Where Are Our Leaders?

Homeowners from developments ranging from Boynton Beach to Parkland gathered at West Palm Beach City Hall Wednesday to meet with Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., over Chinese drywall concerns.

Nelson opened the meeting with a call for the resignation of the acting chief of the U.S. Consumer Product and Safety Commission. ”We need to put a fire under the responsible agencies,” said Nelson, who Tuesday penned a letter to the White House saying that the CPSC “is doing too little, too late to help residents of Florida and other states.”

However, homeowners attending the event were much more interested in discussing the possible health effects of living in a home with the tainted product: The plasterboard emits sulfuric gas thought to corrode metal, including air conditioning coils, bathroom fixtures and jewelry.

Now where are the leaders of Mississippi?  How much of the Chinese drywall was used in South Mississippi in the Katrina repairs?  Why have not our cracker jack Washingt5on big shots cared enough to meet with us to answer our concerns?  One of the senators spent time playing the flesh pressing game…stopping at a small resturant and a business on the Coast, but so far he has not shown much leadership other than making an ass of himself in Washington.

If you have concerns about the drywall then I suggest that you by-pass AL:L the state’s worthless reps and go direct to Rep. Wexler of Florida, at least he will knows how to talk to the people.

FLASH! WARR INDICTED!

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The mayor of a Mississippi city hit hard by Hurricane Katrina has been indicted after federal officials say he filed a false claim for disaster assistance.

Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr says the charges have nothing to do with his job and he will continue to run the city, which was heavily damaged by Katrina’s wind and storm surge in 2005.

The indictment alleges Warr and his wife, Laura, sought a grant for a hurricane-damaged beachfront house they did not live in. Gulfport is on the coast about 80 miles east of New Orleans.

The Warrs pleaded not guilty Wednesday.

Charges include conspiring to defraud the federal government and filing a false claim for disaster assistance.

Brent Warr is the highest-ranking municipal official indicted for Katrina fraud to date.

Still Without A Clue

Oh My God!

In his last press conference as commander-in-chief, President Bush on Monday forcefully defended his response to Hurricane Katrina, saying that the federal rescue of 30,000 people from rooftops was a tribute to the Coast Guard, but critics countered that FEMA was the president’s failure.

“I’ve thought long and hard about Katrina — you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge,” said Bush. “The problem with that … is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission.”

“People said, well, the federal response was slow. Don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed,” said Bush, his voice rising as he tapped his finger for emphasis on the lectern. “Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It’s a pretty quick response.”

His plan was to make the Democrats in Louisiana look bad and in doing so crapped in his own chili. But revisionist that he is, he sees it differently.  As a first responder, I can say and mean, the whole Katrina thing was a cluster f*ck.  If it had not been for local officials staying calm and collected, it would have been a lot worse.

Katrina Fraud Nails Police Chief

Lumberton Police Chief Maurice Hammond has been indicted on eight charges involving false claims he allegedly made to FEMA and the Small Business Administration for Katrina disaster assistance money, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced today.

The indictment alleges that Hammond, who is from Poplarville, filed a false claim for disaster assistance, made false statements to FEMA, stole government funds, and committed wire fraud. The indictment also alleges Hammond made a false statement to the SBA.

If convicted of each count, Hammond faces up to 105 years in prison and up to $2 million in fines. Hammond has been released on bond and ordered to appear Dec. 1 for arraignment in U.S. District Court.

MS: BAM! Nail Another One

A South Mississippi man has been indicted on charges of Katrina fraud involving about $200,000 in grants in Hancock County.

State Auditor Stacey Pickering announced the indictment of Clinton Tapper today.

Tapper, 58, appeared in U.S. District Court and was released on $25,000 bond. His trial date is set for Dec. 1.

“The State Auditor’s Office continues to investigate cases of Katrina fraud across South Mississippi and currently has over 250 active cases,” Pickering said. “Our office has been very successful in identifying fraud cases and we continue to work with federal and state courts to bring these cases to a conclusion.”

La: Is New Orleans Worth It?

Please before I get any hate mail…this is not my opinion it is a piece I found in a Florida newspaper..

Those who love New Orleans say Hurricane Gustav is proof that the billions of dollars spent to protect the city and bring it back to life after the devastating 2005 storm season was worth it.

But what if Gustav had been stronger, a category 4 instead of a 2, and hit the city directly instead of 70 miles to the west? Would it be worth the cost to rebuild New Orleans again if the storm caused widespread destruction as Katrina did?

“That’s a question that was there before and after (Hurricane) Katrina, and I think is going to come to the forefront again,” said Don Powell, who oversaw the Bush administration’s effort to rebuild the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Since Katrina ripped through New Orleans three years ago, the federal government has devoted at least $133 billion in emergency funds and tax credits for Gulf Coast disaster relief. Much of it went to rebuilding and better protecting New Orleans from future storms. How much more will be needed after Gustav – or Hurricane Hanna, as that storm creeps up Florida’s eastern coast – is unclear.

