Mood:
d'ohTopic: Lib Loser Stories
Why am I not surprised. Tell me again how it is all Bush's fault... I guess it was all part of Bush's master plan to destroy NO. He trumps up false charges against locals so they can't do their jobs, cuts funding, incites Katrina, blows up the levee and then delays sending aid to punish the blacks in NO for voting for Kerry and Gore. He is an evil genius that GW. Or maybe Bush is a dunce, and it was Karl Rove who did all this!! Gotta wait 'till the libtards take their pick once and for all. Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit ♠ Federal audits found dubious expenditures by the state's emergency preparedness agency, which will administer FEMA hurricane aid.
WASHINGTON - Senior officials in Louisiana's emergency planning agency already were awaiting trial over allegations stemming from a federal investigation into waste, mismanagement and missing funds when Hurricane Katrina struck.
And federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were funneled to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency dating back to 1998.
In March, FEMA demanded that Louisiana repay $30.4 million to the federal government.
The problems are particularly worrisome, federal officials said, because they involve the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, the agency that will administer much of the billions in federal aid anticipated for victims of Katrina.
Earlier this week, federal Homeland Security officials announced they would send 30 investigators and auditors to the Gulf Coast to ensure relief funds were properly spent.
Details of the ongoing criminal investigations come from two reports by the inspector general's office in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, as well as in state audits, and interviews this week with federal and state officials.
The reports were prepared by the federal agency's field office in Denton, Texas, and cover 1998 to 2003. Improper expenditures previously identified by auditors include a parka, a briefcase and a trip to Germany.
Much of the FEMA money that was unaccounted for was sent to Louisiana under the Hazard Mitigation Grant program, intended to help states retrofit property and improve flood control facilities, for example.
The $30.4 million FEMA is demanding back was money paid into that program and others, including a program to buy out flood-prone homeowners. As much as $30 million in additional unaccounted for spending also is under review in audits that have not yet been released, according to a FEMA official.
One 2003 federal investigation of allegedly misspent funds in Ouachita Parish, a district in northern Louisiana, grew into a probe that sprawled into more than 20 other parishes.
Mark Smith, a spokesman for the Louisiana emergency office, said the agency had responded to calls for reform, and that "we now have the policy and personnel in place to ensure that past problems aren't repeated."
He said earlier problems were largely administrative mistakes, not due to corruption.
But federal officials disagreed. They said FEMA for years expressed concerns over patterns of improper management and lax oversight throughout the state agency, and said most problems had not been corrected.
They point to criminal indictments of three state workers as evidence the problem was more than management missteps. Two other state emergency officials also were identified in court documents as unindicted co-conspirators.
"The charges were made after some very extensive reviews by FEMA investigators and other authorities, who identified issues they felt were of the severity and magnitude to refer them to the U.S. attorney's office," said David Passey, the spokesman for FEMA's regional office in Texas.
Passey, while acknowledging that the state had made some administrative changes, said it had not completed the kind of overhaul FEMA said was needed.
"It concerns us a lot. We are devoted to the mission of helping people prepare for, prevent and recover from disasters and we want these federal funds — this taxpayer money — to be spent and used well and in accordance with the rules," he said.
Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington watchdog group, said recent Louisiana history showed that FEMA "money earmarked for saving lives and homes'' was instead squandered in "a cesspool of wasteful spending."
Louisiana's emergency office receives money directly from FEMA. It passes on much of the funding to local governments that apply for assistance.
The audit reports said state operating procedures increased the likelihood of fraud and corruption going undetected.
For instance, a Nov. 30, 2004, report by Tonda L. Hadley, a director in the Denton field office, examined $40.5 million sent to the Louisiana agency, mostly for the Hazard Mitigation program. The report found that the state's emergency office did not have receipts to account for 97% of the $15.4 million it had awarded to subcontractors on 19 major projects.
The report also said the Louisiana agency had misspent $617,787 between May 2000 and September 2003.
