RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Hurricane Katrina

What do you call someone who rips off the American taxpayer by spending Katrina relief funds on champagne, 'Girls Gone Wild' videos or gambling sprees?

Why, a 'victim', of course. At least, you do if you're the editorial writer of the Los Angeles Times.

The sub-headline in the editorial in today's LA Times reads like a parody: "It's Wrong to Blame Victims for Spending Irresponsibly."

No, that's not a misprint.

While acknowledging that the 16% of improper expenditures 'is indeed high', the Times doesn't want us to get all worked up about it:

"... obsessing about the spending habits of refugees comes perilously close to blaming the victim."

The LA Times blames the government agency giving away the money - not the cheats who rip off the system and the taxpayer.

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...Some misuse of the FEMA-issued debit cards, however, is hardly shocking. The aim of the $2,000 cards was to give individuals immediate aid to be spent according to his or her judgment, rather than earmarking items that the government guessed would be of greatest assistance. For every "Girls Gone Wild" video purchased, thousands of families used their cards for clothing, food and temporary shelter without having to deal with federal red tape. Bad spending decisions are an unfortunate side effect of a clever and responsive policy.
The 16% of improper expenditures is indeed high for a federal aid program — food stamps and unemployment insurance, by comparison, had respective rates of 5.9% and 10.1% last fiscal year. But these are established programs, not on-the-fly responses that had to process a sudden rush of 2.6 million claims. Unlike a permanent safety net, disaster relief's top priority is to help as many people as fast as possible, which comes at the price of reduced efficiency.
But just because FEMA faced a daunting task does not mean it should be given a pass for its sloppy oversight. The GAO cited several quick fixes that should be put into effect immediately, most notably simple tests for misrepresentation when citizens register for federal disaster assistance. FEMA's response thus far — cutting expedited payments to $500 — misses the point and will undercut relief efforts in future catastrophes.

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the G-man said:
No one, of course, blames the victims of Katrina for having been displaced by the storm. But that misfortune is not a license to victimize the taxpayer.

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...The GAO cited several quick fixes that should be put into effect immediately, most notably simple tests for misrepresentation when citizens register for federal disaster assistance.

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1st Katrina insurance lawsuit opens today
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press Writer

GULFPORT, Miss. - Attorneys carried files and exhibits into a federal courthouse Monday for what they expect to be a groundbreaking trial on whether insurance policyholders who lost homes in Hurricane Katrina are entitled to recover losses that insurance companies claim were caused by flooding.
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"A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, and this is the first step," plaintiffs' attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs said as he arrived in court. "It's one case. If you win it, it's a huge win. If you lose it, you spin it the best way you can."

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of police Lt. Paul Leonard, who had taken out homeowner's insurance with Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. long before Katrina pulverized his Pascagoula house on Aug. 29.

After the storm, Nationwide blamed the damage on water, not wind. The insurer said Leonard's policy didn't cover floods.

Joe Case, a spokesman for Nationwide, downplayed the impact one case could have on others pending against Nationwide and other insurance companies.

"Right now we are focused on what this trial is about," Case said Monday after entering the courthouse that's still surrounded by Katrina destruction. "We look at each claim on a case-by-case basis."

Leonard and his wife, Julie, say Nationwide denied their claim without thoroughly investigating the damage to their house, which is several hundred yards from the Mississippi Sound near the eastern end of the state's shoreline.

The Leonards, who purchased their policy more than a decade ago, also say their insurance agent had assured them they didn't need to buy flood insurance for their home because their policy would cover all hurricane damage.

"The goal here is to make my home whole again," said Leonard, whose house sustained an estimated $100,000 in damage. "If it helps someone else, that's great. But I'm fighting for my family's future."

Scruggs is no stranger to high-profile court fights. He helped secure the landmark, multibillion dollar settlement with tobacco companies in the late 1990s.

"Everyone is going to be watching the result of this," Scruggs said of the trial, which is expected to last a week or two. "It won't be binding for other cases, but the precedential effects of this will be enormous because it's the first one."

While Nationwide homeowners' policies cover wind damage, the Columbus, Ohio-based insurer argues that damage from flood water, including wind-driven storm surge, is excluded from coverage.

