Posted on 01/23/2007 11:50:25 AM PST by Ellesu
A Statement by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco:
"The White House indignation over Michael Brown's whistle-blowing is very revealing. He has broken the code of silence about the political conspiracy to hurt the people of Louisiana. Their target was me, but the real victims have been the people of our state.
"For eighteen months, the Washington Republicans have consistently punished and discriminated against our people. All for partisan political purposes. A state with 80 percent of the storm damage from two hurricanes received barely 50 percent of federal relief funds. Mississippi, with far less damage, received far more money proportionately and six months earlier. Louisiana got its money for The Road Home six months later than Mississippi.
"Although we're working hard to move The Road Home forward, the real roadblock to getting people back into their homes has been the original delay in funding. This pattern of discrimination continues to the present.
"Just one recent example is the Katrina cottages program. We have more than 64,000 people still living in trailers, yet we received money to help only 600 of those families. Mississippi received $280 million dollars, nearly four times as much. This pattern is repeated over and over with our hospitals, our schools, and our institutions of higher education.
"It's time for Congress to investigate this outrageous partisan treatment of our state. I am formally writing to Congress today to demand an investigation into this matter, and to secure from the new leadership proportional funding in keeping with the real damage our people have sustained."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9496474/
Michael Brown earlier comments
What a ding-bat.
Break out the jackets, boys, she's finally lost it!!
Isn't there like a Billion dollars missing there?
Louisiana Recovery Authority Executive Director Andy Kopplin reminded the legislators that Congress did not fund the “Road Home” program until 10 months after Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005.
This morning, U.S. Senator David Vitter, appeared on the Moon Griffon statewide radio show. When asked about Kopplin's statement, Vitter refuted Kopplin's contention that Congress was at fault and put the blame right back on the Blanco Administration.
I have been informed that President Bush signed an appropriation for the Blanco Road Home Program on December 30, 2005. If that is correct, and I have no reason to believe that it isn't, Kopplin is at best guilty of obfuscating the truth.
If Kopplin spent less time rationalizing the irrational and more time getting Governor Blanco's Road Home Program up and running, perhaps the billions of dollars that Congress HAS appropriated would not be sitting in the U.S. Treasury and would be helping over a hundred thousand citizens, literally, rebuild their lives. Currently, the largest portion of the money spent on Governor Blanco's program has gone to a company in Virginia.
http://www.forgotston.com
Come get your consumer-non-producers, your ganstas, your pimps, your gub'ment dependent losers out of the great state of Texas!
And before I go back to New Orleans could you please withdraw the police force, they are causing the murder rate to sore!
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070123/BREAKINGNEWS/70123014/1002/NEWS
only 83 checks sent out by LA.
There was a Brown comment today to the effect that the White House was planning to take over Federalize the Louisiana operation because Blanco was a white Democrat female. If the reporter accurately quoted Brown, then I think Brown has it exactly backwards. I think the reason we didn't federalize when we should have was a political calculation to avoid looking like they were taking control away from her.
As far as political calculations, it was Blanco, who, two days before the storm hit, was giving press conferences announcing it was all Bush's fault because he'd sent National Guard troops to Iraq.
Don't be sore. Soar !
“My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional,” two days before the storm hit, Brown told the panel."
And that continues to be why Lousiana lags in the use of its allocated federal funds - it still doesn't have its act together, contracts are not issued in a vacumn, programs are not implemented on a wish list and a promise.
You would not believe the rise in crime including murders around these apartments complexes used to house New Orleans refugees.
I'll bet that 90+ percent of the reason she's making so much noise about Brown's "whistle blowing" is the fact that the polls show her getting creamed by Bobby Jindal in the governor's race later this year. I'll also bet that this will go over really well with a lot of LA voters and gain her some support, maybe a lot of support, especially if the Dims and the DBM pick up her call for more investigations.
It'd be interesting to see if Blanco's campaign, or the Dims, have had any recent contact wity Michael Brown, and are "encouraging" him to speak out. It might even get looked into if we had a media that was interested in actually reporting facts and not leftist propaganda.
Boy, that first black hurricane just keeps paying dividends!
Gosh, who's next for the Bush-Rove Hurricane Hit Parade? Massachusetts? That'll be the first Irish/Italian hurricane.
Here's the Brown comment:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/20/ap/politics/mainD8MOQ11G0.shtml
Here's the money quote: "certain people in the White House were thinking 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it"
He's accusing Bush of discriminating against her because she's white? Hey, Brownie, you just accused him of committing Affirmitive Action.
Anyone checked to see how much of that $7.5 billion allocated by the feds is actually left?
So I have heard. I'll bet most of them remain in Texas or where the getting is good.
The statement had to be a written release because if she tried to read it public she'd start balling.
I remember one of her press conferences after the storm where she just kept crying I don't know I don't know.
she read it and cried, as she has cried in her last 3 speaking engagements:)
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