From April of 2005, “Blanco Addresses FEMA Payback Issue”:
Governor Kathleen Blanco says if the state is forced to pay back the federal government more than 30 million dollars, the state’s children and sick will suffer. This week, FEMA officials sent a letter demanding back 30.4 million dollars back in misspent flood buyout money.
Governor Blanco is very concerned about that FEMA demand letter. She says the state simply does not have that kind of money just laying around. Blanco says a 30 million dollar hit to the state budget would be devastating.
“The regretful thing is if we have to come up with 30 million dollars, it takes away from children, it takes away from the sick… you know, very, very important initiatives.”
According to FEMA, the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security which is the overseeing agency misspent the money over a five-year period. The money is for buying out homes that habitually flood.
The letter references a federal Office of Inspector General’s report which lists, among other ineligible expenses, a 2002 Ford Crown Victoria, audio and video equipment, office supplies, travel, professional dues, charitable donations, an L.L. Bean briefcase, a rain coat, and a trip to Germany by a Louisiana Homeland Security person as money that has to be sent back.
“I’m hoping that we can demonstrate that it was used for the proper function that it was intended,” says Blanco.
Louisiana Homeland Security officials say it will be up to the parishes who got the money to give it back. Meanwhile, the 32 parishes included in the buyout program were notified Wednesday and Thursday about sending the money back.
East Baton Rouge Parish ranked third in the amount alleged misspent of money they got from FEMA at 3.6 million dollars. St. Tammany got the most with 8.5 million, followed by Ouachita Parish which got just under 6 million.
The entire investigation into the FEMA money originated in Ouachita Parish when local television reporters began looking into how they were using the FEMA money.
One Louisiana Homeland Security person said it may take years to resolve this issue. And it will likely be decided by a judge or jury if this thing ends up in the courts.
Damn you, Michael Brown! Damn you and the federal government to hell!
Look, the President can cowboy up and take “responsibility” all he wants, especially if such a gesture will take the steam out of those carping partisans dishonestly aiming to score political points off a fiasco that began, it seems to me, with years of corruption in Louisiana and ended with two competing and perfectly illustrative bus images: first, hundreds of buses sitting idle while 100,000 people in New Orleans remained behind to face a Category 4 hurricane; and second, eighteen-year-old Jabbor Gibson commandeering a bus on his own and taking a load of evacuees to safety in Houston, where they found food and shelter.
Dependence and corruption vs. self-reliance and initiative.
But what’s telling is, even back in April, Governor Blanco’s reaction to FEMA’s demands that the state account for the misspent money went right to the emotional appeal, with her claiming that any federal repercussions for state graft would likely harm “the children.” Which, it would have been more helpful had her concern for the children extended to overseeing the proper expenditure of those funds.
But that’s not how it works, when you have emotionalism at your disposal. And in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Ms Blanco had framed this demand for remuneration on the part of FEMA as a “budget cut,” then used it to point the finger at the Bush Administration.
Listen: every honest person who has paid attention to the facts here knows where the breakdown in leadership happened in Katrina’s wake. And if we’re really as determined as we say we are to fix the problems we’ve been wringing our hands over, a good place to start—as I’ve been arguing here for weeks now—is with the actual locus of the breakdown.
The Dems (and a few of the more sanctimonious Republicans) have their Bush Administration scalp; now let’s see if we can’t do some honest assessing.
(h/t Jeff Alan)
I have an idea—let’s throw $200 billion dollars at a couple of state and local governments that have proven over the course of, say, a couple of centuries, that they set new standards for corruption and misallocation of government money!
No state knows how to squander cash better than Louisiana.
There are some powerful people who know what’s buried under the rocks that are likely to be turned over in any honest accounting. That and the sheer volume of corruption over the decades make me less than optimistic that, whoever undertakes an investigation, the whole truth will out.
However, I listened to some of the reactions of the people interviewed on ABC last night. There is some genuine anger by the citizens of NO at the state and local officials—not limited to their actions in the immediate time before and after the storm. They have finally realized that they’ve been manipulated for years by people who did not have their interests at heart.
Corrupt beaurocrats steal money and poor crippled children have to pay it back. Damn, I hate when that happens.
When it comes to demanding the taking of responsibility, Blanco can dish it out but she can’t take it.
“…among other ineligible expenses, a 2002 Ford Crown Victoria, audio and video equipment, office supplies, travel, professional dues, charitable donations, an L.L. Bean briefcase, a rain coat, and a trip to Germany by a Louisiana Homeland Security person…”
That’s might account for a few hundred thousand, but not $30 million. It’d be interesting to see the full list. Really interesting.
My wife has been talking to several former colleagues (mostly New Orleans attorneys) and their reaction is nearly universal. The laughter reverberates throughout each conversation when it turns to the subject of dumping a pile of money on the local politicos.
My favorite analogy as to how their newfound wealth will be used is the one about the guy who buys a piece of bubblegum with a food stamp and then uses the change to buy a lottery ticket.
I’m betting that a full audit of the flood buyout program will turn up quite a few cases of friends of Louisiana politicians who bought fifty year old abandoned shacks for chump change, waited for a flood, then sold them back for ten times the purchase price (that’s a common flood insurance scam).
