FEMA gives away $85 million of supplies for Katrina victims - CNN.com

This pisses me the f off. This is shameful beyond belief. Did you see the report on CNN with Campbell Brown????
Chertoff should go to jail for incompetence...and the agency dismantled.
Another gross mistake on the Bush/Cheney watch...or "sleep".

Not only that but they didn't pay some of the contractors for working on the Andrew hurricane disaster. I think the National Guard should be in control of disaster relief-but wait-they're kind of busy right now aren't they.

We should have a draft if we are going to have a war. And let the National Guard and reserve handle disaster relief. IMO

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Why should "Katrina Victims" still be getting free stuff?

This was excess stuff. It was offered to various states INCLUDING LOUISIANA, 16 states took some of the stuff Lousiana turned it down.

Let's see if they don't have enough supplies people complain, if they have too much and have to get rid of some people complain.

"An honest person like me didn't get nothing," said Reed, 54, who recently moved from a tent beneath a New Orleans bridge to a home with the help of Kegel's group. "I'm gonna turn, 'cause I'm gonna cry. I didn't get nothing. I fought to get my money, but they wouldn't give it to me. So I ended up going under the bridge."

I travel New Orleans and talk to businesses and industry there all the time. They are begging for workers and having to compete with Burger King's giving sign on bonuses paying $10 an hour with full benifits. Why is this woman living in a tent under a bridge when jobs and housing are abundant in New Orleans?

FEMA is fully stocked for their requirements, senseless to pay to stock this stuff, it was offered to the states to hand out to appropriate agencies or store themselves for the next storm.

""But FEMA said the items were no longer needed in the stricken region. So it declared them "federal surplus" and gave them away.

Federal agencies such as the Bureau of Prisons, Postal Service and Border Patrol got first dibs on the material when FEMA started giving it away. Other agencies that received items include the National Guard, U.S. Marshals Service, the Air Force and Navy and the departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, according to a list the GSA provided to CNN.

These items also were offered to all states -- yet Louisiana, where most of the people displaced by the storm live, passed on taking any of them.

John Medica, director of the Louisiana Federal Property Assistance Agency in Baton Rouge, said he was unaware that Katrina victims still had a need for the household supplies.

"We didn't have anybody out there who told us they wanted it," Medica said.

Instead, 16 other states took the free items.

"Louisiana Recovery Authority Director Paul Rainwater is taking the lead on determing where this serious breakdown in communication occured and ... is working to pursue options for the state to still make use of these important supplies," said Michael DiResto of the Division of Administration.

DiResto said Rainwater has already taken up the issue with a FEMA official.

"But FEMA said the items were no longer needed in the stricken region. So it declared them "federal surplus" and gave them away.""

Why? Because it was humanitarian assistance promised by the US government, to get them back to normalcy, after a disaster, unequalled in American History.
We can give away humanitarian aid to earthquake victims in China, to the victims of the Indonesian Tsunami, whom President Clinton and Bush I petitioned for aid for....but we cannot help our own people?
Or was it because they were mostly "poor and black"?

It was not "excess stuff"...it was dinnerware, coffeemakers, grills, and household goods....one Katrina victim was interviewed, and she said she never got any of those items, and she broke down in tears, as she is still waiting for assistance. She had been living under a bridge in a tent city, until a local church agency found her an apt. FEMA didn't do diddly for her.
Those items were meant for the victims...and they just sat up in warehouses, being stored to the tune of 1 million dollars (wasted!), and then some imbecile determined that the need was no longer there (how that conclusion was reached is beyond most thinking people), and decided to distribute the goods to government agencies "for free"...prisons, the border patrol, etc...
Beyond shame.

Define humanitarian assistance and cite to where such a promise was made and codified into law? They recieved the assistence it's been 3 years why are they still standing their with their hands out demanding "make me whole again"? And BTW look at the flooding going on in the Mid-West, it makes NOLA look like a wading pool. Don't hear screams about why FEMA is not rescuing people, why they have not taken charge. Read the news reports, hardly see FEMA mentioned at all.

So you believe that because NOLA was mostly "poor and black" that aid has been denied there? Can you prove the poor whites got more? Do you have any idea how much has already been spent, how many public housing units have already been restored.

Yes it was excess stuff.

She is waiting for dinnerware and a mop? What is she waiting for? GET A JOB like everyone else.

It's not FEMA's job to.


So why did her state agency turn them down, it is not FEMA's job to go and find her and give her stuff.


Since when did being the victim of a natural disaster give you title to things that don't belong to you are give you license to demand the government take care of you from now on?

No

Yes. I don't depend on supernatural beings or the federal government to be the first responder in a hurricane either.

These people are the same people who lived in NOLA before Katrina and expect then to have their needs taken care of by someone else.

GET A JOB there are plenty of them available in NOLA. Look at the people in the Mid-West and flooding that is far worse than NOLA, they are sitting around waiting for big daddy government to make them whole again.

Excuse me...but those are tax dollars, I have paid...and I say they should go to folks in need...not determined by the likes of you.
Typical conservative response....but you'd bail out the housing industry, the auto industry, and outsource our jobs...Find a rock.

Don't forget a trillion or two so that Iraqis "have democracy"...

I think the quickest way for us to get out of Iraq is to convince Republicans that all this money we're shipping abroad is equivalent to welfare.

Yeah, right! Ol' Texas style Democracy...I can envision Starbucks and Wal-Mart
outlets, coming right up.
What a farce! The same folks who believe "the war can be won".