritage Foundation figures show that two-thirds of children classified as poor live with a single parent). Just after the hurricane someone at the Washington Post wrote, "hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina seem to be disappearing…." AP statistics showed that public school enrollment in February 2007 was only 40 percent of that in the fall of 2004. Apparently, many families with children did not return. Could they be better off now?

Conditions change along the Gulf Coast. Over in Mississippi, another AP story about planners wanting to reinvent the "Redneck Riviera" with "New Urbanism" claims that federal funds have flowed slow to cities in that state. Maybe Democrats have stalled cash flow to Mississippi because it had a Republican governor. Or, could it be that Mississippians are more self-sufficient than…what are people from New Orleans called: New Orleanians or New Orleanders?

Speaking of politics and Democrats, the AP poverty-story reporter called the poverty dip good economic news, but couldn’t resist dragging in the obligatory bad news about 47 million "Americans without health insurance." Congressman Charles Rangel, D-New York, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (named for the ways they have to tax us that give them the means to spend), got into this story. He used the occasion of the Census report to justify more government insurance programs, and croaked out the tired refrain: Bush policies favoring the rich have dug "a deep hole" for the poor.

The poor dig their own holes, Charley. And you want the government to give them shovels. Heritage Foundation figures show that we have 1.5 million out-of-wedlock births each year. Children with resident working fathers do not live in poverty. If poor mothers married, most of their children would "immediately be lifted out of poverty." But that would not be good news for those champions of dependency: Big Welfare and Democrats.

The House and Senate have passed bills to "dramatically increase spending for ‘Children’s Health Insurance.’" The latest figures that show 15.8 percent of Americans "without insurance" give liberals justification for increasing taxes and incrementally moving us toward socialized health care. Yet stories analyzing this figure and identifying the 47 million have-nots rarely show in the print press. At the end of the AP poverty story, a short paragraph explains part of the lack-of-insurance distortion.

"The income group with the most people losing insurance was households making $75,000 or more a year, showing that the issue is not limited to the poor."

Thanks to Associated Press reporter Stephen Ohlemacher for a tidbit of truth about this. But we need much more to counter the warped views to promote government programs that support poverty—those counterproductive to the solutions: they being marriage and work.