“…with her claiming that any federal repurcussions [sic] for state graft would likely harm “the children.â€Â
Actually, she might be more right than we think. You don’t actually think the crooks who misused/stole the money are going to pony up with an “Aw, shucks, you got me,” do you? If the money has to be paid back, it’s going to come from those that can squeal the least, and that’s the poor, illiterate dependent class.
How do you think the 9th Ward in specific, and New Orleans in general, got into the mess it did in the first place? It wasn’t by accident.
When any gov’t official/agency is forced to cut they first aim for the biggest chunk of bone they can find leaving all the fat in place. The idea is to inflict maximum pain with even the smallest of cuts thereby discouraging any further cuts (reduction in increases, actually).
You don’t think that is actually going to happen do you? In order for that to happen, there has to be a lot of people, including the MSM, Congressional Pols, LA Pols and NOLA Pols eating a whole bunch of Bush & FEMA hating words.
The meme now is going to be, “There were mistakes made and plenty of blame to go around, so let’s just start from here and fix what’s wrong.”
That is code for, “Send lots of money. We’ll take it from here.”
Well, Malkin has a long post today on FEMA failures (specifically, Michael Brown failures). Perhaps its time to start looking at that post and seeing if we can’t figure out if she’s right or wrong in her assessment.
I would like to think that Bush dumping all this money into NO is accompanied by the words of Admiral Ackbar.
“It’s a trap!!!”
In other words, I hope the feds will be watching closely with an eye on meting out justice for the corruption that caused this, and will surely accompany the cleanup. Time will tell.
Do the Dems think that ‘for the children’ is some sort of magical shield against governmental accountability? I think they do.
If I have to give back the money I embezzled from my employer, I won’t be able to feed my kids! You heartless bastards!
Let’s see — from the Malkin thing, we find out that Brown was at the command center in Baton Rouge where he was supposed to be instead of ass-deep in sewage himself; that his staff in New Orleans got the hell out of town on the mandatory evacuation order; that when he couldn’t get co-operation from Blanco he referred the problem up the chain as far as the President before Blanco and Nagin (finally) acted; that when Blanco did act, he turned her list of requests over to the agency that had the resources with the instruction “do this”, went out to look at the damages himself, and came back to find he’d been blown off; and while he was still trying to get Blanco and Nagin to co-operate he said nice things about them instead of going into a press conference and calling them on their cluelessness.
I still can’t see anywhere he had the authority to do something where he did anything unwise. Perhaps he should have been more public in the press conference, but that would have just made him the one who started it (and you know what Mom does to the one who started the fight); maybe he could have publically resigned when he realized that Blanco’s staff wasn’t interested in being co-ordinated (but that would have been abandoning his post during an emergency, wouldn’t it?)
I generally think Malkin’s a fool anyway.
But they needed that Crown Victoria to evacuate the sick children from New Orleans…
I just wonder how many of the financial records in those parishes have been amazingly “destroyed in the flood” over the last 24 hours? Have any floating islands of shredded papper been spotted by CNN?
Charlie–
I concur completely. Malkin is a fool, at least in this instance. I am still waiting for a list of sins of either omission or comission to be laid at the feet of Michael Brown.
The fact remains that loss of property in this case is unavoidable. Loss of life, presumably avoidable in part, is nonetheless moot insofar as FEMA goes since its own directives to the states say they should not rely on the feds for the first 72 hours of a disaster. That places responsibility for evacuation and near-term resuces squarely at the feet of the locals.
Moreover, when the final death toll turns out to be only the hundreds, while the French Quarter rapidly dries out, the whole “catastrophe” aspect of this story is going to deflate. What will be left will the appalling inadequacy of the mayor and the governor and a six-inch coating of billion-dollar federal unguent all over the slums of New Orleans.
Given the projections beforehand, versus what is actually happening, I think the grunts at FEMA did just fine. But politically it was a disaster for the White House. A hostile, sensationalist press is part of the problem, obviously, but it seems to me Brown has to take a big part of the blame politically. He did not play the game well at all, and that is the directors job.
I nominate Bill Clinton for new FEMA chairman. Just because…
I am one of those Republican scalp hunters who deservedly slammed Bush because of his selection of a bad FEMA Director.
That said, Blanco is an idiot as I’ve said numerous times.
Ok, I give. Blanco and Nagin should be deified and Brown crucified. Bullshit! Gov and Mayor are grossly incompetent and are in way over their heads. They both are due for some political comeuppance and I hope they get it. To think the worthless mayor has packed his brood up and moved them to his newly purchased home in Dallas makes me want to puke.
Blanco, per Malkins drivel is not apparently at fault as is Nagin. More bullshit. The bus thing is just the icing on the cake. His “excuse” that the bus drivers evacuated (smart motherfuckers huh?) is lame. Most drivers could have driven those buses and this should have been done. Ray could have driven one himself – but he was too busy getting his worthless ass outta dodge.
The money wasted in Louisana (and elsewhere) is a crime and I hope these “po folks” will get everything coming to them – like free room and board at a federal ass-pounding prison for oh 20 years to “think about their crimes”.
Glenn Reynolds links to today’s LA Times article about indictments that followed this affair. I guess Blanco’s footsoldiers were not able to “demonstrate that it was used for the proper function that it was intended” after all.
Doesn’t this sound a lot like Saddam Hussein’s argument against international sanctions?
Maybe the UN would send in medical care, food and medicine while Louisiana is paying off its debts. Then she could syphon it off like Yassir Arafat did the international aid to the Palestinians!