Questionable expenditures identified by the inspector general included $2,400 for sod installation, several thousand dollars for a trip to Germany by the deputy director, $1,071 for curtains, and $595 for an L.L. Bean parka and briefcase. The inspector general also challenged unspecified spending for camera equipment, professional dues and a 2002 Ford Crown Victoria.
The day before the report was issued, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana obtained an indictment against Michael L. Brown, deputy director of the Louisiana office of emergency preparedness. (Brown is no relation to former FEMA director Michael D. Brown who resigned this week.) Louisiana's deputy director oversaw the state's Hazard Mitigation program.
Brown was charged with conspiring to obstruct the inspector general's investigation and for making a false statement to a federal investigator.
Michael C. Appe, another senior state agency official, also was charged with obstructing the audit. Months earlier, Appe had been appointed as head of a "surge team" to review projects funded with FEMA money. The team's mission was to help spot abuses.
Both Appe and Brown hold the rank of colonel for their roles in overseeing elements of the state National Guard.
Appe was arrested in Baton Rouge last November, as was Daniel J. Falanga, the state agency's flood-mitigation officer. Falanga was accused of committing perjury before a grand jury investigating misuse of FEMA funds.
All three men have pleaded not guilty to the charges and deny wrongdoing, according to their lawyers. Trial dates remain uncertain because the hurricane disrupted court schedules.
According to the indictment, Brown and Appe conspired in 2000 to use $175,000 in FEMA funds to cover a shortfall in a related agency's budget. Later, when the inspector general began investigating the agency's use of FEMA money, the two men conspired to create a fake, backdated memo to cover up the earlier diversion of funds, the indictment says.
State agency spokesman Smith said Brown had traveled to Germany, but to attend a conference. He declined to answer questions about alleged improper spending, citing the pending trial. Smith said at the time, state officials believed the trip to Germany was a proper expenditure.
Brown's lawyer, Elton Richey, said his client tried to spend federal disaster funds wisely despite job turnover and confusion between state agency officials and FEMA overseers. He said FEMA kept changing the rules.
Marty Stroud, a lawyer who represents Appe and Falanga, said, "There are no charges that anyone in this case enriched himself at the expense of a federal program."
Hadley, of the inspector general's office, issued a second report on Feb. 25, 2005, which tracked state spending of FEMA money to pay for "extraordinary costs," a special category used for the administration of disaster assistance programs. It said the agency had improperly spent $247,166 for items such as a car, computers, membership dues and travel to seminars.
In addition to alleged misspending reported in the two audits, FEMA has asked for the return of $10.7 million allocated to a program for buying property in high-risk flood areas. Most of that money was passed on to local communities to determine which property owners would benefit.
FEMA alleged the Louisiana agency had not properly monitored expenditures, and failed to ensure that properties receiving the funds were eligible.
About $2.8 million of the refund sought by FEMA went to consultant fees. Most of that money went to Aegis Innovative Systems, a Baton Rouge firm hired by many parishes to administer the flood buyout program. Aegis owners include Mark Howard, a former official at the Louisiana agency.
State Sen. Reggie Dupre said it appeared that parishes employing Aegis were especially successful in winning money from the state emergency preparedness agency.
"It smells like a horrible brother-in-law deal to me," he said in a phone interview.
An Aegis attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
LA Times ~ Ken Silverstein and Josh Meyer ** Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit
Posted by uhyw
at 3:25 PM EDT
Updated: Monday, September 19, 2005 4:04 PM EDT
chatty
The hurricane exposed America's poor >>>>>
HARMAN: 'UK IS NEXT US'
Britain's black and poor communities could end up like those exposed in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, minister Harriet Harman has warned.
Her comments echo those of Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, who believes the UK must heed the lessons of the catastrophe.
Hundreds of America's poor were left homeless by the disaster which struck Louisiana last month. The majority of them were black.
Constitutional Affairs Minister Ms Harman said: "We don't want to get into a situation like America, but if you look at the figures, we are already looking like America - in London, poor, young and black people don't register to vote."
