Katrina help

This sounds promising:

"The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot," says Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the Republican Study Group, an influential caucus of conservative House members. "We want to turn the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise. The last thing we want is a federal city where New Orleans once was."

No doubt we'll hear a lot of kicking and screaming over this.

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Update: Dovetails with this editorial:

Mr. Bush has a chance tonight to turn all of this around. Instead of channeling more cash through the same failed bureaucracies, he should declare the entire Gulf Coast region an enterprise zone, with low tax rates for new investments and waivers for any regulatory obstacles to rebuilding. He can also learn from California's 1994 earthquake experience -- which former Governor Pete Wilson described on this page on Tuesday -- and demand emergency powers to waive rules and allow bonus payments for contractors that finish projects ahead of time.

Above all, he can reframe the entire debate on how to help the poor of New Orleans. The people who couldn't flee the storm were not ignored by "small government conservatism," as if that actually still exists outside of Hong Kong. The city's poor have been smothered by decades of corrupt, paternal government -- local, state and federal.

While Chicago and other cities leveled their public housing projects, the Big Easy has continued to run nasty places like the Lafitte homes. The city's crime rate is 10 times the national average, even as New York and other big cities have seen their rates fall. Its public schools are as bad as any, and its city government more corrupt than most. The last thing the poor need is to be returned to such tender, loving care.