Interesting to read that conmen in New Orleans spent more than £750 million of disaster relief meant for the victims of Hurricane Katrina on pornography, strippers and holidays. Up to 7,000 cheats received federal aid intended to shelter and clothe thousands of evacuees after the disaster last August, according to an audit presented to Congress yesterday. The frauds happened because the agency in charge, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), did nothing to check the identity of claimants. Well, I guess they were in a hurry to help all those "po' black people" that SO concerned the MSM?
Congressman Charles Dent reacted with disbelief at the finding that a man managed to acquire emergency money to fund a sex-change operation. "This is an assault on the American taxpayer," Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House homeland security committee's sub-committee on investigations, told the New York Post.
So it is. And yet the liberals out there were SO BUSY foaming at the mouth and blaming George W Bush for what happened in New Orleans that they entirely missed the widespread criminality which unfortunately disfigures New Orleans. It wasn't acquire the name the Big Sleazy for nothing.
I suppose Bush had nothing to do with making sure that FEMA assistance went to the right people and nor did his administration?
Posted by: Adrian | June 15, 2006 at 11:24 AM
FEMA was under enormous pressure, fueled by media hysteria, to deliver aid immediately to the victims. Don't you know that delaying aid in order to complete background checks is "inhumane" and "uncaring", even if the poor dears making the claim have no proper identification?
Posted by: JWK | June 15, 2006 at 12:06 PM
JWK I think you're right but surely the aid could have been delivered in a form that would be harder to misuse.
Bush didn’t ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: “We are fully prepared.”
Posted by: Adrian | June 15, 2006 at 01:50 PM
We must expect some of the genuine problem issues surrounding the Katrina management controversy to be ignored by the overtly 'race conscious' established media networks, incidents like this, and the disturbing acts of murder and robbery perpetrated in a variety of locations by the displaced "po' black people" upon those who gave them sanctuary, and also the seemingly instant slide into chaos follow the collapse of the infrastructure are indicative of the very real social crisis that rendered these people so helpless in the first place, a social crisis our beloved moral dispensaries are of course to egalitarian to tackle in any realistic way, for fear of offending people with the public (multi racial) addressing of difficult and (statistically) virtually mono-racial problems.
After all so long as we are prohibited from offending one and other surely we then live in a plural society...
Posted by: jaun | June 15, 2006 at 01:50 PM
Adrian,
Is there nothing you won't blame GWB for? Seriously. FEMA is an enormous organization and as someone else already noted, if Bush had perused over the figures to account for where every last penny was going, you would have been here howling that the money wasn't distributed fast enough. Jesus, the man's got enough flaws without you blaming him for every last thing that goes wrong in the US.
Posted by: Emily | June 15, 2006 at 04:17 PM
Adrian,
Is there nothing you won't blame GWB for?
I'm with Truman.
Posted by: Madradin Ruad | June 15, 2006 at 05:45 PM
Emily,
I don't blame GWB for the hurricane as such.
However I do think he was in charge of appointing the right guys to direct the relief effort.
In which case, surely a high level Federal official known to Bush should have personally supervised what was going on, I don't mean to the last dollar but at least monitoring what was going on.
Unfortunately Bush didn't realise (until it was too late) that it would turn out to be politically sensitive and bad for his PR.
Posted by: Adrian | June 15, 2006 at 06:23 PM
Blame the local and state governments then.
FEMA WAS waiting, federal government WAS waiting, twiddling it's thumbs because the local government refused to allow the feds to help. The state has to authorize the use of the feds - the state refused to do that until it was quite late. Bush begged Blanco to authorize the feds - she had to think about it while she got her hair done and dressed for the TV cameras. The local authorities confiscted arms from the law abiding citizens. The local government prevented people from leaving the city in the aftermath. The local government DID NOT IMPLEMENT IT'S DISASTER PLAN - not one letter of it.
Notice in devastated parts of MS we didn't have the problems that we had in N.O. Why? Because the state was on the ball with what THEY should have been doing and they authorized the federal government to come in and assist.
As far as those FEMA funds - what a joke. The debit card relief card SEEMED like a good idea at the time and looked good on paper I suppose. It failed to take into account the fact that human beings out there will steal anything they can from anyone they can. They don't care. It's not their money and they don't care - it's the way they're raised. Gubment handouts - they're called 'entitlements' because certain people feel entitled to YOUR money.
Posted by: Monica-Philadelphia | June 17, 2006 at 06:56 AM
Monica:
The coast of Mississippi as you may recall from your home schooling has a significantly smaller population than New Orleans. It is really apples and oranges. The disaster exposed how unprepared and incompetent we were at all three levels (Bush, Blanco and Nagin). The fraud is disgusting, and corruption is a hallowed pastime in Lousiana. We can only hope that the offenders are punished at a local level because Angola State Pen is far worse than any federal prison.
Posted by: mahons | June 20, 2006 at 08:02 PM
Hey man...sorry I missed the party. nokia6630
Posted by: Marta | July 01, 2006 at 03:53 PM
Posted by: | August 15, 2007 at 07:51 PM