Ministers fear the failure of many to register is evidence of their disengagement from civic society - in the same way the poor of New Orleans had no power to improve their position.
Latest figures show that 20% of people aged 20 to 24 were not on the electoral register.
On Thursday, Mr Phillips will tell Manchester Council for Community Relations in a speech: "We are a society which, almost without noticing it, is becoming more divided by race and religion.
"Our ordinary schools ... are becoming more exclusive and our universities are starting to become colour-coded with virtual 'whites keep out' signs in some urban institutions."
In an assessment of the UK after the July 7 terror attacks, Mr Phillips said: "We are sleepwalking our way to segregation."
celebratory
U.S.: 2 al-Qaida Leaders Captured in Mosul
Money Earmarked for Evacuation Redirected
As far back as eight years ago, Congress ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan for evacuating New Orleans during a massive hurricane, but the money instead went to studying the causeway bridge that spans the city's Lake Pontchartrain, officials say.
The outcome provides one more example of the government's failure to prepare for a massive but foreseeable catastrophe, said the lawmaker who helped secure the money for FEMA to develop the evacuation plan.
"They never used it for the intended purpose," said former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La. "The whole intent was to give them resources so they could plan an evacuation of New Orleans that anticipated that a very large number of people would never leave."
In Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, attention has focused on the inability of local and federal officials to evacuate or prepare for the large number of poor people, many of them minorities, who had no access to transportation and remained behind.
That possibility was one of the concerns that led Congress in 1997 to set aside $500,000 for FEMA to create "a comprehensive analysis and plan of all evacuation alternatives for the New Orleans metropolitan area."
Frustrated two years later that nothing materialized, Congress strengthened its directive. This time it ordered "an evacuation plan for a Category 3 or greater storm, a levee break, flood or other natural disaster for the New Orleans area."
The $500,000 that Congress appropriated for the evacuation plan went to a commission that studied future options for the 24-mile bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney said.
The hefty report produced by the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission "primarily was not about evacuation," said Robert Lambert, the general manager for the bridge expressway. "In general it was an overview of all the things we need to do" for the causeway through 2016.
Lambert said he could not trace how or if FEMA money came to the commission. Nor could Shelby LaSalle, a causeway consulting engineer who worked on the plan.
LaSalle said it would be "ludicrous" to consider his report an evacuation plan, although it had a transportation evacuation section, dated Dec. 19, 1997. That part was tacked on mainly to promote the causeway for future designation as an official evacuation route, LaSalle said.
"We didn't do anything for FEMA," he added.
Asked why the congressional mandate was never fulfilled, Barry Scanlon, senior vice president in the consulting firm of former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, said he believes the agency did what it needed when it gave the money to the state.
"FEMA received an earmark which it processed through to the state as instructed by Congress," Scanlon said. Witt is now a private consultant to Gov. Kathleen Blanco, D-La., on the Katrina aftermath.
Tauzin said he, too, could never find out where the money went. "They gave it to the causeway commission? That's wacky," he said.
At the time eight years ago, the Louisiana delegation had plenty of political muscle to get the money. Then-Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which controls the government's purse strings.
Livingston, now a lobbyist, said he could not explain what happened either, although he knew of other predictive hurricane studies over the years.
"Do I wish the study had been made? Sure, but now that's by the boards. We're doing the best we can right now to repair and rebuild," he said.
FEMA typically contracts its studies to private or government entities. Kinerney, the agency spokesman, said it appeared the money went through the Louisiana government. State emergency and transportation officials said they did not recall it.
After nothing came of its first directive, FEMA addressed the need for an evacuation plan "off and on" over the years, Kinerney said. Last year, the agency undertook the massive "Hurricane Pam" project that was supposed to create a comprehensive emergency plan for New Orleans.
That work was unfinished when Katrina struck, though its first phase involved an elaborate hurricane simulation that was eerily predictive of Katrina's disaster.
