{"id":7567,"date":"2006-06-01T13:42:35","date_gmt":"2006-06-01T17:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7567"},"modified":"2006-06-01T13:42:35","modified_gmt":"2006-06-01T17:42:35","slug":"at-the-start-of-hurricane-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/at-the-start-of-hurricane-season\/","title":{"rendered":"At the start of hurricane season…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, officially, is the start<\/a> of [tag]hurricane[\/tag] [tag]season[\/tag]. With this in mind, Nancy [tag]Pelosi[\/tag]’s office released a really good report<\/a> (.pdf) about on where we are nine months after [tag]Katrina[\/tag]. The report is well done, but as FDL noted<\/a>, it’s also terribly discouraging.<\/p>\n

* Up to $1 billion dollars in [tag]waste[\/tag] and [tag]fraud[\/tag] for housing contractors and payments made by the government, mainly to contractors from outside the Gulf Region.<\/p>\n

* The SBA has rejected more than 60% of small business loan applications in the wake of Katrina. Of those that have been approved, only 4% of funds have been disbursed to small business owners at this point. (Oh yeah, I got yer business friendly environment here. What was that Republican talking point that small business is the backbone of American jobs and communities?)<\/p>\n

* Less than 2% of all Federal aid that has gone to the Gulf Coast has been used for education expenditures.<\/p>\n

* The Rubber Stamp Republican Congress still refuses to ease Medicare restrictions for children in the Gulf Coast region, despite the fact that there is a substantial health care crisis for children in the region, stemming from infections and other issues arising from prolonged exposure to pathogens from flood waters, stress, and other factors. (1\/3 of all children living in FEMA trailer parks have been found to have a chronic illness.)<\/p>\n

* 40,000 families are still waiting for some sort of housing assistance, meanwhile there are 10,000 FEMA trailers still parked in the mud, just sitting there unused.<\/p>\n

* Contractors with a political connection to the Bush Administration were paid up to 15 times the actual cost of jobs contracted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And there’s more where that came from. I’d only add that, as of yesterday, FEMA announced plans to dismantle the camps<\/a> that have “housed and fed 40,000 volunteers who came to Louisiana to help salvage blighted areas in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”<\/p>\n

Bush sat down with reporters<\/a> from seven Florida newspapers in April for a roundtable interview. In response to a question about the upcoming hurricane season, the president said<\/a> he is worried about the thousands of Gulf Coast residents now living in trailers. “Let’s just pray,” he said, “there is no hurricane heading that way.”<\/p>\n

It’s supposed to be an active hurricane season. Who’s confident that the Bush administration is prepared?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, officially, is the start of [tag]hurricane[\/tag] [tag]season[\/tag]. With this in mind, Nancy [tag]Pelosi[\/tag]’s office released a really good report (.pdf) about on where we are nine months after [tag]Katrina[\/tag]. The report is well done, but as FDL noted, it’s also terribly discouraging. * Up to $1 billion dollars in [tag]waste[\/tag] and [tag]fraud[\/tag] for housing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}