Blanco wants 'Family Recovery Corps' to get families back to Louisiana

BATON ROUGE — Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Saturday proposed creating a nonprofit group, funded with nearly $2 billion in federal money, that would provide services to evacuated Louisiana residents, much as refugees are settled in this country after fleeing political persecution overseas.

The Family Recovery Corps would rely almost entirely on federal money, plus some donations, Blanco aides said. It was unclear who would run the noprofit, which relief groups and government agencies would be involved and how contracts with the relief groups would be arranged.

Blanco said the Corps "will certainly not be inexpensive." She contacted President Bush about funding on Thursday, before Hurricane Rita struck, but has not heard back, said Andy Kopplin, Blanco's chief of staff.

Blanco said she envisioned the Corps as manned by "a cadre of trained workers, trained to know what benefits are available and how families can access those benefits. They will connect benefits to families -- families from all walks of life."

The plan, released to reporters late Saturday, said Blanco will appoint a senior executive from the private sector to lead the group, along with an advisory board, whose members will help with management and fund-raising.

As planned, the Corps would provide a single clearinghouse of information and assistance to the estimated 1.3 million residents who were driven from their homes by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, scattering into shelters and the homes of friends and family members elsewhere in Louisiana and around the country.

Its staff would work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Red Cross and other non-governmental agencies to get help for refugees who need housing, health care, counseling, job training, help enrolling children in school and many other services, said Ann Williamson, head of Louisiana's Department of Social Services.

Since Katrina hit and the evacuations began, Blanco has repeatedly said the refugees need to return so Louisiana's economy, communities and culture can recover from the storms.

"The damage Rita leaves behind makes approving this plan even more pressing," she said.

As budgeted, Blanco's plan calls for spending an average of $4,100 on each family to be served. Each family would also get an average of $1,300 in financial support to cover additional costs.

Williamson said about 5.3 percent of the proposed $1.99 billion budget -- about $100 million -- would go toward administrative costs.

One nonprofit that was involved in creating the plan, and planned to be involved in the Corps, was the Washington, D.C.-based International Rescue Committee, which helps get job training, housing, counseling and other services for political refugees given asylum in the U.S. The group has had representatives in Baton Rouge since the days after Katrina struck, said Christine Petrie, its national resettlement director.

"The sooner we start to serve these individuals, the sooner they will have the opportunity to participate in their plan to return" to Louisiana, Petrie said.

MEGA-RANT ALERT

OK, here are my firsthand observations.

I moved to Central Louisiana from the Northeast (NJ/MA) two years ago with my young daughter to join other family members. My relatives relocated here from California about 15 years ago. They said they'd had problems keeping their kids away from bad influences in Orange County and that, by contrast, this would be a very safe and wonderful place to bring up my little girl. They harped on this for years until the time came when I lost my management job and I figured I had nothing to lose, so we came down. I looked at their nice home on plenty of land, new trucks in the driveway, boat in the carport, well-mannered kids and it all seemed pretty good to me. I figured I'd get some state civil service job like the rest of them and eventually be as comfortable as they were.

In reality, this scenario never materialized. I did get my daughter into an excellent public school, but it's been a nonstop nightmare trying to support the two of us. I never manage to hang onto a job longer than a few months at a time because I keep getting seriously injured and re-injured -- through no fault of my own, by the way, just the stupidity of the Louisiana locals (2 collisions both times when I was stopped at red lights and 1 Workers Comp accident in a state office building caused by careless state-licensed movers). Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd be living in a place where it's necessary to keep your personal injury attorney on speed-dial, but here I am.

Being both a single mother and a recent civil service employee, I have seen the Louisiana social service system from an intimate perspective I wouldn't wish on anyone. I can quote you chapter and verse of exactly how much money you can get from welfare, food stamps, housing, child care subsidies, utility allowances, etc. I know to the dollar what it costs the State of Louisiana per diem to make a welfare recipient "work for their benefits." Worse yet, I can also tell you that the wages I've been paid here are but a tiny fraction of what I earned in the Northeast, even though I am college educated, have impeccable office skills and many years of supervisory and management experience. Here, I've discovered that I'm just an overqualified Yankee who makes all the illiterate people around me look bad, and therefore the welcome mat gets rolled up fast when I'm around. I've also learned the hard way that Louisiana unemployment laws are slanted completely in favor of the employer; I've never fought so hard to collect in my life as I do here.

