As America turned towards Texas and Ohio to hear “Yes We Can” chants and five-point Clinton plans, dozens of important stories have flown under the radar. Down here, one story has grabbed my attention and been somewhat overlooked.

The federal government has been poisoning evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in their homes for more than two years.

One cannot drive around the Gulf Coast without seeing FEMA trailers, as more than 140,000 have been given out. In June 2006, a man died in his trailer because of fumes.

A few months later, a trailer-dweller and Sierra Club member lobbied that environmental group to begin testing for formaldehyde because of his family’s respiratory diseases.

Within months, Becky Gillette, the head of the Mississippi Sierra Club, received disturbingly consistent results: The average level of formaldehyde in the trailers was more than 12 times the recommended level.

Gillete began informally lobbying FEMA to create more widespread tests at the beginning of 2007. But FEMA dragged its feet because the Office of Legal Counsel told high officials it couldn’t acknowledge the dangerous conditions. FEMA didn’t request tests until a year after Gillette did her tests.

The director of FEMA, R. David Paulison, announced the results on Valentine’s Day 2008. As trailer-dwelling couples celebrated a third trailer-bound holiday, he announced that dangerously high levels will force residents to move out of trailers.

He even announced a plan of attack for the medical bills of poisoned residents: “We’ll look into that.”

In FEMA-speak, the billing system seems unlikely to be implemented, to say the least.

A few lessons emerge from this infuriating story.

For one thing, FEMA’s incompetence has morphed into blatant malfeasance. FEMA intentionally slowed down the process of testing trailers and warning residents of possibly fatal dangers because of legal liability.

For another thing, the federal government refused to admit mistakes in the aftermath of Katrina in any substantive way.

The government built faulty levees yet refused to take blame for Katrina deaths. Similarly, the government housed displaced residents in poisonous trailers and didn’t help them medically.

Finally, one sees how the whole country, across partisan lines, has forgotten about the worst-off population of the Gulf Coast.

We live in a country in which the government poisoned its own residents after flooding them out of their homes, yet it barely makes the news.