FEMA's "don't ask, don't tell" policy blows $85 million in aid to Katrina victims

One Citizen's Opinion
by
Lee Dunkelberg

You see, it's this way.

No one told us anyone needed anything and we didn't ask.

That's about how it boils down in FEMA latest buterfingers handling of the much-dropped Katrina football. Here's the story fron CNN.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.
The material, from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.
James McIntyre, FEMA's acting press secretary, said that FEMA was spending more than $1 million a year to store the material and that another agency wanted the warehouses torn down, so "we needed to vacate them."
"Upon review of our assets and our need to continue to store them, we determined that they were excess to FEMA's needs; therefore, they are being excessed from FEMA's inventory,"
McIntyre wrote in an e-mail. He declined a request for an on-camera interview, telling CNN the giveaway was "not news."
Photos from one of the facilities in Fort Worth, Texas, show pallet after pallet of cots, cleansers, first-aid kits, coffee makers, camp stoves and other items stacked to the ceiling.

No one thought of getting on the phone and calling around?

No one thought of going public with this tidbit?

Don't ask. Don't tell.

To be fair, apparently the state of Louisiana has picked up the torch of the Bush administration and is clueless to the needs of Katrina victims as well.

John Medica, director of the Louisiana Federal Property Assistance Agency in Baton Rouge, said he was unaware that Katrina victims still had a need for the household supplies.
"We didn't have anybody out there who told us they wanted it," Medica said.
Instead, 16 other states took the free items.

How y'all liking that new Republican administration there in Baton Rouge?

By the way, as FEMA sat on this pile of relief supplies - supplies one local social worker were vital to people finally returning to their homes - we the taxpayers were paying $1,000.000 a year to store the goods. That wasn't incentive enough to move the merchandise?

In the meantime, the people still picking up the pieces after the storm and the people serving those folks have gotten another huge dose of what Boy George Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is all about.

"Heckuva job, Bush!"