Asked about any earlier FEMA-funded plan, Mark Smith, spokesman for the state Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said, "To the best of our knowledge we can find no information on this."
Congress' 1999 language directed that FEMA consult with that state agency as well as the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development.
FEMA's parent agency, the Homeland Security Department, did provide $75,000 to print 1 million evacuation maps that were distributed this year for the state's updated transportation evacuation blueprint, state transportation spokesman Mark Lambert said.
That plan used phased evacuation orders and reverse-flow traffic patterns to avoid the highway snarls New Orleans saw during Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
But that plan was designed for traffic management, not to provide transportation or contingencies for the infirm, elderly and poor who could not get out on their own, officials said.
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CINDY SHEEHAN CALLS FOR U.S TO 'PULL OUR TROOPS OUT OF OCCUPIED NEW ORLEANS'
Celebrity anti-war protester, fresh off inking a lucrative deal with Speaker's Bureau, has demanded at the 
Sheehan is in the middle of a bus trip across America in support of her cause.
Dems Woo Bill Clinton To Oppose Arnold
Enticed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plunging approval ratings, California Democrats are courting some heavy hitters to run against him next year - including Bill Clinton.
"We hear that major donors are reaching out to former President Clinton, once governor of Arkansas, to run," Paul Bedard writes in his U.S. News & World Report column, Washington Whispers.
A Democratic strategist quoted by Bedard says: "On first blush, it might sound nuts. But he'd be governor of the fourth-largest economy in the world and have the ability to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for Hillary" if she ran for president.
Other potential candidates being considered include ex-Lakers star Magic Johnson, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and activist actor Rob Reiner, aka "Meathead" of "All in the Family" fame.
Says Bedard: "Imagine a 'Meathead vs. Terminator' race in 2006."
spacey
Air America Hosts: Farrakhan Not Wrong on Levees
Two hosts at the liberal radio network Air America are defending Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan - saying he's not wrong to suspect that white people deliberately blew up the levees in New Orleans.
"You cannot blame people for coming up with conspiracy theories," Air America host Chuck D. (right) said, after he was asked Thursday about the paranoid pronouncement by MSNBC's Tucker Carlson.
"They look on television and see that the government is four days late in saving people [who are] supposed to be their citizens," Chuck D. explained.
Carlson gave him a second chance to denounce Farrakhan's lunatic declaration, saying, "You're a smart guy. You know that white people didn't blow up the levees to kill black people. You've gotta know that didn't happen."
But the Air America host refused to budge, insisting instead that there was a chance Farrakhan could be right.
"I can't say unless I know for sure what's the actual facts and what's actually false," the rapper-turned-talk host said.
Carlson tried a third time, telling Chuck D.: "Look, I can say for certain that it was not a white conspiracy. White people did not blow up the levee to kill black people."
Still, the radio lefty wouldn't denounce Farrakhan's poisonous rant, saying only, "I don't think it's a person at fault but I think the system needs revamping."
After failing to persuade Chuck D., the MSNBC host turned to panelist Rachel Maddow, who also hosts a show on Air America.
Asked if she believed that white people deliberately destroyed the levees, Maddow declined to render a personal judgment - and instead defended the sentiment behind the toxic hypothesis.
"Conspiracy theories don't necessarily help but you have to understand where they come from," she told Carlson. "They come from people feeling like this disaster had a real racial component. I mean, it was a majority-black city that was absolutely abandoned by the country."
On Monday, Farrakhan uncorked his ugly theory, telling a North Carolina audience: "I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach. It may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry."
Seinfeld Who? NBC Pursuing the Heartland
By 
In advance of the new prime-time television season, NBC sent more than 7,000 DVD's of the show's first episode to ministers and other clergy members, along with a recorded message to their congregants from Ms. Grant. ("At its core, 'Three Wishes' is faith in action," she tells them.) The network has also booked Ms. Grant - a pop singer who vaulted to fame singing Christian songs, crossed over to mainstream radio and recently released an album of hymns titled "Rock of Ages" - for interviews on Christian radio and taken out advertising in small-town newspapers.
