Katrina: FEMA Busses 'Run' by GOP-connected Scuzzbuckets

Why Didn't the Buses Come?

Bush-Linked Florida Company and the Katrina Evacuation Fiasco

By TIM SHORROCK
Counterpunch
January 21 / 22, 2006
Memphis.

The U.S. Department of Transportation may hold the key to one of the biggest unanswered questions from Hurricane Katrina: Why did it take nearly a week for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize private buses to evacuate thousands of city residents desperately seeking rescue from the horrific conditions in the Superdome, the Convention Center and the open tarmac of Interstate 10?

Clues to that mystery will come in the form of an audit into a FEMA contract for hurricane evacuation services awarded in 2002 to the Federal Aviation Administration. An initial report on the audit, which was quietly opened last October by the DOT's Office of Inspector General, is nearing completion and will be released to the public soon, a DOT official told Reconstruction Watch.

So far, the IG's office suspects that that the FAA "did not verify that the services were performed," said David Barnes, a public affairs officer in the Office of Inspector General. As a result, the IG "has raised questions about the FAA's internal controls."

The audit is also focused on Landstar Express America Inc. A trucking and logistics company based in Jacksonville, Fla., Landstar is a politically well-connected corporation that's risen to the top of the U.S. transportation industry without actually owning any trucks. Chairman Jeffrey Crowe served until recently as head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and last April Florida Gov. Jeb Bush appointed him to his Advisory Council on Base Realignment and Closure.

SNIP...

Landstar, however, has not been reticent to talk about its profits from the contract. Last October, the company disclosed that $129.8 million of the $676 million it earned in revenue during the third quarter of 2005 was directly attributable to its "disaster relief" contract with "the United States Department of Transportation/Federal Aviation Administration."

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/shorrock01212006.html

DOT overpays Landstar $32 million

by Terrence Nguyen, web editor

Jan 23, 2006 3:06 PM

A recent report by the Dept. of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) suggests that the Federal Aviation Administration (FFA) needs to overhaul its emergency transportation contracting procedure-- it reportedly overpaid Landstar Express America $32 million for providing buses to evacuate New Orleans residents following Hurricane Katrina. Landstar issued a $32 million check to FFA the day it provided the agency with documentation to support its invoices.

Landstar quoted the FAA $137 million to provide 1,105 buses each day at a cost of over $5,000 per bus for Katrina evacuations from Aug. 31, 2005 to Oct. 7. On Sept. 23, FAA paid Landstar a partial payment of $59 million based on bus services from Sept. 23 to Oct. 7.

An OIG request for documentation led to the discovery that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) actually required an average of 400 buses per day and that the cost per bus was around $1,550. On Nov. 7—the day Landstar provided that documentation-- Landstar issued FFA a $32-million check, which represented the difference between the partial payment and the actual cost of bus services.

“The nature of those types of exigencies illustrates the need for careful and thorough review of all associated paperwork after an emergency has passed,” stated the OIG report, signed by David A. Dobbs, Assistant Inspector General for Aviation and Special Program Audits.

Landstar CEO Henry Gerkens said that a down payment was required to pay its contractors for accepting such a large task, adding, “to characterize that as an overpayment is a gross inaccuracy.” The government still owes Landstar about $200 million, Gerkens said.

CONTINUED...

http://fleetowner.com/news/topstory/dot_landstar_overpay_truck_bus_katrina_012306/

KATRINA: DOT Audit Probes Katrina Evacuation Fiasco

by Tim Sharrock, Reconstruction Watch
January 19th, 2006

The U.S. Department of Transportation may hold the key to one of the biggest unanswered questions from Hurricane Katrina:

Why did it take nearly a week for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize private buses to evacuate thousands of city residents desperately seeking rescue from the horrific conditions in the Superdome, the Convention Center and the open tarmac of Interstate 10?

Clues to that mystery will come in the form of an audit into a FEMA contract for hurricane evacuation services awarded in 2002 to the Federal Aviation Administration. An initial report on the audit, which was quietly opened last October by the DOT's Office of Inspector General, is nearing completion and will be released to the public soon, a DOT official told Reconstruction Watch.

So far, the IG's office suspects that that the FAA "did not verify that the services were performed," said David Barnes, a public affairs officer in the Office of Inspector General. As a result, the IG "has raised questions about the FAA's internal controls."