"Essentially, the Leonards are asking the court to change their contract after the fact," Case had said earlier. "They're asking for flood damage to be covered, and they didn't purchase flood insurance, regrettably."

Scruggs represents around 3,000 policyholders on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, including his brother-in-law, U.S. Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record), R-Miss., whose Pascagoula home was demolished by Katrina on Aug. 29.

Scruggs also has filed against other insurers, including Allstate Insurance Co., Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., State Farm Insurance Cos. and United Services Automobile Association.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood also is suing insurance companies, arguing they should pay for all of Katrina's property damage, whether it was caused by wind or wind-driven water.

Dr. Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute in New York, warned that a victory by the Leonards would "create chaos in insurance markets all over the country" because it would send a message that contracts can be "retroactively rewritten" after a disaster.

"That creates an impossible business environment," he said.

Scruggs and other plaintiffs' hope that winning this and a handful of other cases would pressure insurers into settling thousands of other Katrina-related lawsuits. "The outcome will at least set the tone for future cases," Scruggs said.

Hartwig, however, downplayed that scenario. "Insurers will be looking at every single case on its merits," he said.

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One year ago today, Hurricane Katrina made its second and third landfalls as a Category 3 Hurricane. While the media continues to portray Katrina as the "perfect storm" because of the destruction it caused in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the simple fact is that Katrina could have been far worse. New Orleans did not suffer a direct hit.

At some point in the unforeseen future, the perfect storm will hit New Orleans, and the billions of dollars we are pumping into rebuilding the city will be realized for the misallocation of funds that it is as it slides beneath the waves for a final time, perhaps with a far greater loss of life than the 1,836 souls that were lost when Katrina bypassed New Orleans.

We should have learned; you don't build a major city in a hole in a swamp surrounded by the Mighty Mississippi on the once side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other an expect it to last. Katrina should have been our wake-up call to relocate or abandon the Big Easy for higher ground; instead we are pumping millions of dollars into a city that the Army Corps of Engineers predicted would fall into the sea within 50 years even before Katrina chewed up an already receding Louisiana coastline.

A pre-Katrina map of what the Louisiana coastline may look like in less than 50 years.

We have not learned the lessons that this mighty near miss tried to teach us, and are now doomed to repeat our mistake in the future. It is arrogant and foolish to think Band-Aid solutions will resurrect a city so close to its natural death.

So what would have been the "proper" response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina? Rebuilding elsewhere. Surely, the millions of dollars flowing into the slowly drowning city of New Orleans would have been better spent in relocating it to higher ground further inland, where it could have a legitimate chance to rebuild and prosper, instead of looking forward to the dark further of The Next Time, when the futility of our efforts to combat the forces of nature will be realized on a stark day after.

But instead we rebuild New Orleans to fail, no stronger, weaker in many regards, and doomed to repeat as scene of massive tragedy. We have failed to learn from the recent past, and will be forced to live with the consequences in the future.

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Prometheus said:
The MS Gulf Coast was fucking flattened. But, hey, it wasn't New Orleans, and wasn't a major city, so, it doesn't rate the news coverage.

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no one seems to care about southern white trash, southern middle-class, and southern blue-bloods, either, though. At least, that's the inference I get from the lack of any coverage

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the G-man said:
The media, in fact, doesn't care...

...its not politically correct to worry about them in any event.

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Prometheus said:

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the G-man said:
The media, in fact, doesn't care...

...its not politically correct to worry about them in any event.

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I agree with both of those statements...





_{I still hate you}

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thedoctor said:

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Things I have learned from watching the news on TV during the last eight days:

The hurricane only hit black family's property

New Orleans was devastated and no other city was affected by the hurricane

Mississippi is reported to have a tree blown down

New Orleans has no white people

The hurricane blew a limb off a tree in the yard of an Alabama resident

When you are hungry after a hurricane steal a big screen TV

The hurricane did 23 billion dollars in improvements to New Orleans: now the city is looter and gang free; and they are in your city.

