Well I’m PO’d-that money was stolen-by people who never deserved to have it! The list of scams is endless-people gettin 20 $1000 debit cars, people registering for assitance who NEVER set foo in NOLA, crooked politicians skimming off contracts-eveb the “leaders” of NOLA getting their cut. But nobody cares-just the poor taxpayer who foots the bill.
Next time for NOLA-NO MORE MONEY. The gov. can pass out rice and canned corn, but not one cent.
Nobody in Washington has the slightest bit of shame-which speaks volumes about the kind of “people” our leaders are :smack:
Let’s see:
- Government fucks up in getting relief to the people who need it in NOLA.
- SDMB poster says, “Next time for NOLA-NO MORE MONEY.”
Makes lots of sense. :rolleyes:
And yes, I have been mad about the FEMA ripoffs and fuckups. When I’ve had time to think about them in between all the other idiocies, fuckups, and deliberate evil of this Administration and the GOP Congress.
Do you remember back in 2002, when they created the Department of Homeland Security, the Administration and the GOP Congress insisted that the new department not have the usual union worker protections? Supposedly, this was because we couldn’t afford to have anything less than the highest quality workforce in DHS in a time like this.
Then, of course, the Administration staffed the leadership positions with fuckups like Chertoff and Heckuva Job Brownie, which showed how much they really meant it. The whole union thing was, of course, about:
a) the GOP and their business backers hate unions; and
b) they wanted a ‘wedge’ issue so they could pretend the Dems were supporting the terrorists by being against the DHS, when they were really just sticking up for the union.
So yeah, plenty of outrage. WTF is Chertoff still doing as secretary of DHS? He was just as responsible as Brownie for the fuckups while Brownie was still there. And since then, it’s all been under Chertoff.
I might be outraged if I didn’t expect there to be jerks who’d try to capitalize on other people’s misery. How many people got some sort of relief from the Red Cross when they didn’t deserve it? How many people took advantage of other charities at the expense of kind-hearted people who donated?
Frankly, I’ve no idea how to design a good emergency relief system, but let’s face it – the wrongdoers here were the thieves who decided to prey on people’s goodwill, not the government who was trying the best it could in an incompetent effort to give relief to a lot of people who needed it.
Chicken feed, compared to Iraq . (I bett good Googlers can find more.)
Since they screwed up the immediate relief, they over-reacted by handing out money left and right to respond to the criticism. You could have predicted this at the time. Isn’t amazing what these guys say we can’t afford, and what we can?
What I cannot fathom-when somebody HAD to approve a payment to a HOTEL owner in Texas who falsly claimed to have rented rooms to people WHO DIDN’T exist? Did anybody ever question this? Or the massive scam with those credit/debit cards. The attitude is, hey people will steal, and who cars anyway? Its like that crook nagine-he got an offer from a car salvage outfit to remove all the abandoned cars from NOLA (and pay the city $500/car). What happened? the city PAID over $5 million to some connected crook-no doubt Nagin got his cut.
I really couldn’t give a shit less. Sorry. Compared to what’s been wasted in Iraq, this is a fart in a hurricane.
How can I be outraged? This story doesn’t elicit the least bit of shock or surprise from me- in fact, I’m surprised that they only blew $2B and not more.
No- it’s realizing that there will always be some people out there who want to take advantage of a disaster and run a scam for their own purposes. It happened with Katrina, the Asian tsunami, 9/11, and lots of disasters before that.
People who approve claims for money during disasters are human, too, and generally working under pressure. There’s no perfect way to tell the difference between someone who really does need disaster relief aid, and someone who is a clever scammer who’s good at acting. People who need disaster relief usually need it quickly, so there isn’t time to do a full background check on everyone who requests aid. And investigations of people requesting aid aren’t free- if they did that, people would complain about all the overhead costs coming out of disaster relief funds.
I’m not saying that the government shouldn’t try to do a better job of giving out aid- just that, no matter what they do, someone is going to find a way to scam the system. That’s not a reason to not give any aid to anyone at all.
Audit: U.S. lost track of $9 billion in Iraq funds -No outrage?
Sorry ralph124c, all the outrage was used up over the Oil for Food Scandal
There’s just not enough outrage left to cover this Katrina Kerfuffle.
And the lack of outrage in the posts so far merely mimic the lack of outrage by the population at large. Too bad that so many (including those who posted already) seem not to care about the cumulative effect of a couple of billion here, nine billion there, yadda, yadda. When you consider that Bush will have spent half a trillion by the end of the next fiscal year (according to Rep. Murtha), will the people rise up? Not likely.
By the time collective masses open their eyes (if they ever do), Bush will be out of office, the government waste will be in the trillions, the permanent damage will be done, and everyone will ask, “whut happened?” America is going downhill by the death of a trillion tiny cuts.
You are aware that the area affected by Hurricane Katrina disaster payments is roughly the size of the state of Minnesota, right? I’m not saying that people in the New Orleans area aren’t part of the graft, and you have every right to be upset by the mismanagement, but the New Orleans metropolitan area is only a small part of the overall area.
Your outrage would be better directed at the incompetent bureacrats, rather than vowing to withold humanitarian assistance from thousands of people because a few of their neighbors played the system like a cheap violin.
My thoughts exactly.
I’m with you-part of the reason WHy we have an 11 Trillion $ national debt is because of thousands of katrina-like scenarions. my out rage is this; i pay taxes-plenty of them , and i pay on time. Well, dammit, suppose I were to tell the IRS-ge-the govt, squandered my money-how about i pay you $3000 LESS? You know whta wouldhappen.
Well, we KNOW the cheats and crooks-how about maybe PROSECUTING them? Like that crook in NOLA who double-billed FEMA for $150,000? put a few of these people IN JAIL! And debar them from ever holding office-that would stop it.
And yes, somebody in Washing needs to be fired NOW!
Cite? (For that figure, I mean.)
Or else, awarded a Medal of Freedom . . .
There are always going to be con artists out there ready to take advantage of these situations. Still, after the outrage, I think they did the right thing by giving out the money. I"m sure we’d be having a debate here if there were hundreds of stories of people waiting on aid while government bureaucrats ran background checks and tried to verify their claims.
It is expected, by all intelligent people, that a sizeable chunk of federal spending will be sucked down the corruption sink. It is a fact of life, and the basics function of the process amidst the federal government is not very different from how it works with state and local governments, or in other countries. Those who are friends, relatives, or business partners of the people in power get big chunks of cash for doing nothing. The media, who are also closely allied with the people at the top, distract the public with trivialities.
The only thing unique about what’s happened in the federal government during the Bush administration is the scale of the corruption. The sheer volumes of money being stolen by the Republicans and their cronies have risen exponentially. For instance, the number of “earmarks” (last-minute add-ons to spending bills) in the federal budget has soared from just a few hundred to over fifteen thousand in less than ten years. Why? Because the Republicans are more secure in their power than ever before. With large majorities, careful gerrymandering, a huge fundraising edge, and control of the media, they can commit larger outrages without worring about losing control of Congress.
The other factor, of course, is that the federal government keeps getting bigger and bigger. The more programs we have, and the larger the budgets get, the easier it is to sneak some money around with people noticing.
Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to Non-Farmers -No Outrage?
I expect we’ll see more on this one, as it can be layed at Bill Clinton’s doorstep.