About FEMA Outside of Louisiana
Debbie Elliott is the new host for All Things Considered on the weekends and she is a good choice for hurricane coverage because she is a long-time resident of Orange Beach, Alabama.
This evening she interviewed Trent Lott about his book and the response to the hurricane in Mississippi.
Even though he agrees that FEMA shouldn’t have been under the Department of Homeland Security and wasn’t receiving all that it asked for in funding, he says they flat messed up providing assistance to Mississippi. He also supports using Medicaid to provide hurricane victims with access to medical care.
Old Trent and his constituents are not a happy with the Federal response.
[Listen to the report – Debbie gets in some digs about Lott’s attitude toward “big government” and Medicaid prior to the hurricane.]
In Florida the Palm Beach Post added it voice to several other Florida editorial writers suggesting: As FEMA looks at 2006, repay Florida for 2004.
I don’t want people to forget this: FEMA did not do a competent job in 2004 and they are still holding up reconstruction. Congress gave them the money, but they aren’t covering their obligations.
The “response” was another charade, because after the election FEMA did everything it could to screw over local governments.
What happened in New Orleans was not an aberration, that is the way FEMA does its job: badly. It hasn’t been noticed before because Jeb was covering for the Shrubbery last year. People avoided making their complaints until after the election.
The scope of the disaster caused by Katrina made it impossible to hide and the Louisiana officials didn’t even make the attempt.
A small statistical aside – the death rate in Louisiana is only slightly ahead of Mississippi when you look at the numbers as a percentage of the population.
