News shocker: most of the federal money sent to help folks in Mississippi has gone to relatively affluent residents and big business. According to the New York Times, the Bush Administration waived a rule mandating that 50 percent of all federal disaster relief grants go to low-income programs.

Mississippi officials told the Times that they do not discriminate by race or income in distributing aid to storm victims. In response, low income victims cried bullshit.

The state’s plan “moves business to the forefront and forgets about the people on the ground,” said Anthony Thompson, pastor at Tabernacle of Faith Ministries, whose spotless church (rebuilt by volunteers) is next to a moldering subsidized housing project that he says has not been touched since the storm.

In his mostly black neighborhood in west Gulfport, Mr. Thompson said, “I see a lot of people waiting on help. I see a lot of houses still damaged.”

Critics say that upper and upper-middle class residents are benefiting from the funding both directly and indirectly. Officials suggested that remaking the Gulfport shipping port, a project garnering substantial grant funding, for example, is essential to providing jobs in the area. But the Times reports that those jobs have never gone to low-income residents, a fact that’s not likely to change after the state has spent millions in earmarked low-income grant money on its reconstruction.