The audit is also focused on Landstar Express America Inc. A trucking and logistics company based in Jacksonville, Fla., Landstar is a politically well-connected corporation that's risen to the top of the U.S. transportation industry without actually owning any trucks. Chairman Jeffrey Crowe served until recently as head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and last April Florida Gov. Jeb Bush appointed him to his Advisory Council on Base Realignment and Closure.

SNIP...

In the end, the bus companies did their best without FEMA's help. In the days that followed the hurricane and the disastrous flooding of New Orleans, said Pantuso, the bus association and its members quickly put together spreadsheets of companies with available buses and dispatched them to the storm zone as quickly as they could.

CONTINUED...

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13142

White House Was Told Hurricane Posed Danger

By ERIC LIPTON
Published: January 24, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The White House was told in the hours before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that the city would probably soon be inundated with floodwater, forcing the long-term relocation of hundreds of thousands of people, documents to be released Tuesday by Senate investigators show.

A Homeland Security Department report submitted to the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, hours before the storm hit, said, "Any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."

The internal department documents, which were forwarded to the White House, contradict statements by President Bush and the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, that no one expected the storm protection system in New Orleans to be breached.

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees," Mr. Bush said in a television interview on Sept. 1. "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

Other documents to be released Tuesday show that the weekend before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Homeland Security Department officials predicted that its impact would be worse than a doomsday-like emergency planning exercise conducted in Louisiana in July 2004.

CONTINUED...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/national/nationalspecial/24katrina.html?_r=1&oref=login

FBI Uncovers Post-Katrina Fraud

By HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writer
Mon Jan 23, 3:59 PM ET

The FBI has uncovered fraud by public officials in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and has created a task force to investigate corruption as federal money pours into the Gulf Coast region, Mississippi's top agent said Monday.

"We are seeing public officials facilitating some of the fraud," John G. Raucci, agent in charge in Mississippi, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's not widespread, I will say that, but we have seen it and we have begun addressing it."

Raucci would not give details.

Sheila Thorne, an FBI agent in Louisiana, said the bureau has set up task forces in each of that state's three districts to deal with hurricane-related fraud. "As allegations come in, they will be investigated," Thorne said in a separate interview.

Thorne said agents are looking at all levels of fraud in Louisiana, including public corruption.

CONTINUED...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060123/ap_on_re_us/fbi_katrina_fraud;_ylt=Argyg4QSYzYnyJel7XKjdj9vzwcF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

Power the Web

Using a small energy trade site as a springboard, Enron transformed itself into a master of e-markets.

BY DAINTRY DUFFY

Enron launched its online energy marketplace in November 1999. Still, many longtime customers were wary of the change. "I had one guy that I was talking to for three to four months, and I couldn't get him to trade online," recalls Larry Gagliardi, director of marketing for the crude oil and refined products business. "Finally, I talked him through it: 'Put the little arrow on the sale price, click and you're done,'" Gagliardi says. "The next day he did five trades with us. The next week he did 20. The following week he did 40 in one day, and I had to call him and tell him to slow down."

An extreme case of love at first site? Perhaps. But the simplicity—and the lack of red tape and paperwork—of EnronOnline has rocketed the company to success.

Since launching the site, Fittest 50 winner Enron has not Enron Net Works CEO Greg Piper says technology has boosted the success
only revolutionized the energy markets but pioneered the Web as a supremely easy place to buy and sell commodities. EnronOnline now encompasses 30 commodity markets, from forest products and plastics to broadband and weather futures, and currently averages a whopping $3 billion in transactions per day. "EnronOnline is one of the leading examples of the right way to apply technology," says Bruce D. Temkin, group director at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. "While other dotcoms tried to invent new business models, or made them up, Enron has done a great job of extend its business model." Formed in 1985 by a merger between Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth of Omaha, Neb., Enron started as a natural gas pipeline company. But when gas and electricity deregulation hit in the late '80s, the company moved into the business of buying and selling those commodities by phone or fax. Traders took orders from buyers, such as independent power companies, then tracked down potential energy supplies. The gambit worked: Within a year of deregulation, Enron's gas services group had captured 29 percent of the electric power market. And as the traders looked for new and better ways to aggregate and analyze market information, they realized that an online marketplace may be the answer.

The site began as a skunk works project—a popular practice at Enron. In this case, Louise Kitchen, who was the head of European gas trading in London at the time (and is now chief operating officer for Enron Americas, a division of Enron), spearheaded the campaign for a global electronic trading platform. Kitchen mounted a full-scale PR assault to get Enron traders on board, and searched out the technology that would support the new marketplace. It was only when those two goals had been achieved—a process that involved 350 Enron employees, 25 law firms to work through the legal details and about $15 million in development costs—that Kitchen took the idea to the CEO, who gave it the green light.

