Federal investigators already determined that $1 billion in aid to Hurricane Katrina victims was misspent. Now they are estimating that another $1 billion may have been wasted on no-bid contracts with businesses. Some waste is expected in a crisis, but not $2 billion worth.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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20 Comments
So lets see how this works…get bitched at for not HURRYING…then get bitched out for HURRYING and money gets misspent…
hmmmm. amazing how that works in hind sight.
I think the key phrase here is ‘no-bid contracts’. Sounds like alot of good ole’ boys network that got the biggest chunk of the money.
Let’s face it, Bush and Company completely failed with Katrina. What made it worse was the fact that every television network had daily pictures of the misery but yet the federal government did nothing until how many days later? And don’t give me that ‘the governor didn’t call’ crap line. George W. Bush should have called her and insisted she do her job. If he would have done that, more average people would have a better perception of him. As it is now, GWB will always be known as the man that doesn’t care about black people.
Oh brother..here we go again…it is all GW’s fault. Yep…it is his fault that we don’t have several thousand National Guard troops standing on every street corner, ready to respond instantly wherever help is needed.
Sorry to burst your bubble..but NG troops are people with jobs, families, and they don’t all live right in New Orleans. It takes a while to muster, gather supplies, drive, form orders, etc. The National Guard is not a light switch that can be deployed in seconds.
I am not saying the federal government did all they could, and do agree there was definite room for improvement..but this ridiculous unrealistic expectation of immediate response is without merit.
It seems that a part of the Katrina disaster relief ‘fiasco’ was a lack of planning on how to respond to such a disaster, whether caused by nature or by man; IIRC, there was quite a bit of criticism in the media about the lack of a plan on the part of the Department of Homeland Security (of which FEMA is a part) to deal with large magnitude disasters. Had there been, for lack of a better term, ‘gaming’ and preparation of a ‘master plan’, perhaps there would have been a structure which could have been quickly imposed on the situation, reducing the waste that seemingly flowed from contradictory actions on all levels with little to no coordination, and hopefully could have also provided a structure where no-bid contracts would not have been deemed necessary or essential, an ability to do fraud checks, etc.
It bothers me, too, that (again from memory) there had been studies on the effects of a cat 4 or 5 storm on the New Orleans area prepared years before, at least some of which were reasonably accurate on the problems encountered with flooding, ability to evacuate, etc., which seemingly were ignored.
wow suza that’s sure some interesting thinking.
As a so-called expert in Safety I can tell you that Preparedness for Disaster first comes from local providers and then you seek help at the National level. If you are not ready at the local level, you won’t be ready to receive help from the National Level.
Sound silly you say? Nope, there are methods for a Community and Companies, private homeowners to be prepared to receive help. Standing there with your hand out won’t get it when you lose everything. There must be some action on the victims part before the event.
New Orleans and Lousiana failed their Citizens miserably. On a scale of 1 to 10, I give them a -100. Why you say?
Because they ignored their aging flood walls and systems. They had no contingency plans in place if they broke. New Orleans had no education plan for the Citizens in event of a Hurricane/tidal surge or flood.
New Orleans Plan for Disaster was to open up their Sports Stadium and allow radio/TV announcements to announce certain highways were open for evacuation. That’s it! Nothing else.
Now to the part you are yelping about Suza, about being prepared to get help. There were zero state planned functions to assist the citizens in receiving food, water or making claims to get assistance…zero. This takes a huge amount of planning and should have been done and practice yearly.
It was Mayor Nagin that didn’t care about his own people in New Orleans. He had all the resources there at hand in New Orleans to plan, develop and implement Emergency Action Plans. About the only thing Nagin did was to yell fire or should I say “water come – run.” That’s not much of a plan.
Not everything that happens in this world is Bush’s fault. If you want to argue about this subject, bring, but remember I’m the so-called expert in planning for disasters.
And from experience I can tell you my services are grossly underutilized. :)
raptor,
The NG is a light switch, but the Coast Guard, the Army, the Navy and Air Force are all light switches that can be deployed with hours of notice. Granted, that will be hard with half of our armed forces in Iraq and 1/4 on leave, leaving the last 1/4 to do the work.
We can airlift and drop food in Indonesia in less than 4 days. We can have special forces anywhere in the world in 48 hours.
The point here is that the federal government at ALL LEVELS did not respond when Blancko did not.
Here is how blame is passed:
The run up to the hurricane is solely on Mayor Nagin, some on the Gov.
Immediately after, is Blancko (remember she controls the LA National Guard)
Than say, two days after, the Federal Government and at the feet of Homeland Security and FEMA with Bush eventually to blame for hiring idiots for those positions.
its like the old saying, if your boss is an idiot, chances his boss is an idiot and so his his boss…
sorry raptor, the NG is NOT a light switch…
My point was that GWB should have acted sooner than he did (after all, wasn’t it his mother that said something to the effect that the people in the Superdome had it better there than in their own homes – or something to that effect?)
No matter who did what or who didn’t do what – GWB came out looking like a rat that didn’t care about alot of people that happened to be a majority of black people. And Kanye West summed it up for them. This is what will be remembered – not the fact that the NG takes days to round up and provide services.
