Millions in Katrina Aid Wasted By FEMA

[jillian]

Audits: Millions of dollars in Katrina aid wasted
Reports cite scams, unused mobile homes; charges filed against 212

WASHINGTON - In its rush to provide Katrina disaster aid, the Federal Emergency Management Agency wasted millions of dollars and overpaid for hotel rooms, including $438-a-day lodging in New York City, government investigators said Monday.

Reports released by the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department’s office of inspector general detail a series of accounting flaws, fraud or mismanagement in their initial review of how $85 billion in federal aid is being spent.

The two audits found that up to 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received aid under FEMA’s emergency cash assistance program — which included the $2,000 debit cards given to evacuees — were based on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers, or false addresses and names. The GAO audit was first reported by NBC News last Friday.

Separately, the Justice Department said Monday that federal prosecutors have filed fraud, theft and other charges against 212 people accused of scams related to Gulf Coast hurricanes. Forty people have pleaded guilty so far, the latest report by the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force said. Many defendants were accused of trying to obtain emergency aid, typically a $2,000 debit card, issued to hurricane victims by FEMA and the American Red Cross.

Thousands of additional dollars appear to have been squandered on hotel rooms for evacuees that were paid at retail rather than the contractor’s lower estimated cost. They included $438 rooms in New York City and beachfront condominiums in Panama City, Fla., at $375 a night, according to the audits.

The two audits were released by the Senate Homeland Security Committee as the panel wrapped up its investigation into the federal government’s preparation and response to the disaster.

Some audit findings
The audits included these findings:

The $2,000 debit cards issued to hurricane evacuees for emergency supplies were often used for purchases unrelated to disaster aid, including: adult entertainment, gambling, a $450 tattoo, a .45-caliber handgun for $1,300 and a diamond engagement ring for $1,100.
There was little or no verification of the names, addresses or Social Security numbers of applicants registering by phone or the Internet for the $2,000 in aid, resulting in thousands of checks issued to those with duplicate or bogus information.
Duplicate payments were made to about 5,000 of the nearly 11,000 debit card recipients who received Katrina aid, first with debit cards and then again via electronic bank transfer.
Although FEMA says it bought 114,341 trailers for $1.7 billion, discrepancies abound in FEMA’s documentation of the number ordered, received and occupied, making it difficult to ascertain the exact units available or whether government-owned property was otherwise accounted for.
FEMA may have bought too many temporary homes — 24,967 manufactured homes obtained for $857.8 million and 1,295 modular homes at $40 million — resulting in 10,777 such homes sitting empty in Hope, Ark., in sinking mud without proper storage. “It was unclear how the decision was made,” the Homeland Security audit stated.
Collins: FEMA ‘failed to prepare’
Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the committee, decried the findings, noting that a series of audits and hearings after hurricanes in Florida in 2004 highlighted similar accounting problems and had called on then-FEMA director Michael Brown to make immediate changes.

“The problem, once again, is that FEMA failed to prepare for the very type of disaster that happens every year,” said Collins, R-Maine. “This ’pay first, ask questions later’ approach has been an invitation to unscrupulous behavior.”

The audits do not try to estimate a total dollar figure on abuse, but GAO auditor Gregory Kutz told senators it was “certainly millions of dollars; it could be tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.”

[MORE]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11326973/

 

[dilloduck]

[MORE]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11326973/

If you were there you can understand.

 

[jillian]

If you were there you can understand.

Can you elaborate?

 

[dilloduck]

Can you elaborate?

The details of why the waste occured are lost on those that didnt see the hordes of politicians and victims demanding everything be done for them and done for them immediately.

 

[jillian]

The details of why the waste occured are lost on those that didnt see the hordes of politicians and victims demanding everything be done for them and done for them immediately.

Might be. But don't you think they deserved an immediate response? Seems to me that FEMA's non-responsiveness (or incompetent response) was pretty deadly. And the fact that FEMA paid for expensive hotel rooms instead of using the trailers which are sitting there empty was simple mismanagement. No?

 

[dilloduck]

Might be. But don't you think they deserved an immediate response? Seems to me that FEMA's non-responsiveness (or incompetent response) was pretty deadly. And the fact that FEMA paid for expensive hotel rooms instead of using the trailers which are sitting there empty was simple mismanagement. No?