One of the keys to EnronOnline's success was that Kitchen and her team recognized that there was no value in creating another typical exchange, where buyers and sellers are matched up. Enron's marketplace is principal-based, meaning that the company acts as the conduit between the buyer and seller in every transaction. Because Enron deals with players on both sides of the market every day, its traders know where the supply and demand lies. This positioning assures sellers that they can always find a home for their natural gas or power (Enron buys it at a posted price), and assures buyers that they can rely on Enron for dependable delivery. Buyers and sellers that deal with Enron also get predictable pricing because the company bundles a variety of financial risk management products—futures contracts and options, for example—with its commodities as a hedge against volatile market pricing.

CONTINUED...

http://www.darwinmag.com/read/100101/power.html

FEMA Secretly Funneling Katrina Donations to Pat Robertson's Diamond Mine Cargo Planes Charity

FEMA Hiding Rev. Pat 'Charity'

from Sploid

Hours after Sploid reported that FEMA was directing Hurricane Katrina donations to a shady charity run by extremist televangelist Pat Robertson, the federal emergency agency has begun quietly replacing its Web pages that prominently displayed links to Robertson’s front company.

FEMA disaster Web pages and press releases updated on Aug. 29 encouraged donations to three charities by prominently linking to those organizations at the top of the Donations section of the Katrina disaster site.

The first was obvious: The American Red Cross, a disaster relief agency that defined the role of disaster relief agencies around the world.
The second was less familiar: Operation Blessing — as was another religious-sounding group, America’s Second Harvest, which turns out to be a food bank network funded by various corporate farming and restaurant businesses.

After that first screen of three “top charities,” there was a plain alphabetized list of American charities, many of them religious in nature, all but a few familiar to most Americans.

So what is Operation Blessing, and who runs it?

The shady charity is run by the Rev. Pat Robertson, his wife, his son and a few other board members...not that you’ll find Robertson’s name on the official site.

CONTINUED...

http://godlesswonder.blogspot.com/2005/09/fema-secretly-funneling-katrina.html

Diamonds are Robertson's best friend

By Ju-lan Kim

Thirty-five years ago, Pat Robertson founded the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which laid the foundation for his financial empire. Using CBN resources, Robertson launched numerous other business ventures, including: the Family Channel, designed to distribute "The 700 Club," which became International Family Entertainment in 1990; Northstar Entertainment; Broadcast Equities; CBN Travel; American Sales Corporation; International Charter Jet; Kalo-Vita; and the Founders Inn and Conference Center.

Under International Family Entertainment, a for-profit organization, Chairman Robertson and his son, Tim, received over $1.1 million in salaries and bonuses in 1993 alone. According to Robertson, his close relationship with God has given him the insider's scoop on successfully using what he calls "God's marvelous system of money management". With so many projects to run, Robertson seems to have his hands full (with cash, that is).

Although the financial success of CBN is well-known, one of Robertson's lesser known organizations is his African Development Company (ADC). ADC is a private venture that invests in various land-based operations in Africa, such as mining and agriculture, with the stated goal of redirecting profits toward humanitarian projects. In Zaire, the ADC operates a diamond-mining project in the center of Zaire's prime diamond mines and forestry concessions.

Zaire is a country with a population of approximately 43 million, most of whom live in poverty. At the same time, Zaire's head of government, Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who has plundered the wealth of his nation for over thirty years, is able to live luxuriously surrounded by the comforts of vacation homes, yachts, and champagne. Corruption, health concerns, and human rights abuses in Zaire have long been an international concern, causing many countries, including the U.S., to turn a diplomatic cold shoulder toward Mobutu.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reported that billions of dollars in aid given to Zaire during the Cold War now find a comfortable home in Mobutu's personal bank accounts. Human rights groups around the world have campaigned against the numerous atrocities committed against the Zairians during his thirty-year reign, including the deaths of tens of thousands of citizens. Mobutu has refused to implement any democratic reform that would lessen his power.

CONTINUED...

http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/pat_quotes/diamonds.html

FBI: 9/11 hijackers opened bank accounts with fake data

July 10, 2002 Posted: 12:02 PM EDT (1602 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The September 11 hijackers were able to open several U.S. bank accounts using illegitimate Social Security numbers, FBI officials said Wednesday.

