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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: FEMA, The Flood, and Fraud Monday, February 20, 2006 FEMA, the Flood and Fraud I've tried to be sanguine about the lies and distortions swirling around the Flood former known as Katrina in the national press, but this one struck me as odd and I decided I had to run it down. One member of the Congressional delegation this past weekend told the Times-Picayune he was concerned that that one third of claims for FEMA housing assistance were fraudulent. A closer inspection finds that's not true, but truth doesn't matter in journalism anymore once an idea escapes into the daily news cycle. Most of what passes for cable "news" is actually a lot of moderately informed and highly opinionated people talking, and it carries about the same news value as a bunch of folks sitting in a bar talking. A story that moved on the Associated Press wire Feb. 13 (published the 14th in most papers), included this: The GAO report found that up to 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received aid under the emergency cash assistance program, which included the debit cards, based their requests on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers, or false addresses and names. You mean some people tried to apply more than once after being given the FEMA runaround? How many of them were told to complete the questionnaire again by FEMA? As for fraudulent addresses, does that include people who couldn't even find other members of their family may have tried to apply for assistance from the same address? There are an awful lot of people in New Orleans driving around with "by their momma's" addresses on their drivers licenses, and nobody in Louisiana seems to think this constitutes fraud. The actual amount of fraud is much smaller, according to the Washington Post version of this story: Investigators said that so far they have learned that about 1,000 people who applied for aid used the Social Security numbers of dead people, 1,000 used numbers that were never issued, and tens of thousands used names, birthdates and Social Security numbers that did not match. So, is it 900,000 or 2,000 fraudulent applications? How many of the tens of thousands cited actually gave data that didn't match up, or had their telephone applications munged up by FEMA, an agency widely noted of late for its incompetence and inefficiency? This isn't fraud, certainly not on the scale people are suggesting. This is FEMA's own ineptitude, transferred to the victims. I'm disappointed that the T-P let this one slide by unchallenged. The editorial board has been doing a bang-up job in setting the record straight. The paper needs to look into this one, because it has become a "meme", a bit of information just barely above gossip in the food chain that spreads via the Internet, talk radio and cable "news" networks and becomes accepted as fact. These are the lies I wrote about just a few days ago, the lies that set off novelist and blogger Poppy Z. Brite and others on tirades this week against the fabrications that are drowning the city as surely as the negligent failure of the Federal levees. When I started this blog in August one of my purposes was as a news aggregation site for the displaced, to try and gather up as much information from my safe perch 1,000 miles from the disaster as possible. It morphed quickly into commentary on and analysis of that information, since so much of what was being circulated was little better than rumor. The more I try, the less certain I am we can staunch this tide any more than we could stop the waters rushing through the breeches. Many other NOLA bloggers are trying, as a casual trip through the list at right will show you. I have been around politics and the media too long to have any naive notions that we can completely overturn the edifice of talk radio and cable television that has replaced news with political posturing unconcerned with inconvenient truth. If a disaster the scale of Katrina can't topple this behemoth, I don't know what can. Those of us in the blogosphere or in the few remaining outposts of journalism where the idea "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" still has currency can try, but it is an almost quixotic task. Quoted Congressman Lynn Westmoreland told the T-P he voted against the first major aid bill "because it was an invitation to fraud. " No one thought to ask him if his visit to New Orleans would change his future votes. At the end of the day, it is clear that powerful forces could not care less of New Orleans is rebuilt or not, and will happily tell any lie that saves them the bother and the expense. (snip) (emphasis added) Click for Full Text! I posted this not only for the information about the screw job which continues on New Orleans, but also because this writer seems to have such a good understanding of the phenomenon which some blogs now call "The Mighty Wurlitzer". This is the constant drumbeat and bombardment of propaganda with which we are all surrounded here in America. Yesterday, I switched on the radio and of course Rush Limbaugh was on. I listened for a couple minutes and heard him blabbering about a subject he must've already done a million segments on: "global warming and how there really is no global warming and if there is it's not because anyone has been irresponsible about harvest or use of resources." (paraphrase) Later I switched on the TV and saw the usual cable news propaganda (doesn't matter which cable channel, they're all really "Fox News".) Then my phone rang and it was a recorded message which said something like, "Hello, I'm a concerned mother who has learned that the institution of marriage is under attack by homosexuals... blah blah blah." I don't give a flying f**k if queers want to hang around churches or justices of the peace and make out certificates with their names on it... I'm damned if I'm going to bring my blood pressure to the boiling point because of ANYTHING queers do. I don't care. I don't have a dog in that fight. Some may think it matters, but what matters far more to me is the way republicans are currently raping the great majority of Americans. And why in the HELL does Rush Limbaugh care so very much about global warming?? I don't care much about it. Why in the HELL is he so hysterical about whether or not global warming is a totally natural phenomenon, or is exacerbated by something we're doing? I'm not here to get into a debate about its causes, or about if it is even happening. What I want to know is WHY it means so very, very much to Rush Limbaugh to convince people that the climate is not getting warmer, and that there would be nothing we could do about it if it were. Please look up the "manifesto" of the late Justice Powell of the Supreme Court. He was one of Nixon's two Supreme Court appointees. Powell was a pretty fair justice, by all accounts. However, I hadn't known about his "manifesto" until recently. In it, he lays out a plan by which republicans would control all media. Look it up--because that plan has since been placed into action, and we are currently living under it. And the next time you switch on C-Span and see someone from "The Heritage Foundation", remember that they've been working for a long time to get this propaganda machine fully functioning, and now they've succeeded. Then turn off your TV and radio and leave them off till the last republican is ridden out of this country on a rail. (And you all know I was a lifelong supporter of republicans--till 2003. I was wrong.)
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#2. To: h-a-l-f-w-i-t-t (#0)
I'm disappointed that the T-P let this one slide by unchallenged. The editorial board has been doing a bang-up job in setting the record straight. The paper needs to look into this one, because it has become a "meme", a bit of information just barely above gossip in the food chain that spreads via the Internet, talk radio and cable "news" networks and becomes accepted as fact. I don't give a flying f**k if queers want to hang around churches or justices of the peace and make out certificates with their names on it... I'm damned if I'm going to bring my blood pressure to the boiling point because of ANYTHING queers do. I don't care. I don't have a dog in that fight. Some may think it matters, but what matters far more to me is the way republicans are currently raping the great majority of Americans. And why in the HELL does Rush Limbaugh care so very much about global warming?? I don't care much about it. Why in the HELL is he so hysterical about whether or not global warming is a totally natural phenomenon, or is exacerbated by something we're doing? I'm not here to get into a debate about its causes, or about if it is even happening. What I want to know is WHY it means so very, very much to Rush Limbaugh to convince people that the climate is not getting warmer, and that there would be nothing we could do about it if it were. Good article.. seems as if they're trying YET again to blame the VICTIMS not take responsibility themselves. Did you watch any of "Brownie's" testimony re Katrina? The blame is in the lap of the administration and Chertoff.. it was fairly obvious that this was a purposeful purging of the poor in NO. I dont know how anyone could possibly see it any other way. On Limbaugh.. re global warming .. they want the RW base to believe there is nothing to all this for if they give it any attention then possibly they'll see the policies re global warming is helpful to the corporate interests.. They want them to concentrate on things that truly have no or little effect on their lives to keep attention OFF of what does.. the administration's policies that are destroying this country. And I must say as well that the Democrats are no better.. they're just rubber stamping everything that Bush proposes.
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