And, perhaps most seductively, NBC has been stuffing cash registers at stores here like Goody's and others in or around Nashville, Salt Lake City, Des Moines and Milwaukee with tens of thousands of $1 bills used for groceries and other basics. The dollars are affixed with yellow stickers (removable, consistent with Treasury Department guidelines) that ask, "What's your wish?," and implore people to watch the show. All told, the network expects to give away 150,000 of those dollar bills in 15 cities and towns.
Though NBC hopes the show will have broad appeal - it also took its dollar bill campaign to New York and Los Angeles - Barbara Blangiardi, the network's vice president of marketing and special projects, said that "absolutely the Christian community was a target audience."
Indeed, Ms. Grant brings an established following to NBC, instantly making her one of its biggest stars. Her show is consistent with other efforts the network has made to reach viewers outside major cities, including its telecasts of Nascar races and periodic visits by the "NBC Nightly News" anchor, Brian Williams, beyond the Northeast.
Though NBC is using more conventional tactics to promote much of its lineup - advertisements for "My Name Is Earl," a comedy about a ne'er-do-well who wins a lottery, have appeared in stadiums and movie theaters - it is taking a grass-roots approach to "Earl" and several other shows in addition to "Three Wishes." These include "The Biggest Loser," a returning reality series about weight loss. Last week, the network sponsored parties for "Loser" in 1,000 homes.
Here in Kennesaw, a suburb of Atlanta with 22,000 residents and a Civil War battlefield, NBC had little difficulty finding people who had tuned out its prime-time lineup since its glory days.
"I loved 'Seinfeld,' " said Ms. Smith, 40, who works at a Hobby Lobby store. "I watched 'Cheers' and 'Friends,' " said her boyfriend, Paul Perry, 34, who is out of work while recuperating from shoulder surgery.
But when asked to name a show on the network's prime-time schedule last year, neither could.
Instead, they, along with nearly a dozen other recipients of NBC's largess, cited shows they liked on other networks, including "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" (which "Three Wishes" resembles) and "Desperate Housewives" on ABC; the "C.S.I." shows on CBS; and "American Chopper," a Discovery Channel series about motorcycles.
NBC executives refused to say how much they were spending to raise the network's profile this fall, other than that it was roughly a third more than what they spent last year at this time. (The popularity of "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" on ABC last fall has been attributed in part to the network's targeted marketing, including dry-cleaning bags with the "Desperate" logo.)
One of the architects of NBC's strategy, John D. Miller, chief marketing officer of the NBC Universal Television Group, said the network had organized its priorities this year into two tiers. The first includes "Earl"; "E-Ring," a Pentagon drama; and "Surface," about organisms rising from the deep, which are each receiving more marketing support than any show last year. The second tier, also the beneficiary of heavy promotion, includes "Three Wishes," "Biggest Loser" and the Martha Stewart "Apprentice" offshoot.
Mr. Miller said he expected that "Three Wishes" (to be broadcast on Fridays at 9 p.m., Eastern and Pacific times; 8 p.m., Central time) would play a "sleeper" role in helping improve the network's fortunes. But he also said he wanted to help the show because of his emotional reaction to it. Set in Sonora, Calif., the first episode shows Ms. Grant helping a young girl recovering from a car accident, a boy seeking to thank the man filling the void left by his late father and a high school trying to replace its waterlogged football field. And yes, Ms. Grant sings - twice.
"This show makes me feel good," Mr. Miller said.
At the root of NBC's strategy for "Three Wishes" is raising its visibility in smaller counties.
It has bought advertising for the series in Sunday magazine inserts like American Profile, which appears in weekly and biweekly newspapers. The DVD copies of the pilot were distributed to churches, as well as some synagogues and mosques, through a California public relations firm, Grace Hill Media, that specializes in religious audiences. The $1 bill promotion was conceived by another California firm, this one an advocate of promotional stunts, called Impact.