The hurricane was deadly. Even deadlier was the fact that the "victims" expected way more than basic need response. I've NEVER seen the government respond to anything as well as they should have. There is ALWAYS waste. Why only focus on FEMA? The "victims" of this disaster have REFUSED mobile home housing and the cries of racism were everywhere. A profile of the "victims" and thier response to the help they received will show thier complete unwillingness to do anything for themselves. In the Arkansas tornados, the "victims" had all but settled into recovery before FEMA even appeared on the scene. Am I blaming the victims of Katrina? You bet your sweet ass I am.

 

[jillian]

The hurricane was deadly. Even deadlier was the fact that the "victims" expected way more than basic need response. I've NEVER seen the government respond to anything as well as they should have. There is ALWAYS waste. Why only focus on FEMA? The "victims" of this disaster have REFUSED mobile home housing and the cries of racism were everywhere. A profile of the "victims" and thier response to the help they received will show thier complete unwillingness to do anything for themselves. In the Arkansas tornados, the "victims" had all but settled into recovery before FEMA even appeared on the scene. Am I blaming the victims of Katrina? You bet your sweet ass I am.

I think there were cries of racism because of the great disparity in the way that this crisis was addressed and it looked questionable based upon the poverty and race of the affected people. I don't think it was a racist response at all. I think it was simply an incompetent one. Brown was simply over his head and shouldn't have had the job in the first place.

Having the victims evacuate into the Superdome and not giving them food or water and allowing babies and old people to die was criminal, IMO.

My greatest concern as regards the Katrina response (aside from the loss of one of my favorite places in the world) is this: if we can expect this level of incompetence when FEMA knows what's coming, what will they do after a major terrorist attack for which they have no warning?

 

[dilloduck]

I think there were cries of racism because of the great disparity in the way that this crisis was addressed and it looked questionable based upon the poverty and race of the affected people. I don't think it was a racist response at all. I think it was simply an incompetent one. Brown was simply over his head and shouldn't have had the job in the first place.

Having the victims evacuate into the Superdome and not giving them food or water and allowing babies and old people to die was criminal, IMO.

My greatest concern as regards the Katrina response (aside from the loss of one of my favorite places in the world) is this: if we can expect this level of incompetence when FEMA knows what's coming, what will they do after a major terrorist attack for which they have no warning?

Incompetant primarily because the "victims" are totally dependent on the government to take care of them and they don't just expect the emergency food, shelter and medical assistance. They want more than they ever had in thier entire lives. They still do. Look what they did with the money that was to go to help them. Putting FEMA under Homeland Security was a dumbass idea to begin with. If the agency is so screwed up, why did Katrina prove to be the ONLY example of relief problems? Where else has FEMA screwed up?

 

[sitarro]

Might be. But don't you think they deserved an immediate response? Seems to me that FEMA's non-responsiveness (or incompetent response) was pretty deadly. And the fact that FEMA paid for expensive hotel rooms instead of using the trailers which are sitting there empty was simple mismanagement. No?

That is just a bit simplistic, like the bullshit that can be found any day on DU. It is so easy to blindly blame the federal government for slow response but that is just not the truth. The blame should go first to the fools that decided they were going to stay put in that disgusting city waiting to be slaughtered. Then you can blame that imbicile Mayor that didn't take a category 5 hurricane heading towards his unprepared city serious. Next you need to place a huge amount of blame on the incompetent Governor Blanco. She is the one that needed to ask for the feds to come in, she didn't even let the Red Cross in. Nagrin himself said that she was asked by President Bush to let the feds help and she refused. After they screwed up the response the race baiters came out in full force claiming that FEMA wasn't responding to the needs of the poor black people that decided to stay and wait out this storm in the Convention Center and the Superdome. Blanco kept the supplies away from those sites in fear that more people would rush there to be rescued.

Immediately the United States Coast Guard was there rescuing the fools that stayed. Thousands of extremely dangerous missions were flown plucking people off of their rooftops in high winds and amongst power lines that could easily down a helicopter. That was a Federal response that Blanco couldn't stop and the Guard personnel did an incredible job that they recieved very little credit for. The media was too busy paying attention to the professional whiners that came out of the woodworks like the roaches they are. The Coast Guard and other military and civilian volunteers rescued over 50,000 people from probable death and all we see is the bullshit that happened at the Superdome.

I am from Louisiana and have lived within 20 to 80 miles from the Gulf for 30 of my 52 years on this planet. I know what happens in a hurricane and as much as I hate New Orleans I was relieved to see it not get hit directly by this extremely dangerous storm. It was the breech of the levee system that surrounds that assinine city, not the storm itself that flooded New Orleans. Blanco herself was unaware of the break 5 hours after it happened, she was heard saying that water was spilling over the levees and she had heard some reports that the levee had broken but she didn't believe those reports.

