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"When you have a corrupt government that never tends to its business, you have a school system that doesn't educate, you have drug rehabilitation programs that don't rehabilitate ... It's like the dominos are all falling," Wilson said. "What happened is, Katrina lifted up a rock and revealed the horrible circumstances under which people have been living."

The GOP politician believes those educational failures have encouraged some New Orleans residents to develop an unhealthy dependence on government.

"The generations of corruption and welfare contributed to making people feel so dependent on the government that they were willing to sit in the Superdome in the filth and the chaos that was there," Wilson alleged. "It's a vicious cycle. The more ignorant their constituents are, the more power (the politicians) have, so they can run out on Election Day and load a bunch of people on a bus and take them to vote."

Wilson said she cannot understand why the city did not use its fleet of buses to effectively evacuate residents. "We had 500 buses, and they were picking people up at home and bringing them to the [Superdome]. Why didn't they just take them out of town?" Wilson asked. "There never was a shortage of buses when it came to Election Day. Why was there a shortage of buses when it came to getting the heck out of town?"

Based on her experiences with both the levee board and the city council, Wilson hopes President Bush breaks his promise to have local officials control the federal funding dedicated to rebuilding New Orleans and the surrounding areas.

"I just hope that they don't give us the money without giving us the kind of checks and balances to make sure that it's properly spent," Wilson said. "These greedy people are going to cut it up into pieces, and God only knows what we'll have at the other end."

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