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Not too important
Author: Raine    Date: 06/12/2008 12:33:39

Yesterday, John McCain declared that bringing the troops home and setting a deadline for withdrawal for Iraq was "not too important". What exactly is important to these people? Certainly not helping Americans who are still in a state of crisis and need. Like troop withdrawal seems to be for for McCain, FEMA doesn't seems to think getting aid to disaster victims is important either. Republican mismanagement: it is deadly, a lot like war. FEMA gave away $85,000,000 worth of aid slated for victims of the storm. It didn't go where it was meant to go.
The material, from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.

James McIntyre, FEMA's acting press secretary, said that FEMA was spending more than $1 million a year to store the material and that another agency wanted the warehouses torn down, so "we needed to vacate them."

"Upon review of our assets and our need to continue to store them, we determined that they were excess to FEMA's needs; therefore, they are being excessed from FEMA's inventory," McIntyre wrote in an e-mail.
[...]
"These are exactly the items that we are desperately seeking donations of right now: basic kitchen household supplies," said Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans. "These are the very things that we are seeking right now. FEMA, in fact, refers homeless clients to us to house them. How can we house them if we don't have basic supplies?"
[...]
McIntyre said that most of the items given away were not "standard-issue type supplies" that FEMA would have distributed after other disasters. He said that using the GSA, which manages federal property, to get rid of those stockpiles was "standard process."...

Pallets at the Fort Worth warehouse were piled high with boxes of buckets, boots, cleansers, mops and brooms. There were stacks of tents, lanterns and camp stoves for people still displaced, as well as clothing, bedding, plates and utensils.

Meanwhile, Kegel said, Unity's clients can take only "one fork, one spoon, one knife; they can only take one plate. We don't have enough to go around."

But FEMA said the items were no longer needed in the stricken region. So it declared them "federal surplus" and gave them away.

There are so many things wrong with this story I do not know where to begin. We are still evicting people from
FEMA trailers. A report issued in April of THIS year says FEMA is still not ready:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is better prepared for the next disaster, but it is not completely ready for another Hurricane Katrina-scale catastrophe, the agency's watchdog says.
So WHY is FEMA giving away the very items it would need for a disaster this size? Why didn't FEMA make an attempt to get these supplies to the people who have been calling to get them? Where did the 85 million dollars money go?

The magnitude of the criminally negligent mismanagement of this agency is still raging on. FEMA knew that these people in the trailers needed these supplies. Hell - FEMA knew that these people needed trailers 3 years years ago and it took them upwards of a year to get them to people, and when they did, they were poisonous. FEMA could not get ice delivered to the victims of the disaster, so how did they change that policy? They decided to no longer store ice for hurricane victims. These are not just a matters of social issues, they are matters of fiscal mismanagement as well. People are still dying due to these missteps in the Gulf.

We must elect someone that really cares about Americans and REALLY cares about a disaster response agency being able to do it's job. Oh, and if you think it is John McCain? You are wrong. He never thought it was that important, just like telling the truth. His patterns of deceptions can be found here.
McCain Voted Against Establishing A Commission To Study The Response To Hurricane Katrina...TWICE. McCain voted against amendments establishing a Congressional commission to examine Federal, State, and local response to devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in U.S. Gulf Region, especially in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other areas impacted in the aftermath; and makes immediate corrective measures to improve future responses. (2006 Senate Vote #6, 2/2/2006; 2005 Senate Vote #229, 9/14/2005)
There are people still dying from the aftereffects of Katrina. But don't think it about it too much. It isn't important, really. So let them eat cake, today, americans are still dying.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/images/20050829-5_p082905pm-0125-515h.jpg


:peace: and :heart:
Raine

 

241 comments (Latest Comment: 06/13/2008 06:38:00 by livingonli)
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