Free Republic

Some examples of what federal homeland security grants purchased in Wisconsin during the past three years: -Sturgeon Bay Fire Department: $109.12 for four behind-the-neck earmuffs and $23.79 for ear plugs for a new rescue team trained in responding to building collapses, fire Chief Tim Herlache said. The earmuffs provide hearing protection for rescuers wearing hardhats when they are using loud equipment, such as jackhammers. The earmuffs were part of a grant equipping a new $210,000 rescue truck also purchased with the homeland security money. The team also got money for a small carpentry shop - including $3.90 for 10 carpenter...

June 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A Houston hairdresser with a long rap sheet conned the feds into paying for his sex-change operation with Hurricane Katrina aid, it was revealed yesterday. In a shocking example of mismanagement and fraud in the widening FEMA fiasco, Michael James Green, 25, was charged with bilking the feds out of $36,000 meant for destitute hurricane victims. He claimed to have lived in 18 damaged addresses and used 18 different Social Security numbers, federal prosecutors said. But Green wasn't using the money for food and shelter: He used it to pay for a sex-change operation,...

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...

The government squandered millions of dollars in Katrina disaster aid, including handing $2,000 debit cards to people who gave phony Social Security numbers and used the money for such items as a $450 tattoo, auditors said Monday. Federal money also paid for $375-a-day beachfront condos and 10,777 trailers that were stuck in mud and unusable. Overcharges, poor accounting and abuses will take "months or years" to rectify, the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general concluded in preliminary reports on how billions of dollars in taxpayer money is being spent. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes it...

In the days after the release of President Bush's budget for fiscal 2007, liberal special interests and the Bush Administration will have something in common: both will claim that it outlines deep cuts in spending. Don't believe it. The budget for fiscal 2007 (which will be begin October 1) proposes aggregate federal spending that is 49% higher than in 2001 (the last Clinton budget). This rampant spending growth during the Bush years is the cause of our current large federal budget deficits (which had been vanquished in the late 1990s). The President's budget projects a deficit in 2007 of $354...

$39M Katrina Gov't. Credit Charges Probed By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago Federal employees helping Katrina victims charged more than $39 million on government credit cards for disaster relief items. Congressional investigators want to make sure the taxpayers got a good deal. And a senator, citing past abuse, wants to know whether anyone used the cards for holiday shopping. Many of the goods, which included $60,639 for sleeping bags and $713 for four 27-inch televisions, were bought at retail rather than cheaper volume prices following the Aug. 29 storm, according to federal records. The spending also included...

According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion. ... "No American political leadership has ever willfully and deliberately mortgaged our country to foreign interests in the manner we have witnessed over the past four years," said Tanner. "If this recklessness is not stopped, I truly believe our economic freedom as American citizens is in great jeopardy." [CNSNews] I wonder if there are any implications... "The facts are...

Current Month 10/20/2005 $8,009,635,518,716.50

If temporarily deposed House Republican Leader Tom DeLay didn't like "Operation Offset" and its creators at the Republican Study Committee, led by Rep. Mike Pence, he surely hates it now. That's because Pence and his budget-cutting plan probably helped propel Republican whip Rep. Roy Blunt into the temporary party leader post late today. DeLay in meeting earlier in the day with Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, had asked that Rep. David Dreier be elevated to the leadership post. But instead, during a late afternoon caucus meeting, it was determined by Republicans that Blunt would take the post. There is...

The Republican congressional leaders want Indiana’s Rep. Mike Pence to go away, or at least shut up. They say that he’s grandstanding by talking about cutting spending and that the effort of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), which he chairs, to force them to look for offsets as they prepare to spend as much as $200 billion on hurricane relief, on top of the spending that already has conservatives rolling their eyes, is “counterproductive.” Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), among others, took Pence to the woodshed last week and,...

People have always known the risks of living on the Gulf Coast. New Orleans has now had four severe category 4 hurricanes since 1915 (1915, 1947, in 1969 a category 5 narrowly missed, and 2005 Katrina). That's a category 4 or bigger storm every 22.5 years. This is hardly a once in 200- or 300-year event. Hurricanes for the Gulf Coast region are predictable, frequent and are going to happen again. Knowing this, what should the federal government do in response to the hurricanes? If the federal government takes $200 billion out of the American economy to finance Gulf Coast...

September 25, 2005 The Sunday Times Andrew Sullivan: Is Bush a socialist? He's spending like one Finally, finally, finally. A few years back, your correspondent noticed something a little odd about George W Bush’s conservatism. If you take Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that a socialist is someone who is very good at spending other people’s money, then President Bush is, er, a socialist. Sure, he has cut taxes, a not-too-difficult feat when your own party controls both houses of Congress. But spending? You really have to rub your eyes, smack yourself on the forehead and pour yourself a large gin and...

WASHINGTON -- The House approved $6.1 billion in tax breaks Wednesday to help families recover from Hurricane Katrina and to encourage Gulf Coast businesses to reopen their doors, or at least keep employees on the payroll. The House passed the bill 422-0 as the Bush administration urged residents to get out of the way of another approaching storm, Hurricane Rita, threatening Louisiana and Texas. The vote sent the bill to the Senate, where lawmakers hoped for quick final approval. "This aid comes at exactly the right time to help victims of Hurricane Katrina as they rebuild their lives," said Treasury...

George W. Bush, after five years in the presidency, does not intend to get sucker-punched by the Democrats over race and poverty. That was the driving force behind his Katrina speech last week. He is not going to play the part of the cranky accountant--"But where's the money going to come from?"--while the Democrats, in the middle of a national tragedy, swan around saying "Republicans don't care about black people," and "They're always tightwads with the poor." In his Katrina policy the president is telling Democrats, "You can't possibly outspend me. Go ahead, try. By the time this is over...