Don't give thanks to the thousands that came to help rescue you, instead bitch because the government hasn't given you a debit card yet

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Beardguy57 said:
I remember talking with black friends on the phone, online and in person. They were pissed about Bush doing nothing at first.

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thedoctor said:

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thedoctor said:

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Things I have learned from watching the news on TV during the last eight days:

The hurricane only hit black family's property

New Orleans was devastated and no other city was affected by the hurricane

Mississippi is reported to have a tree blown down

New Orleans has no white people

The hurricane blew a limb off a tree in the yard of an Alabama resident

When you are hungry after a hurricane steal a big screen TV

The hurricane did 23 billion dollars in improvements to New Orleans: now the city is looter and gang free; and they are in your city.

Don't give thanks to the thousands that came to help rescue you, instead bitch because the government hasn't given you a debit card yet

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thedoctor said:
He should have been pissed at Nagin and Blanco since it turned out that they weren't smart enough to have New Orleans and the surrounding area declared a Disaster Area. As soon as Bush told them that, they did and the National Guard rode in to take over.

I get pissed all over again when I hear people bitchin' about New Orleans and trying to blame the federal government. Their local government failed them because they kept electing (and have done so again) crooked and incompetent politicians to spend their money and control their governments. Nagin ordered people to leave, and they didn't (ask anyone who works insurance about how many lost/stolen/damaged auto claims have come out of the 9th Ward). He then refused to evacuate them with the shitload of buses he had parked. Fuck it! Learn from Mississippi and rebuild your shit without complaining.

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thedoctor said:

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Beardguy57 said:
I remember talking with black friends on the phone, online and in person. They were pissed about Bush doing nothing at first.

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He should have been pissed at Nagin and Blanco since it turned out that they weren't smart enough to have New Orleans and the surrounding area declared a Disaster Area. As soon as Bush told them that, they did and the National Guard rode in to take over.

I get pissed all over again when I hear people bitchin' about New Orleans and trying to blame the federal government. Their local government failed them because they kept electing (and have done so again) crooked and incompetent politicians to spend their money and control their governments. Nagin ordered people to leave, and they didn't (ask anyone who works insurance about how many lost/stolen/damaged auto claims have come out of the 9th Ward). He then refused to evacuate them with the shitload of buses he had parked. Fuck it! Learn from Mississippi and rebuild your shit without complaining.

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Small need to heed weed
By RYAN LaFONTAINE

HANCOCK COUNTY - In the past few months, county narcotics agents have been pulling wild weed from weird places.

Several residents have reported strange-looking plants growing along roadsides, in ditches or even under a stop sign on a busy street.

The mysterious weeds are actually, just that, weed - marijuana, pot, herb, chronic, maryjane. Whatever one wants to call it, wild cannabis plants are growing naturally in some parts of the county.

"This is the first time I've ever seen marijuana like this, just growing along the side of the road," said Matt Carl, who runs the Hancock County Narcotics Division.

Agents believe seeds were scattered when Hurricane Katrina sacked the homes of some ganja-growing residents in the vicinity.

The ditch weeds are not exactly "wild," Carl said, because someone likely knows how they ended up in strange places.

"This stuff didn't just happen to grow there," Carl said. "It's coming from nearby houses where it was growing when the storm washed it out."

But Cheech and Chong are unlikely to bounce out from behind a debris pile claiming ownership of the roadside pot, so agents are unable to charge anyone for harvesting the stray crops, although the division has made several recent arrests of suspects allegedly farming pot at their homes.

Hancock agents say the stalks they are finding are usually little more than a foot tall, and many experts say dope smokers are more likely to get nauseated than high from the scrawny plants.

Most hard-core herb lovers know the roadside weed is low quality, but some dealers will often strip leaves from the stalks and mix them with a much-higher grade of cultivated marijuana.

"The plants we're finding are nothing that looks healthy or like it's being taken care of," Carl said. "Most of what was spread after the storm was probably killed by the saltwater."

Carl says the ditch dope is not like kudzu, which spread unfettered once released into the wild. He said the narcotics division has eradicated just a handful of naturally occurring marijuana plants.

"We've gotten calls about some growing near a ditch, some under a stop sign and a few others, but it's nothing that's taking over the county," Carl said.

