It’s time for action, not words

With “TURF WARS” consuming Louisiana and federal officials over who should have responded to what and when, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans on Wednesday gave the most clear-cut advice to the bureaucrats: Enough.

In an angry editorial, the Times-Picayune wrote that the feds, who accused local officials of hampering relief efforts by protecting their state’s home “turf,” are the ones engaging in an “awfully convenient dodge” of accountability. Further, establishing a federal commission to investigate the disaster response may help in the long run, the editorial said, but it “won’t address what ought to be everyone’s immediate priority: getting New Orleanians to safety and

The Sun-Herald of Biloxi, Miss., on Wednesday pleaded directly to its readers -- who were also hit hard by Katrina -- for “not one more death” by guarding themselves from the “lethal hangers-on of a killer that has done enough damage.” Among those killers, the Sun-Herald wrote, are contaminated drinking water, soaked electrical appliances and oppressive heat.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal editorializes today that in the hurricane’s aftermath, Washington lawmakers should avoid the temptation to reverse President Bush’s tax cuts. The Journal says the economic expansion stoked by the cuts should be sufficient for the government to finance hurricane relief. Disagreeing is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which says that keeping Bush’s tax cuts “are unlikely to help the neediest of the needy, those so poor they could not afford to flee New Orleans.”

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Paul Thornton