Popular Mechanics just did a very detailed report on the whole story and claimed the response was the fastest in history to any natural or man-made disaster(I would classify this as man-made since there is no reason except ignorance to locate and keep a city that is 32 feet below sea level surrounded by water). Read this report for some reality....http://dolinar.com/column/politics/katrina.html or find the popular mechanics report. Another report that chronicles the extremely dangerous rescues by the thousands of brave Coast Guard crews and volunteers is a Discovery channel special..."SOS COAST GUARD RESCUE" http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/sos/sos.html.

I'm tired of the Democrats defending their own down in Louisiana and doing nothing but lying about what really happened. Try getting some real fact from people that were actually there doing positive things rather than politicizing the deaths of a thousand people. The residents of the many places evacuees went to escape the floods are getting a first hand look at the lowlifes that resided in that awful city. Houston's crime rate has gone up 25% since we opened our city to these people. There are of course good folks but they are overshadowed by the skum that Ray Nagrin is trying to get votes from.

Why is it the Democrats try to appeal to the lowest forms of life in our country? Is it because nobody with the IQ of a Border Collie would believe anything they have to say?

 

[jillian]

That is just a bit simplistic, like the bullshit that can be found any day on DU. It is so easy to blindly blame the federal government for slow response but that is just not the truth. The blame should go first to the fools that decided they were going to stay put in that disgusting city waiting to be slaughtered. Then you can blame that imbicile Mayor that didn't take a category 5 hurricane heading towards his unprepared city serious. Next you need to place a huge amount of blame on the incompetent Governor Blanco. She is the one that needed to ask for the feds to come in, she didn't even let the Red Cross in. Nagrin himself said that she was asked by President Bush to let the feds help and she refused. After they screwed up the response the race baiters came out in full force claiming that FEMA wasn't responding to the needs of the poor black people that decided to stay and wait out this storm in the Convention Center and the Superdome. Blanco kept the supplies away from those sites in fear that more people would rush there to be rescued.

Immediately the United States Coast Guard was there rescuing the fools that stayed. Thousands of extremely dangerous missions were flown plucking people off of their rooftops in high winds and amongst power lines that could easily down a helicopter. That was a Federal response that Blanco couldn't stop and the Guard personnel did an incredible job that they recieved very little credit for. The media was too busy paying attention to the professional whiners that came out of the woodworks like the roaches they are. The Coast Guard and other military and civilian volunteers rescued over 50,000 people from probable death and all we see is the bullshit that happened at the Superdome.

I am from Louisiana and have lived within 20 to 80 miles from the Gulf for 30 of my 52 years on this planet. I know what happens in a hurricane and as much as I hate New Orleans I was relieved to see it not get hit directly by this extremely dangerous storm. It was the breech of the levee system that surrounds that assinine city, not the storm itself that flooded New Orleans. Blanco herself was unaware of the break 5 hours after it happened, she was heard saying that water was spilling over the levees and she had heard some reports that the levee had broken but she didn't believe those reports.

Popular Mechanics just did a very detailed report on the whole story and claimed the response was the fastest in history to any natural or man-made disaster(I would classify this as man-made since there is no reason except ignorance to locate and keep a city that is 32 feet below sea level surrounded by water). Read this report for some reality....http://dolinar.com/column/politics/katrina.html or find the popular mechanics report. Another report that chronicles the extremely dangerous rescues by the thousands of brave Coast Guard crews and volunteers is a Discovery channel special..."SOS COAST GUARD RESCUE" http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/sos/sos.html.

I'm tired of the Democrats defending their own down in Louisiana and doing nothing but lying about what really happened. Try getting some real fact from people that were actually there doing positive things rather than politicizing the deaths of a thousand people. The residents of the many places evacuees went to escape the floods are getting a first hand look at the lowlifes that resided in that awful city. Houston's crime rate has gone up 25% since we opened our city to these people. There are of course good folks but they are overshadowed by the skum that Ray Nagrin is trying to get votes from.

Why is it the Democrats try to appeal to the lowest forms of life in our country? Is it because nobody with the IQ of a Border Collie would believe anything they have to say?

Perhaps you need to read what actually happened. There's plenty of blame to go around....absolving the Federal Government of it's responsibility is kind of absurd. You have a really harsh way of looking at the world. And NO was anything but a disgusting city....nicest people, best food and great music. We were treated beautifully there. Maybe you were looking at the wrong things.

http://www.factcheck.org/archive.html

BTW, I think it's also kind of bizarre for you to think you're smarter than half the country.