Officials said the hijackers appeared to have relied most heavily upon SunTrust Banks for the movement of funds through accounts opened in Florida.

Investigators have traced the transfer of a total of $325,000 through SunTrust accounts held by the hijackers in the year leading up to the attacks. The Atlanta, Georgia-based SunTrust is cooperating with FBI investigators looking into the accounts.

Officials said the false Social Security numbers used to open the accounts appeared to have been randomly selected and were not legitimate or stolen Social Security numbers.

"This shows how the hijackers worked the system. They knew where the vulnerabilities were and exploited them to their advantage," an FBI official said.

CONTINUED...

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/07/10/hijackers.accounts/

BUSH CRIME FAMILY LINKS

Bush Family Connection Research Sites

The following are links to information about the Bush family, the
Bush cabinet appointees and the corporations, think tanks and
foundations that are behind the GW Bush administration. My
including these links to materials other than the articles I wrote
is not to be considered an endorsement of any statement they
contain.

These links connect to sites run by the left, the religious right,
conservative think tanks, political independents and the
mainstream media. Some are pro-Bush and are included for
cross reference value. All links were good as of this writing so if
you get a message to the contrary keep trying -they are busy
sites. When you cut and paste the web adresses or type them in
there must be no added spaces or characters or else you will
not be able to access the sites. Within each of these sites you
can do a word search on Bush or any other word or name that
interests you.

These materials, which are only a tiny fraction of what's out there,
will help you to see through the blitzkrieg of false information we
are all being subject to about GW Bush and his cabinet. Please
forward these links to your friends, the media, elected officials
and anyone else with an interest in knowing the real story behind
the 43rd President of the United States.

This list was compiled by
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
ARTISTpres@aol.com (718) 743-3722

Lederman articles on the Bush connection to Nazis, eugenics
and drug companies. Also articles on West Nile Virus, Giuliani,
the Manhattan Institute - more than 50 articles filled with
references.

http://Baltech.org/lederman/spray/

An exceptional article on the relationship between American
conservatives, GW Bush, so-called compassionate
conservatism, eugenics and the Nazis: Nazis In America by
Myrna Estep Ph. D

http://www.feminista.com/v3n10/estep.html

Bush financial misconduct
http://www.campaignwatch.org

Bush family background
http://www.geocities.com/alanjpakula/triplecrown.html
http://www.shorejournal.com/elkhorn/
http://www.prorev.com/bush.htm
http://www.copvcia.com/witness_list.htm
http://members.tripod.com/~Evademic/naznwo/naznwo10.txt
http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html
http://www.realchange.org/bushjr.htm
http://www.tylwythteg.com/enemies/Bush/bush17.html
http://www.gwbush.com/
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/commentary.html
http://www.bushfiles.com/bushfiles/midland.html
http://afrocubaweb.com/bushes.htm
http://www.davidicke.com/icke/articles/bush.html
http://www.infomanage.com/secrets/bios/bushes.html
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3750/bush.htm
http://www.kmf.org/williams/bushbook.html
http://www.hli.org/issues/pp/bcreview/index.html
http://www.joinhugs.org/mainpage/bushrecord.html
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/morgue.html

CIA, Nazis & the Republican Party
http://www.bartcop.com/nazigop.htm
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/OldNazis_NewRight.html
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/ratline.html
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/mblinks.htm
http://www.watch.pair.com/jbs-cnp.html

Philadelphia Enquirer 9/10/98 David Lee Preston, "Fired Bush
backer one of several with possible Nazi links," September 10, 1988.

Project Paperclip: the CIA Nazi recruitment program - many of the
think tanks and organizations behind Bush got their ideas directly
from these former Nazi officials.

http://www.dc.peachnet.edu/~shale/humanities/composition/assignments/experiment/paperclip.html

Head of Florida holocaust Museum links Bush family to Nazis
"The Bush family fortune came from the Third Reich." -John
Loftus, former US Justice Dept. Nazi War Crimes investigator
and President of the Florida Holocaust Museum quoted in the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune 11/11/2000

http://www.newscoast.com/headlinesstory2.cfm?ID=35115

4/14/1990 New York Times quotes George Bush as stating,
"Lets forgive the Nazi war criminals."