Former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., infuriated Louisiana lawmakers when he suggested in 2005 that a lot of New Orleans “could be bulldozed” after Katrina and questioned the wisdom of rebuilding it. More dispassionate observers note that no matter how much is spent, New Orleans will continue to swallow federal dollars with each gulp of the Gulf or Lake Pontchartrain.

“New Orleans didn’t rise up in the ground from where they were before,” Harvey E. Johnson, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said shortly before Gustav’s landfall. “They’re still below sea level. So you’re still going to get water inside of New Orleans. And they know that.”

A study last month by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, concluded that 72 percent of the city’s households that fled Katrina returned to New Orleans, as did 90 percent of its sales tax revenues. However, as many as 65,000 blighted properties or empty lots still mar the city, and house rents are up 46 percent.

To die-hard residents and other devotees of the Big Easy, the money poured into the Gulf Coast to continue oil production, preserve local culture and, most importantly, strengthen levees showed that New Orleans could withstand another battering by Mother Nature.

“It’s a soup bowl and it’s not safe,” said Beverly Cigler, a public policy professor at Penn State University, referring to the city’s cup-shaped geography.

Local political eagerness to develop property in New Orleans instead of protecting wetlands, which serve as a natural storm buffer, has hampered safety, said Cigler, co-chair of a Katrina task force set up by the American Society for Public Administration. Levees, meanwhile, are still three years away from being fully strengthened. And since there are differing levels of elevation throughout the city, “some places are safer than others.”

“My own personal opinion is that you shouldn’t rebuild in areas unless you can make them safe,” she said. “And nobody’s had the willingness to confront these kinds of issues.”

Of course, these opinions are from idiots that do not live in or around New Orleans.  So what do they know?

LA: No Murder Charges

A judge threw out murder and attempted murder charges against seven New Orleans police officers accused of gunning down two men on a bridge in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The judge, Raymond Bigelow of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, agreed with defense arguments that prosecutors violated state law by divulging grand jury testimony to a police officer who was a witness in the case. Survivors of the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings have said the officers fired at unarmed people crossing the Danziger Bridge to get food at a grocery store.

LA: The Only Good News From Katrina

An annual survey of the number of Formosan termites in the French Quarter this year shows them at the lowest level since the survey began in 1989.

This year, volunteers collected an average 443 insects in the French Quarter, and an average 8,719 in traps elsewhere.

The Quarter collection is significantly less than last year’s average of 3,152 insects, and well below the average of 13,830 collected in 1998, which was the largest number collected in the historic district.

This year’s average numbers for outside the Quarter also are down, both from last year’s 11,546 and from a historic high of 37,737 in 2005.

Credit the intensive federally financed treatment program in the French Quarter for the much lower numbers there, say both Henderson and Frank Guillot, who coordinates the Formosan subterranean termite national program with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Finally some good news in the Katrina recovery, there is so little of it, that we will take anything we can get as far as good news go.

LA: Katrina Used As A Benchmark

Google the phrase “Midwest flooding Katrina,” and you do not have to look far to find the heated comparisons of victims of one catastrophe with those of the other.

The phenomenon is not new. According to snopes.com, a Web site that examines rumors circulated on the Internet, an e-mail sent out in late 2005 extolled the virtues of North Dakotans who withstood a blizzard without “howling” for government assistance or asking for a “FEMA Trailer House.” In 2006, similar e-mails referred to the aftermath of a blizzard in Marquette, Mich., and to Colorado, which was hit by two severe snowstorms.

The day after she got the chain letter, Dozier responded, detailing the struggles she and countless others faced in the early weeks after the storm. Dozier, 54, lives in Austin, Texas, but she was living in Mandeville when Katrina hit and working as a professor at the University of New Orleans.

“I’d like you to know that not everyone hit by Katrina was a drug addict, government-sponging criminal,” she wrote. “This catastrophe hit working class, middle class, wealthy, young and old. It DESTROYED an entire city.”

It is hard to accurately draw comparisons between the aftermaths of disasters, given the sweeping differences in scope, topography and population. While the Midwestern floods caused billions of dollars in damage and left nearly 20 people dead, Katrina was one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history and logged a death toll of close to 1,500.

Enough Said!

AL: Companies Get Tax Extension

South Alabama companies would get more time to take advantage of a Hurricane Katrina-related tax break under a waiver tucked into a housing bill now before the Senate.

Under the waiver, businesses in Mobile, Baldwin and nine other “Gulf Opportunity Zone” counties in the state would no longer have had to break ground on new projects by the end of last year to qualify for accelerated depreciation benefits, said Natalie Naquin, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat pushing the measure. The waiver drops that deadline, she said, but does require the projects to be finished by the end of this year.

The bill would also add Dallas and Colbert counties to the overall GO Zone as a way of letting them take advantage of tax-exempt bond financing. The full Senate could vote on the measure–which is mainly aimed at helping homeowners facing foreclosure — this week. If approved, it would go back to the House for further action, a spokeswoman for Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.said today.