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Prometheus said:
I love the ignorant propaganda they feed people about weed...

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Beardguy57 said:
Posts: 11447
Since: May 14 2003

#800664 Families Blame More Deaths on Katrina - Wed Dec 13 2006 05:56 PM




Families Blame More Deaths on Katrina
By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer
2 hours ago

NEW ORLEANS - You won't see Sylvester Major's name among the 1,698 listed officially as Hurricane Katrina victims.

He survived the floodwaters that gushed through the windows and door of his house. He persevered through miserable, fearful days at the convention center. He endured separation from family and the only hometown he had ever known. And he lived more than a year after the Aug. 29, 2005, tragedy.

Officially, he died of congestive heart failure at 59. But his family and a social worker who was with him when he died say the real cause was a broken heart, inflicted by Katrina and the loss of his elderly mother, who also died after being evacuated.

"Being away from most things we love, the people we're used to ... it had to take a toll on him," said Major's brother, Ellis Coleman Jr. "He just didn't have the will to go on. He lost the spark."

Major's story is one told and retold here since Katrina: Friends and family say the deaths of many New Orleans residents were hastened by the stress and heartache of seeing their hometown ravaged and their lives upended.

No one can say for certain whether deaths like Major's were caused by Katrina. Many of the dead were elderly or had serious health problems even before the storm.

The official Katrina death toll is based on the bodies collected in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and from reports from other states of evacuated Louisiana residents who died in the month afterward.

To help determine whether, as many residents believe, people are dying from the stress of the disaster and the grueling rebuilding, Louisiana state epidemiologist Raoult Ratard did a comparison between deaths during the six months after the storm and the same period the year before. But he said no definitive pattern emerged.

Without accurate population statistics and with so many people dying away from home, the numbers yielded few reliable conclusions, he said.

Ratard said it is plausible that elderly and frail people who went without their usual medication and suffered the stress of evacuation died prematurely, but quantifying the deaths may be impossible. New Orleans' pre-Katrina population of 455,000 is believed to be up to about 200,000.

"There are some things we will really never know. We'll have to live with that," he said.

For those who knew Major, there is little question that Katrina hastened his deterioration, ending his life before his family could get him home from Oklahoma City, where he was cared for at a nursing home.

"I'm telling you, all the way, it was Katrina. It just broke his heart," said Joann Bowers, a social worker at the Grace Living Centers nursing home. "You really can die of a broken heart. I don't care what anyone says."

During Major's 10-month stay in Oklahoma, Bowers said, only a few things seemed to perk him up: New Orleans Hornets basketball, talk about traditions like Mardi Gras king cakes and parades, and home-cooked food.

Major, a former laundry worker whose wide grin and smooth threads drew comparisons to Cedric the Entertainer, never had any interest in leaving New Orleans, said his son, Sylvester Major Jr. The elder Major's first trip in an airplane was his evacuation flight.

He desperately wanted to come home.

"It was almost like being in a foreign land," the 35-year-old son said of Major's stay in Oklahoma City.

The son and his wife arranged for a New Orleans-area nursing home to take the elder man earlier this fall, but before Major could make the trip home, they got word that he was too ill to travel.

Bowers, who was with the ailing Major in the final hours before he died Oct. 30, said she made him a promise: "Somehow, someone will get you home." Unable to speak, the dying man squeezed her hand.

Major was laid to rest Nov. 11 in a tomb overlooking the grave of the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.

There was never any question the New Orleans native would eventually make it home, his son said: "That's what he would have wanted."

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This is some heavy duty stuff here. I know how losing someone you love dearly, and then losing your home can affect you. It stays with you for the rest of your life.

It's rough. I feel for those people. I cried when I watched "When The Levees Broke."

Those with family and friends, a good support system
and a strong sense of self have a good chance of pulling through.

I do believe you can die from a broken heart, as Major did.

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Prometheus said:
Can I smoke it?

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sneaky bunny said:

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Prometheus said:
Can I smoke it?

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you can but you'll believe that your head is yellow and Cylindrical, your hair is interchangeable, your missing a hand and you can only bend at the waist and shoulders.

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