Failing the Poor

Opinion Journal says the welfare state failed New Orlean's poor long before Katrina:

This isn't a failure of President Bush's compassionate conservatism. Nor is it evidence that Ronald Reagan's philosophy of smaller government is fatally flawed. If LBJ had won his war on poverty, Ninth Ward residents would have had the means to drive themselves out of New Orleans. Instead, after decades and billions of tax dollars have been poured into big government programs, one out of four people in the Big Easy were still poor. That is an indictment of the welfare state and all its antipoverty programs.

Being poor isn't necessarily a bad thing, as some would have you believe. What's worse is being poor in spirit.