Though the "Wishes" campaign has been in the works for months, the hurricane that displaced tens of thousands of people has put the network in a bit of a bind: will the wishes the show is trying to fulfill pale in comparison? NBC figures that the hurricane, by touching off a national spirit of charity, could actually draw viewers. (One wish will now concern a family devastated by the storm.)
As luck would have it, one of the people randomly picked to have her Goody's order paid by NBC - at an even $80 - was a woman who said she had promised to help about 100 children relocated to Georgia after the storm. She was Catherine Love, 36, a hairstylist, who said she was struggling to fulfill that pledge.
"I would watch 'Three Wishes' because there's so much bad going on in the world," said Ms. Love, who works at a salon, Kids Kuts, in nearby Marietta. "It's refreshing to see good things happen to people who deserve it."
U.S. troops find chemical weapon in Tal Afar stronghold
U.S. commander derides enemy's 'unscrupulous' actions
ARLINGTON, Va. - While taking down the insurgent stronghold of Tal Afar, U.S. troops discovered a crude chemical weapon, the commander of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment said Tuesday.
The troops had just entered a building when their ears and throats started to burn, said Army Col. H.R. McMaster in a briefing to reporters.
U.S. forces determined insurgents had rigged the chemicals to explosives, McMaster said, though he did not identify the type of chemical.
"We evacuated the civilians from the area and we demolished that building without a hazard to the people," McMaster said.
He said several families were living near the building, suggesting insurgents intended to detonate the chemical weapon to harm them and blame it on coalition forces, he said.
McMaster hailed operations in Tal Afar as a major success against an "unscrupulous" enemy.
"They are some of the worst human beings on the face of the Earth, and there is no real greater pleasure for us than to kill or capture these individuals," he said.
In recent operations in the Tal Afar area, U.S. forces killed and captured hundreds of terrorists who had taken over the city and ruled by terror, McMaster said.
McMaster called the insurgents "unscrupulous." In one incident, insurgents killed a boy and then put a bomb inside his body and detonated it when his parents came along, he said.
Tal Afar's residents recognized the insurgents for the thugs they are and provided U.S. and Iraqi forces with critical intelligence, McMaster said.
"The people are sick and tired of this violence, of this enemy, and they are very grateful for our efforts and the Iraqi efforts particularly to rid them of this enemy," he said.
Another element in the successful operation was the Iraqi security forces, which served as a capable backup for U.S. troops, McMaster said.
"These Iraqi soldiers are brave, they're courageous, they're building capabilities every day and we are drawing strength from their example," he said.
Still, the Iraqi security forces are not yet able to conduct operations on their own, and coalition forces do not have enough troops to secure Tal Afar, McMaster said.
Kim Jong Il: We Want Clinton Nuke Deal
Negotiators for North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il insisted on Wednesday that the U.S. honor ex-President Clinton's promise to give them a nuclear reactor in exchange for giving up their nuclear weapons program.
But the Bush administration quickly nixed the idea.
After his first one-on-one meeting with the North Korean delegation during talks on their nuclear program, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told reporters: "We did not make a lot of progress."
The North Korean regime is demanding the kind of light-water nuclear reactor promised by Clinton under a 1994 deal dubbed the "Agreed Framework" - and pledged they won't use it to make nuclear weapons.
But Hill noted that North Korea has pursued a nuclear program for 25 years and used it solely to make weapons-grade plutonium for atomic bombs - not for generating electricity.
The North was slated to get two such reactors under the Clinton plan. Other assistance promised by the U.S. at the time would have turned Pyongyang into the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the Pacific rim.
The Agreed Framework collapsed, however, in late 2002, when Kim Jong Il's government admitted it was making nuclear bombs. "As it turns out, they were cheating," Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright later explained.
Under the Bush administration's proposal, North Korea would receive economic aid and security guarantees from Washington along with free electricity from South Korea in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons program.