'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

[DoYouEverWonder]

June 27, 2006

WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/washington/27katrina.html?hp&ex=1151467200&en=fc734cc14df0b54d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Heck of job Georgie, heck of a job.

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. In the meantime 1000's of FEMA trailers sit empty

FEMA spends $250,000 a month to store about 10,000 empty mobile homes at an airfield in Hope, Ark.

[JudyM]

8. This is so ridiculously negligent. How long are they going to keep paying

waiting for people to inhabit them. Sell the damned things, already! And what incompetent official made these arrangements without first clearing it with the govt of Louisiana? They should be fired, IMO.

[SoCalDem]

15. Last I heard, they were in a meadow/pasture and were SINKING

intot he soft ground.. They packed them in so tightly, and the ground is so unstable, that they were having problems getting big vehicles in to even try and remove them..

Some fat-cat land owner made a pretty penny for "leasing" his land, and continues to rake in the "rental" fees.. and some fat cat contractor will rake in the dough if and when they ever get moved...

never mind that people in LA,MS.AL have no place to live...

[intheflow]

18. They shouldn't sell them.

They should move them to that fancy, updated Army base in Alabama. That way FEMA wouldn't have to pay rent on a storage facility.

Then, they could use the savings to bring the families at least back to homes in the South. It's a lot easier to rebuild your life in New Orleans living in Alabama than it is if you're living in Los Angeles or New York City or Denver or whatever three-day drive it is from where they evacuated you. And then the Army base updates wouldn't be taxpayer money wasted.

Of course they'd have to remove all barbed wire fencing around the base. That'd be too close to a detention center. :scared: I'm talking about making this a temporary public housing facility, not a pen.

[JudyM]

25. Good idea! nt

[Canuckistanian]

9. O-M-G

:wow: I never knew there were that many.

[hootinholler]

17. The mother of all tornado targets! n/t

[hobbit709]

2. I want to know

just how much of the allocated and donated funds were siphoned off for george's dirty little war.

[Bridget Burke]

10. And what proportion of the funds supporting the War....

Are just going into the pockets of Bush's cronies?

[intheflow]

19. Ask Halliburton and the Bechtel Group.

US: No-Bid Contracts Win Katrina Work
White House uses practices criticized in Iraq rebuilding for hurricane-related jobs.
by Yochi J. Dreazen, The Wall Street Journal
September 12th, 2005

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12620

[ixion]

3. breath-taking catastrophic success

coupled with staggering levels of graft and corruption is the hallmark of BushCo.

[babylonsister]

4. Must recommend, if only to highlight what we might be in for this

year. This is disgusting; I never knew how high the level of greed could be, at the expense of fellow human beings.

[JeffR]

5. Imagine the worst, then raise it to the power of 10

And you've probably come up with the lower range of possible corruption, in anything they do.

[Skink]

6. Breathtaking, oh you're just saying, really breathtaking...

:bounce:

[azurnoir]

7. Notice they mention

the woman from Illinois twice in the article once in the beginning and once at the end, the second time they used her name, could it be to make it look like two separate incidents? This "massive fraud" program is a variant of the "Southern Solution?". Supposedly the same thing happened after Andrew but no front page national stories were published about it, wonder why?

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. They put most of the focus on individual cases

and diverted attention from the incredible waste and deliberate incompetence of the Bush administration.

[redqueen]

24. Well of course... why would the 'liberal' media

want to highlight that it's bush's administration that's done so much to encourage this culture of corruption?

Those who see Enron's executives walking away with a slap on the wrist and only having to sell a few of their mansions... what lesson do we learn from Kenny Boy and his pals? from bush and his oil buddies? It's all a-okay if you get away with it! So why not try?!

[lonestarnot]

12. Bushitler, worst disaster in history!

[ovidsen]

13. And Republicans say they have a plan?

You know, a plan for Iraq, a plan for the economy, a plan for this and that....

This is a shining example of Bush administration planning.

After 9/11, without any foresight, they created the Department of Homeland Security, made FEMA (which used to be independent) part of DHC, and then disembowled it, dismissed or chased away experienced disaster managers, stocked it with political hack like Michael Brown...

And now they're dumbdounded at how wasteful and inefficient FEMA is??

Now THAT'S planning....

[bunkerbuster1]

14. One guess as to how this will be spun this week.

Focus on the small time fraud, ignore the heavy-duty stuff, unless (of course) the latter has a "D" attached to the name.

[Swede]

16. What's breathtaking is $2 billion spend a week in Iraq.

Katrina is a blip when compared.

[intheflow]

20. Recommended.

There's so much wrong with this story on so many levels. What's worse is that the administration will use this in the disaster to deny truly needy people financial asisstance, assuming that their own ineptitude, lack of planning, and fiscal irresponsibility is proof that the vast majority of citizens who applied for and got federal assistance after the storm are too irresponsible to be "trusted" with taxpayer dollars. The fox is in charge of the henhouse, all right. :grr:

[indepat]

21. A $B here, a $B there are real money, but peanuts compared to Iraqi

squandering on a weekly or so basis, every week or so.

[superconnected]

22. Thank the Gooberment.

[young_at_heart]

23. This is a wrench in the GOP plans to project themselves as "winners"

"Cut and run", "swiftboating", etc. are just two of underhanded tactics used by the GOP. Their goal has always been to show themselves as tough and the winning team.