But then, our National Guard has been deployed in Iraq and was not even around to be called up for service for Katrina. And whose doing was that?
Perception is the key here raptor. If people perceive George Bush as uncaring in the Katrina disaster, then that’s the label he will be branded with.
I would say the Press is the key here. Both Liberal and Conservative Media got it wrong focusing rightly so on the disaster, but in appropriately focusing on who was responsible for what.
There are a few people coming around, including some press, figuring out that Disaster Preparedness is a local responsibility.
I was going to be out of here by 8:00 this morning, but just couldn’t get up, and it looks like the weather is going to hold another day, so noon is looking like a better plan. My nephew sent me this on Christmas Eve and it just seems so appropriate to this thread.
WEATHER BULLETIN
“UP here, in the Northern Plains, we are just recovering from a Historic event–may I even say a ‘Weather Event’ of ‘Biblical Proportions’–with a historic blizzerd of up to 44″ of snow and winds up to 90 MPH that broke trees in half, knocked down utility poles, stranded hundreds of motorists in letal snow banks, closed ALL the roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to tens of thousands.FYI:
“George Bush did not come.
“FEMA did nothing.
“No one howled for the government.
“No one blamed the government.
“No one even uttered an expletive on television.
“Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton didn’t visit.
“Our Mayor did not blame Bush or anyone else.
‘Our Governor did not blame Bush or any one else, either.
“ABC, CBS, or NBC barely reported on this snow storm. Nobody demanded $2,000 debit cards.
“No one asked for a FEMA trailer house.
“No one looted.
“Nobody–I mean NOBODY–demanded the government do something.
“Nobody expected the government to do anything, either.
“No Larry King. No Bill O’Reilly. No Oprah. No Chris Matthews and, thank God, no Geraldo Rivera.
“No Shaun Penn. No Barbra Striesand. No Hollywood types to be found.
“Nope, we just melted the snow for water.
“Sent out caravans if SUV’s to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
“The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for and wouldn’t take a penny.
“Local restaurants made food and the police and fire departments delivered it to snowbound families.
“Families took in the stranded people–total strangers.
“We fired up wood stoves, broke out coal oil lanterns or Coleman lanterns.
“We put on extra layers of clothes because up here it is “Work or Die”.
“We did bot wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for ’sittin at home’ checks.
“Even though a Catagory 5 blizzard of this scale had ever fallen this early, we knew it could happen and how to deal with it ourselves.
“In my many travels, I have noticed that once one gets north of about 48 degrees North Latitude, 90% of the world’s social problems evaporate.
“It does seem that way, at least to me.”
Obviously no one can comprehend what is being said in these postings. Everyone carries blame in the Katrina disaster but when asked, people remember that George W. Bush sat in Washington, DC while the television cameras were on 24/7 and showing the disaster unfolding. I remember Mayor Nagin pleading on television to get off their **** asses and send help.
If you want to blame Democrats for it, go ahead but there is enough blame for everyone. And like I tried to state several times – the federal government should have stepped in and demanded that local and state government do their jobs or else.
But, rather than to solve the problem, we have to play politics with it and cover GWB at all cost – is that the deal?
Say what you will. The image that is gonna stick for posterity is one of a split screen. On one side of the screen is a radar showing a cat. 5 hurricane bearing down on New Orleans. On the other side is bush playing the guitar in California.
“Everyone carries blame in the Katrina disaster but when asked, people remember that George W. Bush sat in Washington, DC while the television cameras were on 24/7 and showing the disaster unfolding.”
“bush playing the guitar in California.”
You guys may be right, but I thought Bush was sitting on his ass and playing guitar in Crawford, TX.
Whether he was in Crawford TX, California or Washington, DC – we do know that he was doing nothing while the disaster was unfolding on television. And to justify his lack of leadership, the Republicans blame only the local and state government for not asking for help.
My God people, it was a category 5 hurricane – it should not take red tape to get Bush to do something.
Pay attention Suza,
Disaster Prepardness starts with the local people planning and helping themselves.
I’ve been in the business 25+ years now and pretty sure I know what I’m talking about.
Sure, there was some buffoonery with all that who’s in charge thing. But it doesn’t excuse local and state governments not making plans to prepare for such events.
Come now, we all know that the poor response to Katrina was a plot against blacks. Those reich-wing, republikkkans are all racist!
rm6046
Re your “blizzard” post at 10:42 AM — you should inform your nephew that he’s spreading a BOGUS story.
http://www.snopes.com/katrina/soapbox/dakota.asp
Before you go spouting off about paying attention – you might want to take your own advice and LOOK again at my posts. I put the blame on EVERYONE. Can you repeat that back? EVERYONE And I really don’t care how many years you have been in the business or are you just one of those ’supervisors’ that show up for their paycheck but doesn’t get the job done?
Okay Suza, fair enough, you blame everyone.
No I’m not one of those supervisors. I work by contract now and if I don’t perform properly, I don’t get paid or can get penalized financially. I have to meet all of the terms of the contract I sign regardless of my personal views or opinions.