US releases Nazi documents (AP)
http://www.apbnews.com/media/gfiles/1999/11/03/nazis1103_01.html


Josef Goebbels on propaganda - Understand how the Big Lie
techniques used by the Bush campaign work
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goebmain.htm

Eugenics sites (the Bush family are among the world's top
advocates for eugenics)
http://www.notdeadyet.org/eughis.html
http://www.techreview.com/articles/as96/allen.html
http://www.hli.org/issues/pp/bcreview/index.html
http://users.erols.com/straymond/EUGENICS2.htm
http://home.att.net/~eugenics/
http://www.sightings.com/general3/eugene.htm
http://www.biol.tsukuba.ac.jp/~macer/SG.html

Fluoride info
(Alcoa, which plays a major role in the Bush administration, is
the world's leading producer of fluoride and was a leading ally
of Nazi Germany)
http://204.181.21.150/trufax/fluoride/flchrono.html

Gulf War Syndrome and how the George Bush administration
supplied Iraq with chemical and biological warfare materials,
allowed US servicemen and women to be exposed to them and
then covered up the entire scandal by Air Force Captain Joyce
Riley
http://www.all-natural.com/riley.html
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/gulf.htm

A very interesting chronology of world events related to the
Bush family and the new administration's goals
http://www.trufax.org/chrono/cre.html

Cheney links
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/cheney1.html
http://www.weeklywire.com/ww/08-28-00/austin_pols_feature2.html
http://www.campaignwatch.org
http://www.weeklywire.com/ww/08-28-00/austin_pols_feature2.html
http://www.l0pht.com/pub/blackcrwl/patriot/north_and_constitution.txt
http://www.findarticles.com/m1295/9_64/65014757/p1/article.jhtml
http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0008a/cheneydislike.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/cheney.html
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/micr/introduction.html#Figure 1
http://www.l0pht.com/pub/blackcrwl/patriot/north_and_constitution.txt
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/micr/mission.html

"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state
to supplant our democratic government and is working closely
with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of
opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of
our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. . . Certain
American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing
fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They
extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they
are helping to keep it there."-William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador
to Germany, 1937. See: Shadow of the Swastika
http://www.capnasty.org/taf/issue7/elkhorn1.htm and
http://users.actweb.net/~eye/arms_industry_world_war_2.htm

Powell took hefty fee from Lebanese just before election
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/08/world/world3.html

Ashcroft and white supremacists
NY Observer January 11, 2001
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/conason.asp

The Heritage Foundation
http://www.corporations.org/coors/
http://alant.purespace.de/anti.html
http://www.watch.pair.com/heritage.html

The Bell Curve and the Pioneer Fund (The Bell Curve is the
socialogical text that is the source behind many of the Bush's
cabinet appointees ideas on African Americans, welfare reform,
affirmative action, school vouchers, voting rights etc. Its author,
Charles Murray, is directly connected to more than half of Bush's
cabinet appointees and advisors)
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/049.html
http://www.fair.org/extra/9501/bell.html
http://www.marmoset.com/60minute/Webnav/eugen.html
THE NEW YORK TIMES - 12/11/97
Pioneer Fund Backs Controversial Study of "Racial
Betterment"
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/022.html

Bush Monsanto connection
http://www.notmilk.com/

Bush has controversial bio removed from stores
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/bushbook991022.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/stmartins102799.htm

Masons and US Presidency connection
(GW Bush will be sworn in on a masonic bible)
http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/daniken/443/uspresidentasmasonspt3.htm


Quotes by Bush, Kissinger, etc., on the New World Order
http://www.wearenow.com/eighthground/free/quotes.shtml
http://www.vaix.net/~api/172115.htm

Bush, Hitler, Skull and Bones connection
http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1314.cfm

To access thousands of web sites with detailed information on
the Bush/Nazi connection go to a good search engine such as
http://www.google.com/ and type in Bush AND Nazi.
Likewise if you type in Alcoa AND Nazi or Ford AND Nazi
etc. you'll get thousands of pages of information on these
connections.

Other excellent search engines to search for Bush links
http://www.excite.com/
http://www.google.com/
http://www.raging.com/
http://www.dejanews.com//
http://www.webcrawler.com/
http://www.mamma.com/
http://www.yahoo.com/
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/cynavi.html?Partner=AOL&RefId=l3eEFnnnn.n-
http://www.scrubtheweb.com/

Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
ARTISTpres@aol.com (718) 743-3722
Lederman articles on the Bush connection to Nazis, eugenics
and drug companies; West Nile Virus expose, Giuliani,
Manhattan Institute, Eugenics info - more than 50 articles
http://Baltech.org/lederman/spray/

SOURCE:

http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/bushcrimefamily.htm