Posted on 06/13/2006 4:01:53 PM PDT by Libertarian444
WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance.
That's just one of thousands of examples of alleged fraud and abuse described in a new report by the investigative arm of congress — abuse that cost taxpayers about $1 billion.
One person applied for aid 13 times, using 13 bogus addresses, and received a total of $139,000.
The report says FEMA didn't even try to verify the identity of people who applied for aid by phone and says FEMA's fraud controls are “weak or nonexistent.”
More than 2,000 people applied for aid from prison and received about $12 million.
The report also finds that FEMA debit cards, which were supposed to be used for necessities, were used for a week-long Caribbean vacation, a $600 tab at a gentleman's club and a visit to Hooters, which included a $200 bottle of champagne.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Yes there was fraud. But the question is how do you get funds to these people in need in a timely manner? Some of the shysters will be caught but many more won't be thus millions of dollars wasted. So something needs to be done to help those that do qualify in some sort of timely manner, imo.
No risk there. I certainly wouldn't accuse you of being "intolerant". I think the existence of any federal function that isn't mandated by the Constitution should be questioned from time to time. Perhaps eliminated, perhaps not, but occasionally questioned nonetheless. It could make for an interesting debate.
There wasn't any such thing as FEMA, as its own agency, for many, many years after the founding of this country. In fact, I just googled it and found that FEMA wasn't formally established as an independent agency until 1979.
Even before FEMA existed, though, the feds took a role in assisting state and local governments with disaster relief efforts. That assistance was being provided independent of the existence of FEMA itself until 1979.
For sure, some of these should have been caught before issuing checks to W. VA or a cemetary, but most of the examples were only known after the fact, when the bill was submitted from Girls Gone Wild, or the NO Saints Football Club. I hope that the "victims" that abused FEMA to the point of fraud will be held to account. We taxpayers may be generous, but we need to send a message that we won't stand still for robbery.
After all, a new hurricane season is upon us.
WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance.
My entire family going back generations is buried in Greenwood (http://www.graveaddiction.com/greenwood.html ) and during Katrina parts of it did take on some water. I wonder what kind of "housing" this applicant had to evacuate? Could it have been a tomb, a coping, or an oven vault? ;)
So why aren't recipieints of aid required to give a fingerprint for ID purposes? That would take care of a lot of the fraud problem.
How dare you slander the lib's godvernment!
Are you related to the poet e. e. cummings?
Shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you....
Cut off all "aid" and let states clean up their own self-created disasters.
Or that the right way to solve the problem is to deregulate the insurance market and let the chips fall where they may.
Fraud in the highest per-capita welfare receiving city? How could that be?
What I think is that we would do better without FEMA. Tell the states that emergencies are their responsibility.
Option C: FEMA sez "we'll get you to dry land, put you up for a couple nights in a tent, and grant you a few phone calls. Beyond that, it's your problem you chose to live below sea level."
I'm quite surprised to find out that Hooters sells $200 champagne.
The problem here isn't so much FEMA as it is New Orleans and the inbred corruption of people there. Of course there's going to be a little bit of fraud any time the purse strings come open in an emergency... But I would submit that there isn't anyplace in the country even close to New Orleans in its cultivation of people into what amounts to an almost subhuman existence.
I remember vividly watching New Orleans go over completely into Lord of the Flies, *instantly*. Somalia has a more civil culture than our own little third-world in Louisiana.
If it were up to me I'd cut off further federal money to New Orleans. It's a lost cause. Give it to the flies.
And Mary Landrau is begging for more even money
FEMA sucks.
FEMA hired drivers in to bring ice. If they didn't need the ice in Hattiesburg, the company had them run up to Iowa (anyway, a long ways away) for their next stop. The company sent them the bill for shipping.
They need the person from the Forest Service's Region 4 in charge of contracts for FEMA. No sugar daddy stuff like that ever happen again. That person runs a very tight ship, and keeps a eagle eye on contractor games. Emergency during wildland fires or no, you wouldn't ever get away with doing stunts like that in Region 4!
Lots of carefully prepositioned contracts, a well-organized cache of emergency equipment, buyers who have tightly controlled and limited authority on the ground and rational ideas about what things ought to cost.
FEMA comes around with dollars coming out of the kazoo, and little accountability, and starts throwing money around.
Could do a lot more good if somebody doing emergency response actually would use the people who know how to do the jobs without letting the government and the people they are trying to help get ripped off.
Shame!
Sounds wonderful, this fantasyland... but it isn't possible.
EVIL BUSH ADMIN SQUEEZING KATRINA VICTIMS
Wouldn't this seem the same as Ann's comment about "enjoying" the results of the disaster?
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