Thirsting for Redemption

How Pathetic can FEMA get?


Last Tuesday's news conference looked like another success in the Bush Administration's effort to demonstrate it could respond competently to a catastrophe.
However, on Friday the agency admitted the questions were posed by its own employees, not reporters. On Saturday the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, expressed anger and dismay and vowed disciplinary action.
The White House also expressed its displeasure. "It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House," said the spokeswoman Dana Perino, mentioning three times that it was an "error in judgment".


After witnessing first hand the disaster that is the FEMA, I sadly am not surprised. Ditto for the White House.

The list of failures on the part of FEMA post Katrina is endless. A few examples:

The FEMA Trailer costs


Those displaced by Hurricane Katrina and seeking a temporary trailer don't get to kick the tires or discuss financing plans, but a look at the ultimate sticker price might make them wish they could: $59,800.
That's the cost to taxpayers for the trailer's 18-month "life cycle," according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If FEMA offered the cash instead to hurricane victims, they might be able to spend the $3,322 per month in New Orleans on some housing more enticing than a box on wheels.


Formaldehyde ridden trailers


More waste:

The agency spent $632 million to subsidize hotel rooms for tens of thousands of families at an average cost of $2,400 a month, three times what it later paid families to rent two-bedroom apartments.
· The agency spent $249 million to secure 8,136 cruise-ship cabins for six months, at a cost that Inspector General Richard L. Skinner estimated at $5,100 a month per passenger. That is six times the cost of renting two-bedroom apartments


more screwups
Washington Post says


Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.



The $12.5M waste of ice

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has all this two-year old ice it doesn't know what to do with, ice it bought both pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina as part of its preparations and response effort.
How much ice? Around nearly 225 million pounds. That's a lot of margaritas.
But the problem is you probably wouldn't want to use them that way since there are questions about just how safe two-year old ice would be to drink. A lot of Americans would be willing to take their chances but the Centers for Disease Control is already plenty busy.



Sure this is all old news. But these heartless inept assclowns have no limit to how low they'll go to redeem their "image".
History speaks for itself.

Update:
FEMA Finds a fall guy

Regis' brother Pat fired