Staggering Katrina Fraud

It's been about one year since Hurricane Katrina destroyed most of the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast, including of course my own New Orleans. One would think by now that repairs would have been largely made or at least started. But that is not the case. the area still looks somewhat as it did the day after the storm.
Why? Insurance companies have dragged their feet in paying claims or for some homes and businesses just denied them altogether. And the political system that is supposed to make them pay those claims is disinterested in doing so. What have the politicians been doing? Well, many of the elected officials they immediately formed companies after the storm. Those companies all were "hurricane related" and were awarded huge, wasteful government contracts for such tasks as clean-up, purchase of trailers, supplies, food service....anything that the politician could sell for obscene profits at taxpayer expense. Without going into along list of examples, let's just say that the majority of politicians, their family members and friends have become millionaires from the storm as their newly formed (and mostly incompetent) companies charged the state and federal governments fees way beyond what legitimate private companies wished to charge when their own bids were turned down by those same politicians who awarded aunt Sara and company those 100 million dollar contracts to (for example) pick up storm debris or furnish temporary housing. The estimate of excess profits for our politicians is in the hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars. Nothing will be done about it, as the awarding of no bid "emergency contracts" is perfectly legal. Even if the voters throw out the bums they will go with more money that they will ever have to spend to live a high life.
But wait! The politicians are not the only thieves profiting from the tragic storm. According to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) the private sector is even more dishonest. Hurricane Katrina produced the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes, and fraud in the history of the United States. And it cost taxpayers here about 2 BILLION dollars. Here are some examples FEMA cited of waste and theft of taxpayer money after the storm:
- A hotel owner from Sugar Land, Texas has been criminally charged with submitting for reimbursement from the federal taxpayers $232,000 worth of bills for phantom hurricane victims it said the hotel housed after the storm.
- About 1,200 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast area that was hit by the storm collected more than $10 million in phony rental and disaster relief assistance. The prisoners were and have been in jail the whole time, not refugees from the storm
- The friends of politically connected bureaucrats who awarded contracts for expensive trailers (on average each cost tax payers about $70,000) ordered one half billion dollars worth of extra trailers that still sit empty and unused (but paid for by the government)
- One contractor who received a job to renovate an Alabama Army base as a housing site for people displaced by the storm, charged taxpayers $416,000 per unit renovated. The actual charge should have been a few thousands dollars per unit.
- A woman from a state far from the disaster, Illinois, tried to collect hurricane relief federal benefits by claiming she watched her two nonexistent daughters drown in New Orleans.
The stories are endless, blamed on the Bush administrations ineptness in handling anything of importance, disaster or otherwise. It's doubtful much of the %2 billion stolen will ever be reclaimed or that many of the thieves will be sent to jail as a result. But for politicians , friends, family members, and the common thieves who tried and succeeded in enriching themselves of the backs of devastated hurricane victims.....for them a killing hurricane is a good thing to have once in awhile..
Good news for smoking addicts everywhere, human and non human. XIKU the chain-smoking chimpanzee has almost kicked his deadly habit thanks to the efforts of zoo keepers in China, but it has taken a beer or two to help get him through detox. Xiku became addicted to smoking while mimicking the habits of humans during a career as a circus performer.
By the time he was sent to a zoo in Urumqi, the capital of China's northwest Xinjiang region, in 2002, Xiku was already smoking 10 cigarettes a day. That number doubled as visitors threw him cigarettes for amusement, but he is now down to smoking four a day after some unorthodox efforts from zoo keepers. "At the beginning, he became irascible when he wanted to smoke, jolting windows and doors,'' one of the keepers aid.. "We sometimes gave him some sunflower seeds or a bottle of beer to help him shake off the addiction and visitors are no longer allowed to throw him cigarettes.''
No truth to the rumor that XIKU is actually a normal teenager in disguise.