Michael Gaynor
Save Louisiana and New Orleans from unfit officials
By Michael Gaynor
The thought of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin leading the recovery of Louisiana and New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina is nearly as heartbreaking as the unnecessary death and destruction that Hurricane Katrina wrought, mostly as a result of the chronic failure of local and state officials and Louisiana's Congressional delegation, especially its United States Senators, to prepare for a hurricane above category 3 and the particular ineptitude of the Dithering Duo. Blanco and Nagin are responsible for an enormous amount of needless suffering and even have blood on their hands, figuratively speaking.
The Governor needed twenty-four hours to consider President Bush's offer to have the federal government take charge. And apparently the thought of a female Democrat governor ceding authority to a male Republican President even in the face of Hurricane Katrina was more horrific to her than additional death and destruction.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is utterly unfit to lead the reconstruction of the city he helped to destroy.
Mayor Nagin did not have a workable disaster plan, even though he got a wakeup call about that LAST YEAR.
Mayor Nagin was much too slow in ordering mandatory evacuation. (President Bush urged him to act sooner, but Mayor Nagin thought he knew better and supposedly feared that businesses would sue the city if he ordered mandatory evacuation sooner.)
Mayor Nagin failed to implement mandatory evacuation, despite the availability of hundreds of buses, or to supply the Superdome adequately.
Mayor Nagin reacted hysterical, raving that buses from around the country should immediately be commandeered for New Orleans (where buses went unused) and hyping the casualties by a factor of 10 to 20.
Mayor Nagin sent some of the New Orleans police who did not desert the city to Las Vegas for vacation before the situation was fully under control.
And Mayor Nagin, having initially acted too slowly, then acted too quickly, by ordering a premature repopulation of the city, acting like a pompous jerk when the Coast Guard admiral, concerned with people's safety and not local politics, pointed out that his plan was too ambitious, and then attributed his decision to reverse course solely to Hurricane Rita.
Billions need to be spent to rebuild and repair. But they must be spent wisely. And not become a de facto campaign fund for Mayor Nagin.
Corruption has been a way of life in Louisiana for generations.
And it would be a crime to waste the funds earmarked for recovery, not for corrupt state and city officials.
After blaming President Bush and the federal government, the leftist Los Angeles Times finally reported what should be known by all Americans: that several senior Louisiana Department of Homeland Security officials had been indicted for misappropriation of government funds, waste and mismanagement BEFORE Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.
Much maligned. FEMA, which had dealt well with many hurricane disasters for years, had sent millions of dollars to Louisiana to help them prepare for an event like Katrina.
What happened to the money?
Federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were transferred to Louisiana from FEMA dating back to 1998.
Example: A November 30, 2004 report by Tonda L. Hadley, a director in the Denton field office, examined $40,500,000 sent to the Louisiana homeland security agency, mostly for the Hazard Mitigation program. Ms. Hadley found that there were no receipts to account for 97% of the $15,400,000 the agency had awarded to subcontractors on 19 major projects.
Democrats held a lock on Louisiana's United States Senate seats until Senator David Vitter won one in 2004, and they continue their stranglehold on the governorship, now occupied by Kathleen Blanco, who, like Mayor Nagin, puts his self and public image first, and rejected President Bush's wise counsel that obviously would have ameliorated the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina for Louisiana.
As the Los Angeles Times acknowledged:
"Even in the notoriously corrupt government of Louisiana, having receipts for only three percent of government spending has to set a new record for opacity. Those undocumented expenditures will no doubt implicate the subcontractors in some sort of money-laundering scheme, especially if the investigation finds that little of the work got performed — and based on the response to Katrina, that appears to be the case in general, if not in specifics."
The Los Angeles Times reported some specifics, however:
"More money got sent to Aegis Innovative Systems, a consultant firm that ate up most of $2.8 million in government grants for that purpose. Aegis, it turns out, is run by Michael Howard, a former Louisiana DHS official. More money went to buying LL Bean parkas, a Ford Crown Victoria, a junket to Germany for the DHS director, and so on. $10.7 million earmarked for buying up low-level property for condemnation and conversion to non-residential use wound up in the coffers of other government agencies and consultants."
And concluded:
"It looks like the DHS officials in Louisiana wanted to prepare for a rainy day, but just not for the kind of rainy day that Katrina brought the Gulf Coast. The feds had already tried to clean house where the state couldn't or wouldn't, bringing indictments against the deputy director of hazard mitigation, Michael L. Brown (no relation to the former FEMA director) and Michael C. Appe, who led a team tasked with identifying abuses. Louisiana put the foxes in charge of the henhouse, it seems.
"All of this shows that Louisiana left itself woefully unprepared for the catastrophic damage of Katrina. Small wonder that state and local officials reacted like deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck in the days before and after landfall. Funds that could have gone towards emergency preparedness, identification and abeyance of hazardous materials, and especially identifying fraud and abuse went elsewhere. Now Louisianans and New Orleans' evacuees must pay the price for the corruption and incompetence of not only their leadership but also their bureaucracy. Is it difficult to understand why more than half of the displaced have little desire to return?"
The people of Louisiana need to do better for themselves in future elections.
And President Bush and Congress need to make sure that federal funds are spent properly instead of put to political and personal use by pathetic politicians.