Also, which is it? Are dems/liberals the elitist/intelligensia or are they idiots with subpar IQ's? You really need to make up your mind.

 

[dilloduck]

Perhaps you need to read what actually happened. There's plenty of blame to go around....absolving the Federal Government of it's responsibility is kind of absurd. You have a really harsh way of looking at the world. And NO was anything but a disgusting city....nicest people, best food and great music. We were treated beautifully there. Maybe you were looking at the wrong things.

http://www.factcheck.org/archive.html

BTW, I think it's also kind of bizarre for you to think you're smarter than half the country.

Also, which is it? Are dems/liberals the elitist/intelligensia or are they idiots with subpar IQ's? You really need to make up your mind.

Focusing soley on FEMA is equally absurd.

 

[MissileMan]

Having the victims evacuate into the Superdome and not giving them food or water and allowing babies and old people to die was criminal, IMO.

The blame for the fiasco at the Superdome falls squarely on the shoulders of Nagin and Blanco. They were aware, based on the results of a disaster exercise a year earlier, that if the shit hit the fan, the Superdome would become a shelter. Even with that knowledge, Nagin and Blanco failed to prepare the Superdome to double as a shelter by pre-positioning basic supplies there. If the basic necessities had been there, the people could have easily lasted the few days necessary to get them relocated.

Also, Blanco delayed federal response because she didn't want it to appear that she wasn't strong enough to handle the situation on her own.

 

[Rico]

Since NO is about to have a mayoral election, and they want so much money from the taxpayers around the country, I say we make it a national referendum. We'll call it " The select the next person to run the largest welfare city in the country vote". Or maybe just tighten that up a bit.. "Vote for the Mayor of Welfare City"... It's got a certain ring to it.

 

[sitarro]

Perhaps you need to read what actually happened. There's plenty of blame to go around....absolving the Federal Government of it's responsibility is kind of absurd. You have a really harsh way of looking at the world. And NO was anything but a disgusting city....nicest people, best food and great music. We were treated beautifully there. Maybe you were looking at the wrong things.

Did I absolved the federal government of blame? I believe I actually directed the blame where it belongs. It isn't the federal government's job to babysit each individual state. It was New Orleans and Louisiana's job to make sure that if you are foolish enough to locate a large city in such a dumbass place you make sure all of our federal tax dollars are well spent on what they are suppose to be spent on. The levee board spent 2.4 million this year building a Mardi Gras fountain and built and in the past spent 15 million on bridges leading to the city run casino.http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050916-091420-1784r.htm


Are you sure you were in New Orleans? Maybe you were at Disney World and thought you were in Nawlins. Nicest people????? Are you from Iran? Best food???? You need to travel west on I-10 about 137 miles to get real cajun food, New Orleans specializes in nasty creole food. I would have to dispute the great music line too, I'll take modern jazz anyday. Did you actually venture out of whatever tourist trap you were in? What color is your skin? Whites have been treated terribly for the last 30 years there. Oh wait, you're a female, never mind.

BTW, I think it's also kind of bizarre for you to think you're smarter than half the country.

Never said I was smarter, maybe less naive and certainly more informed than to vote for either of the wooden dimwits the Dems ran in the last 2 elections.

Also, which is it? Are dems/liberals the elitist/intelligensia or are they idiots with subpar IQ's? You really need to make up your mind.

I didn't say that all Democrats had an IQ smaller than a Border Collie, just less common sense. Bill and Hillary Clinton are both suppose to be the smartest people in the world, I don't know about that but Bill didn't have enough common sense or a sense of reality to understand that getting a girl his daughters age to keep a huge secret was even remotely possible. He also didn't have the self respect or respect for the office of the Presidency to realize that a cheap blowjob wasn't worth the chance of losing it all. As for his wife, she doesn't have the self respect of that same Border Collie. Her husband rapes adult women and has sexual relations with kids their daughters age and she is still talking to him? Does the term doormat seem too harsh? Her lust for power is the most important thing to her. These two have set marriage back 2000 years. How smart is it to think you can take the United States Medical System and socialize it?

