It’s hard to imagine a better summarization of the Katrina reponse failures than this:
A congressional report to be released this week slams the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, calling it a “failure of leadership” that left people stranded when they were most in need. “Our investigation revealed that Katrina was a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare,” the report says. “At every level — individual, corporate, philanthropic and governmental — we failed to meet the challenge that was Katrina. In this cautionary tale, all the little pigs built houses of straw.”
Yup – I’d say that about sums things up – right up into today’s failures. I can hardly wait til the report actually releases Wednesday.
And this just makes me sick:
The two audits, released at a Senate hearing, found that up to 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received aid under FEMA’s emergency cash assistance program — which included the $2,000 debit cards given to evacuees — were based on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers, or false addresses and names.
Lovely, eh? And worst of all – FEMA and the Red Cross were actually doing the right thing there by cutting red tape and moving money into the hands of people who needed it. I’m thoroughly disgusted that people apparently took stole money so desperately needed – still – in the region.
Polimom says that’s flat-out un-American. If we catch these people, can we put them on a slow boat someplace? Maybe with some leftover MRE’s (about 3 days worth…)?