© Michael Gaynor
The thought of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin leading the recovery of Louisiana and New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina is nearly as heartbreaking as the unnecessary death and destruction that Hurricane Katrina wrought, mostly as a result of the chronic failure of local and state officials and Louisiana's Congressional delegation, especially its United States Senators, to prepare for a hurricane above category 3 and the particular ineptitude of the Dithering Duo. Blanco and Nagin are responsible for an enormous amount of needless suffering and even have blood on their hands, figuratively speaking.
The Governor needed twenty-four hours to consider President Bush's offer to have the federal government take charge. And apparently the thought of a female Democrat governor ceding authority to a male Republican President even in the face of Hurricane Katrina was more horrific to her than additional death and destruction.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is utterly unfit to lead the reconstruction of the city he helped to destroy.
Mayor Nagin did not have a workable disaster plan, even though he got a wakeup call about that LAST YEAR.
Mayor Nagin was much too slow in ordering mandatory evacuation. (President Bush urged him to act sooner, but Mayor Nagin thought he knew better and supposedly feared that businesses would sue the city if he ordered mandatory evacuation sooner.)
Mayor Nagin failed to implement mandatory evacuation, despite the availability of hundreds of buses, or to supply the Superdome adequately.
Mayor Nagin reacted hysterical, raving that buses from around the country should immediately be commandeered for New Orleans (where buses went unused) and hyping the casualties by a factor of 10 to 20.
Mayor Nagin sent some of the New Orleans police who did not desert the city to Las Vegas for vacation before the situation was fully under control.
And Mayor Nagin, having initially acted too slowly, then acted too quickly, by ordering a premature repopulation of the city, acting like a pompous jerk when the Coast Guard admiral, concerned with people's safety and not local politics, pointed out that his plan was too ambitious, and then attributed his decision to reverse course solely to Hurricane Rita.
Billions need to be spent to rebuild and repair. But they must be spent wisely. And not become a de facto campaign fund for Mayor Nagin.
Corruption has been a way of life in Louisiana for generations.
And it would be a crime to waste the funds earmarked for recovery, not for corrupt state and city officials.
After blaming President Bush and the federal government, the leftist Los Angeles Times finally reported what should be known by all Americans: that several senior Louisiana Department of Homeland Security officials had been indicted for misappropriation of government funds, waste and mismanagement BEFORE Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.
Much maligned. FEMA, which had dealt well with many hurricane disasters for years, had sent millions of dollars to Louisiana to help them prepare for an event like Katrina.
What happened to the money?
Federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were transferred to Louisiana from FEMA dating back to 1998.
Example: A November 30, 2004 report by Tonda L. Hadley, a director in the Denton field office, examined $40,500,000 sent to the Louisiana homeland security agency, mostly for the Hazard Mitigation program. Ms. Hadley found that there were no receipts to account for 97% of the $15,400,000 the agency had awarded to subcontractors on 19 major projects.
Democrats held a lock on Louisiana's United States Senate seats until Senator David Vitter won one in 2004, and they continue their stranglehold on the governorship, now occupied by Kathleen Blanco, who, like Mayor Nagin, puts his self and public image first, and rejected President Bush's wise counsel that obviously would have ameliorated the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina for Louisiana.
As the Los Angeles Times acknowledged:
"Even in the notoriously corrupt government of Louisiana, having receipts for only three percent of government spending has to set a new record for opacity. Those undocumented expenditures will no doubt implicate the subcontractors in some sort of money-laundering scheme, especially if the investigation finds that little of the work got performed — and based on the response to Katrina, that appears to be the case in general, if not in specifics."
The Los Angeles Times reported some specifics, however:
"More money got sent to Aegis Innovative Systems, a consultant firm that ate up most of $2.8 million in government grants for that purpose. Aegis, it turns out, is run by Michael Howard, a former Louisiana DHS official. More money went to buying LL Bean parkas, a Ford Crown Victoria, a junket to Germany for the DHS director, and so on. $10.7 million earmarked for buying up low-level property for condemnation and conversion to non-residential use wound up in the coffers of other government agencies and consultants."
And concluded:
"It looks like the DHS officials in Louisiana wanted to prepare for a rainy day, but just not for the kind of rainy day that Katrina brought the Gulf Coast. The feds had already tried to clean house where the state couldn't or wouldn't, bringing indictments against the deputy director of hazard mitigation, Michael L. Brown (no relation to the former FEMA director) and Michael C. Appe, who led a team tasked with identifying abuses. Louisiana put the foxes in charge of the henhouse, it seems.
"All of this shows that Louisiana left itself woefully unprepared for the catastrophic damage of Katrina. Small wonder that state and local officials reacted like deer in the headlights of an oncoming truck in the days before and after landfall. Funds that could have gone towards emergency preparedness, identification and abeyance of hazardous materials, and especially identifying fraud and abuse went elsewhere. Now Louisianans and New Orleans' evacuees must pay the price for the corruption and incompetence of not only their leadership but also their bureaucracy. Is it difficult to understand why more than half of the displaced have little desire to return?"
The people of Louisiana need to do better for themselves in future elections.
And President Bush and Congress need to make sure that federal funds are spent properly instead of put to political and personal use by pathetic politicians.
© Michael Gaynor
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