College professors are thought to be very intelligent yet if they are forced out of their tenured little lives and have to compete in the real world it is doubtful many would survive in their chosen field. They think that because they can recite from a book about their field of study they can actually perform in the real world, doubtful. Out of all of the Profs I had to deal with in the study of Architecture only one stands out as being worth a crap. I ended up teaching the instructor in a graphics class about producing camera ready art for printing, big difference from just producing something that looks nice in hand. I learned more about the realities of a career in Architecture in two weeks of working for one than I learned in the entire five years of bullshit taught by those that couldn't do. I did have one instructor that I firmly believed in his ability as a designer, he just really enjoyed teaching and his class was like a tank of oxygen in the middle of the Pacific. I not only remember his name after thirty years, I remember the lessons he taught me. I don't blame teachers, it has to be hard to keep motivated dealing with the same type of students year after year.

Elitism is more about a state of mind, walking around calling yourself a progressive is a good example of that mind set.

 

[jillian]

Focusing soley on FEMA is equally absurd.

Oh...I agree. But the article was simply a rendition of certain facts as the pertain to FEMA. Nothing in it implied in any way that no one else played any part.

It's just that it seems the article started a total and complete defense of FEMA and attempted to shift the blame totally to the State. Such responses change the tenor of the discussion. You were the first to take the above positon.

 

[dilloduck]

Oh...I agree. But the article was simply a rendition of certain facts as the pertain to FEMA. Nothing in it implied in any way that no one else played any part.

It's just that it seems the article started a total and complete defense of FEMA and attempted to shift the blame totally to the State. Such responses change the tenor of the discussion. You were the first to take the above positon.

Framing the incident seems to be the thing to do these days. Slanting the facts to show only one facet of an incident leaves the truth hanging somewhere in the middle but I guess it's a necessary evil in debate.

 

[jillian]

The blame for the fiasco at the Superdome falls squarely on the shoulders of Nagin and Blanco. They were aware, based on the results of a disaster exercise a year earlier, that if the shit hit the fan, the Superdome would become a shelter. Even with that knowledge, Nagin and Blanco failed to prepare the Superdome to double as a shelter by pre-positioning basic supplies there. If the basic necessities had been there, the people could have easily lasted the few days necessary to get them relocated.

Also, Blanco delayed federal response because she didn't want it to appear that she wasn't strong enough to handle the situation on her own.

I disagree. I think there's plenty of blame to go around. But it didn't happen that way. Check out the factcheck.org link I posted. It gives an accurate assessment.

 

[jillian]

Framing the incident seems to be the thing to do these days. Slanting the facts to show only one facet of an incident leaves the truth hanging somewhere in the middle but I guess it's a necessary evil in debate.

Yes. But for some reason it also seems that some people who support this admin have difficulty looking at its actions with a jaundiced eye and assign it any responsibility for any of its missteps.

 

[GotZoom]

It's a shame that people are so dead set on blaming the current administration for every thing that goes wrong in the world.

It was a Category 5 hurricane. No amount of money, building, or drills could guarantee that the levee wouldn't have broken or people wouldn't have died.

I guess the government is to blame for every disaster that happens across the country.

Tornados and earthquakes - If more funds were available to scientists to help predict them, less people would die from them.

Traffic Accidents - more money, better roads, less accidents perhaps.

Hurricanes - every state that is in the path of hurricanes, should ban houses within 3 miles from the coast and build a 30 foot all along the shore.

Forest Fires - States that have forests should build extensive sprinkler systems throughout that forests to keep the trees, bushes, and ground wet so there is a smaller chance of something catching on fire.

The government should fund all these projects. If they refuse, then they are to blame for the death and destruction from any natural or man made disaster.

 

[jillian]

It's a shame that people are so dead set on blaming the current administration for every thing that goes wrong in the world.

It was a Category 5 hurricane. No amount of money, building, or drills could guarantee that the levee wouldn't have broken or people wouldn't have died.

I guess the government is to blame for every disaster that happens across the country.

Tornados and earthquakes - If more funds were available to scientists to help predict them, less people would die from them.

Traffic Accidents - more money, better roads, less accidents perhaps.

Hurricanes - every state that is in the path of hurricanes, should ban houses within 3 miles from the coast and build a 30 foot all along the shore.

Forest Fires - States that have forests should build extensive sprinkler systems throughout that forests to keep the trees, bushes, and ground wet so there is a smaller chance of something catching on fire.

The government should fund all these projects. If they refuse, then they are to blame for the death and destruction from any natural or man made disaster.

So...because the admin didn't cause the cat 5 hurricane, FEMA didn't have to act quickly and professionally to prevent as much suffering as it could?

You're all over the place with your issues.... do you think that makes it so one doesn't have to discuss what the admin DOES do incorrectly? You certainly wouldn't say they performed competently, would you?