It's Worse Than We Thought
"Did you know that Arabian horses come in grey, chestnut, bay and roan and an occasional solid black?"In the months before Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush sought to cut a key program to help local governments raise their preparedness, and state officials warned of a "total lack of focus" on natural disasters by his homeland-security chief, documents show.
The disclosures add to questions over the administration's emergency-response planning, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's priorities and the way the White House budgets for disaster preparedness after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Organizations representing emergency-response and security officials at state and local agencies had complained of funding shortages and what they saw as an excessive shift by the Homeland Security Department away from preparing for natural disasters, as it focused increasingly on terrorism.
In July, the National Emergency Management Association wrote lawmakers expressing "grave" concern that still-pending changes proposed by Chertoff would undercut the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
"Our primary concern relates to the total lack of focus on natural-hazards preparedness," David Liebersbach, the association's president, said in the July 27 letter to Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat, the leaders of a key Senate committee overseeing the agency.
He said Chertoff's emphasis on terrorism "indicates that FEMA's long-standing mission of preparedness for all types of disasters has been forgotten at DHS."
FEMA, formerly a cabinet-level agency, was folded into the new Homeland Security Department as part of a major government reorganization after the September 11 attacks. The agency has borne the brunt of criticism over the delays and problems in responding to Katrina, and its head, Michael Brown, resigned after being removed from the recovery effort.
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It never ceases to amaze me how liberals will go out of their way to accuse Bush for everything under the sun without taking responsibility for their own lack of preparedness. Amazingly, in a Los Angeles Times article, By Ken Silverstein and Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writers, they show the corruption of local and state officials long before Katrina ever became an issue. And isn't it interesting how this disaster has revealed the waste and corruption of a socialist (liberal) run society. Louisiana has been a democratic state for many years and yet we find $60 million dollars of FEMA money missing that was earmarked for disaster preparedness.
For example, it is stated in the article:
"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." Oh, you mean during the Clinton years???? More liberal corruption!!
The article also states:
"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." "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." Of course this is just a small fraction of the mistakes carried out by local and state officials. Check out the rest of the story for yourself at the link below.
Here's a link so you can check out the story for yourselves. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-money17sep17,0,1698555.story?coll=la-home-nation
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