So let me stop digressing and get to the points I want to make.

First, people who make broad judgments against the poor in Louisiana need to crunch some numbers first. I can tell you personally that the wages are so low in this place (yeah, there really IS such a thing as the $5.15/hr minimum wage...and guess what state is full of people earning it), that once you get on welfare it isn't cost-effective to get off of it. Louisiana's system is designed to punish you as soon as you get a job, because everything that was given to you for free under welfare suddenly comes out of your net take-home pay from wages. If wages were high enough that there was a substantial difference between net wages and welfare subsidies, then more people would have an incentive to work. But until that day comes in Louisiana, I guarantee you nothing's going to change. It's like that guy Howie from "Big Brother 6" said, "Don't hate the players, hate the game!"

Second, this job corps thing really makes my blood boil. I'm looking for work at a time when literally thousands of unemployed, displaced people have just shown up in my community to compete in the labor force. Despite the lack of jobs previously available for locals, 50 employers suddenly showed up out of nowhere at a "Katrina Job Fair" recently to roll out the red carpet to 300-400 displaced workers. Help wanted signs are suddenly hanging in windows all over town saying "Preference Given to Katrina Victims." Now, there have been reports of job-corps type temporary 12-week positions being given to Katrina evacuees at $9.00/hr, and I imagine that the Lake Charles-area Rita evacuees who just arrived here will be offered them as well. Sounds like peanuts to people who don't live in Louisiana, but given my explanation above, $9.00/hr is considered a LOT by local standards. I've never been able to earn anything remotely approaching that much in the 2+ years I've been here, not even in civil service!

Third, I can't believe the stupidity of these instant trailer park cities they want FEMA to set up in Louisiana. Anybody who lives here knows that the first thing you have to do at the first sign of a tornado or hurricane is flee a mobile home. If you were able to take your Section 8 voucher to live in, say, a garden apartment complex outside Houston, would you really come back to Louisiana to live in a TRAILER??

I chuckle along with the posts attacking the Democratic politicians in Louisiana, but don't labor under the misconception that this is a blue state. It's not -- Louisiana voted for Bush and indeed fell for Republican Senator David Vitter's shameless pandering last year. I didn't vote for Vitter because his TV commercials made me want to hurl. I long for the day when I can get him in a room for 10 minutes and tell him why. I didn't vote for Bobby Jindal because I found a lot of things he said during his campaign really alarming, plus I was alienated by some of the people I met who supported him. In the days following Katrina, neither Vitter nor Jindal could withstand the scrutiny of the media. They both sounded pathetic during interviews and had no viable solutions to the catastrophe at hand.

I didn't mean to turn this post into such a long rant; it just sort of evolved that way. Thanks for allowing me to get that out of my system!

Today Gov. Blanco requested $20.2 billion to repair levees and infrastructure in the State of Louisiana. First, an accounting of the misspent and misappropriated federal funds and the indicted New Orleans Levee Board parties, i.e. Michael Brown (former FEMA director)would be in order.

Obviously,she must have been 'counseled' to slide in an additional couple of billion more(chump change)under the rug for the 'Family Recovery Corps' project to be led by her personal appointee James Witt from the private sector. (formerly head of FEMA under the Clinton Administration.)

Blanco was unable to respond to media questions as to how the funds would be meted to the families in need of assistance. This is a transparently feeble attempt to waste federal monies on a project which is ill-timed, and, in all probability, ill-fated. The federal government will implement federal programs for federal projects. Why would this responsiblity be handed over to the State which had performed an irreponsible job in prevention and management due to its acculturated problems with corruption and graft??

While the State of Louisiana is still submerged in devastation, this unmitigated stunt is not going to go unnoticed. The people of Louisiana do not deserve this level of incompetentence on the part of its highest official.

The Louisiana dem constituency living out of state have expressed no real plans to come back to Louisiana to live... let alone just to vote for Blanco, etal in November 2007. Why would they? There is an utter loss of faith on the part of the evacuees towards all of the officials "in charge" of the evac-recover from Katrina.

Louisiana citizens are counting the minutes until this regime is no longer holding their state's fiscal future in its lethal grip. Twelve Noon, January 14th, 2008 is 27 months too far long to wait to take appropriate action!

www.impeachblanco.org

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