FEMA's Miami vice

Article published Thursday, January 27, 2005

FEMA's Miami vice


FROM the "tax dollars at work" file: The Federal Emergency Management Agency shelled out $30 million in disaster aid to 12,500 residents of Miami-Dade County in Florida last year after Hurricane Frances. The money was used to pay for cars, clothing, furniture, televisions, and even $4,500 for a funeral.
Only problem was, the hurricane's edge barely stirred the palm trees in Miami, causing little damage and no deaths. The eye of the storm came ashore 100 miles up Florida's east coast, near Sewall's Point.

Nonetheless, as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported, applying for FEMA aid became something of a cottage industry, particularly in the poorer areas of Miami-Dade. It was, residents exulted, "free money," too good to pass up.

FEMA officials now admit that at least some of the money it lavished on Miami-Dade residents was misspent, including some duplicate payments and at least six claims listed in agency records as being due to "ice/snow." FEMA says those were due to data entry errors, but it's impossible to believe that the entire $30 million fiasco could have been simply a mistake.

What is more likely is that the top brass at FEMA, headed by Michael D. Brown, President Bush's appointee as undersecretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, saw a chance to gain political good will by dropping a treasure chest full of federal dollars into South Florida. Did we mention that the checks came out just before the presidential election?
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http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050127/OPINION02/501270376/-1/OPINION

Posted on Tue, Jan. 25, 2005


Excerpts from editorials in Florida newspapers
Associated Press


Jan. 23,

South Florida Sun-Sentinel, on FEMA director should be fired:

What's next from the reality-challenged Federal Emergency Management Agency? Relief checks to Miami-Dade County residents whose homes and possessions were wiped out by the recent Asian tsunami?

Why not? After all, it seems that if there's a disaster anywhere, FEMA starts sending checks to Miami-Dade. It's fast becoming a tradition. The agency has even given residents more time to apply for Hurricane Frances aid, just in case they haven't realized yet that they were in a disaster.

Already the agency has paid about $30 million in Miami-Dade disaster claims for damage blamed on Frances, which made landfall more than 100 miles away. Neither the National Weather Service nor the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recorded any hurricane conditions or storm-related damage in Miami-Dade from Frances, but that hasn't stopped FEMA and its crack team of unconscious claim inspectors.

FEMA has written checks to cover new wardrobes, cars, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, furniture, and thousands of televisions, microwave ovens, stoves, air conditioners and other appliances. The government even paid for dental work and a funeral, although the county medical examiner recorded no storm-related deaths. And it has done the same kind of thing in other parts of the country after other "disasters" that weren't.
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http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/10730621.htm

Our government has no money to spend, so in this instance the people have been paid by future generations of angry Democrats. (That's because the 2nd American Revolution will wipe Neocons from the face of the Earth.)