Katrina Aftermath... Continued

[docbyers]

This past weekend FEMA and the City of Austin , along with the Texas Workforce Commission setup a job training/hiring/interview/job fair for all the Katrina FEMA evacuees in the Austin area to be held at the ACC campus on Webberville Road in East Austin.

Several of the evacuees said they had no transportation to get from the apartment complexes.  So the city of Austin/FEMA/TWC set up transportation for each of them to ensure they would be able to partake of the benefit of job searching. The transportation consisted of nine buses and vans, to run from four locations in Round Rock, and five locations in Austin, in continuing shuttles back and forth to the campus to ensure that the hundreds of people looking for jobs would be transported in comfort. The vehicles were brought to their residences; drivers knocked on the doors; and every effort was made.

At the end of the day, the nine vans and buses transported a total of one person. Not one person per bus - one person total. At the end of the day, none of the Katrina Evacuees applied for any of the jobs. Not one person took employment - NONE total.

The bill to FEMA was $7800. And yet they still get on TV claiming that the United States Government "OWES THEM", I say we don't owe them anything and if anything, they OWE us - the Tax Payers that are "WORKING PEOPLE", they owe what they have been mooching off of the Tax Payers for almost a year now.  It is obvious that they don't intend to work as long as they can sponge off of the system. It is time to cut them loose and tell them the free ride is over!

[Thraxas]

Don't believe everything you read in your e-mail , doc. Here's an excerpt from snopes.com. The web address follows.

In reference to the more recent version of the rumor that places the story in Austin, the Austin American-Statesman noted that the story did have some truth to it, although not necessarily for the reasons implied in the above-quoted e-mail. An 18 February 2006 job fair held in Austin drew over 200 attendees despite poor weather, although only one of those attendees actually arrived there via the shuttles provided, possibly because a delay resulted in limited publicity of the "free transportation" aspect:

Actually, the resource fair, one of several that have been held in Austin since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, was held Feb. 18. And, according to city officials, more than 200 people showed on a rainy, 30-degree day, many commenting on how helpful the resource agencies were.

But the punch line of the heavily circulated e-mail is true: Only one evacuee took advantage of the free rides.

Officials could not verify if drivers knocked on doors, but they did say 12 shuttles were provided for evacuees who lived outside the Capital Metro service area including Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Marble Falls and Georgetown. The bill for transportation to the "Austin & the Gulf Coast: The Perfect Blend" event was just over $7,000.

City officials said publicity about the free rides was limited because they didn't get confirmation that FEMA would reimburse the cost until four or five days before the event. Going through the city's procurement process took time, which meant the shuttles weren't secured until day before.

Rebecca Giello, a City of Austin spokeswoman, said, "I wouldn't consider the (shuttles) a huge success."

http://www.snopes.com/katrina/politics/jobfair.asp

[docbyers]

Bush Plays Into Hands of Katrina Critics
by Michael Reagan
Posted Aug 30, 2006

For a long time now we've been listening to the Democrats and their toadies in the media complaining about the Bush administration's handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and its aftermath.

They charge it up to what they call the administration's incompetence, implying that had the Democrats been running the show, things would have been handled much better.

It takes a lot of gall to make that charge because as one Town Hall blogger, Cato's Corner, recently pointed out, the Democrats were in charge before, during and ever since Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

In the United States, the authorities at the state and local levels are responsible for what happens in their areas. In Louisiana the governor is a Democrat, and the mayor of New Orleans is a Democrat. They were the so-called first responders, and their response was pitiful. They can blame President Bush all they want, but it was their job to handle the disaster and their handling of it was a disaster in itself.

That incompetence continues, especially in New Orleans where the cleanup and rebuilding efforts are lagging far behind where they would have been had they done their jobs competently. And they can't blame that on the president or the federal government.

The fact is that $11.8 billion has been allocated. That's everything that New Orleans asked for. They got $6 billion in December, another $4 billion in May, another $1.8 billion recently, and yet they haven't spent the money.

One big problem: New Orleans has yet to come up with a master plan that will allow people to know what they can do and how to do it.

"The citizens of New Orleans need to know what the plans are, so the citizens can make their plans on whether they should rebuild, repair or sell their homes," Norman Francis, chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, which oversees federal aid given to Louisiana told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"A lot of people are holding their money back pending an affirmation that the city really has a broader idea of where it's going in the future. What kind of a city is it going to be?" added Ken Topping, a California planning consultant hired to help.

Moreover, the city refuses to relax the red-tape provisions to allow the people to get the money to be able to rebuild, which is exactly the opposite of what Mississippi's Republican  Governor Haley Barbour has done in his state. He cut through the red tape to allow the people to get the funds necessary to go ahead and rebuild.

Another reason is that the folks in Mississippi are working together, not standing around waiting for the federal government to rebuild. Officials in Louisiana are still whining, waiting for somebody to do everything for them.

The federal government has supplied the funds. It is the local government that refuses to distribute the money. I was talking to a member of Congress from Louisiana who recalled that the Congress had authorized $6 billion last December but New Orleans made the determination that they were not going to spend any of it until they got the whole $10 billion they were then demanding.

In Mississippi, on the other hand, as they were getting the money they were finding ways to spend it to help the people rebuild.

Tragically, the President is playing into the hands of his critics by implying that he is somehow to blame for the situation. He's allowing the Democrats to use him as fodder in their attacks on him. He needs to stand up and shout, "We're not to blame. We gave you the money. If the people in New Orleans don't have the money it's not because the federal government hasn't done its job; it's because your local government officials refuse to do theirs."

[Hoopty]

Amen!

Just another reason why LA is on my short list of worst states to  live in...