Katrina Looting Continues on Corporate Level

[Doug]

Robin Hood in Reverse: Corporate and Government Looting of the Gulf Coast
By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Monday 13 November 2006

Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. On the Gulf Coast, the reverse is happening. Federal, state and local governments are teaming up with corporations and developers to systematically steal hurricane relief funds from the poor to enrich themselves.

Billions of dollars were given to help the communities damaged by Katrina. The people gave this money to help the working, elderly and disabled people of the Gulf Coast rebuild and restart their lives after Katrina.

The need is still great. Over 300,000 people remain displaced from the City of New Orleans alone. Hundreds of thousands of others on the rest of the Gulf Coast are also not home. Over 80,000 families in Louisiana are living in FEMA trailers. Texas says they have 250,000 displaced people, and Georgia reports another 100,000.

Tragically, money that was supposed to go to those in need is instead being diverted by federal, state and local politicians and corporations who have swooped down on these billions and are taking them for other purposes.

Example one: Congress allocated $10.4 billion through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program to rebuild Louisiana. By law, over 50% of these funds are supposed to benefit low and moderate income people. As of November 1, 2006, only eighteen people have actually received any of this money to fix up their homes, out of over 77,000 homeowners who have applied for assistance. Yes, only 18!

Louisiana cannot get the money to those in need, but it has managed to start paying a corporate management company, ICF International, $756 million over the next three years. This is very big for ICF, whose total revenue in 2005 was $177 million.

While tens of thousands of homeowners wait for assistance, renters are not even on the list. Not a single dollar of CDBG money is allocated directly to any of the renters devastated by Katrina, despite the fact that over 50% of the people in New Orleans were renters.

Example two: Louisiana is giving $200 million in CDBG federal hurricane relief funds to bail out a private utility corporation, Entergy New Orleans. This corporation pleads poverty despite being a subsidiary of its parent, Entergy Inc., which reported a net cash flow of $777 million dollars for the third quarter of 2006.

Worse, Louisiana is saying this $200 million in CDBG funds counts as a contribution to the low and moderate income people of New Orleans - most of whom have not even made it back to the city.

Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

You know Boozman isn't going to do anything about this. Maybe, if there's any money left, the Dem congress can change things. It's only a maybe, since all of the governmental agencies involved in the ripoff are under executive control.

[Hogeye]

Typical government program. It would be naive to expect anything else. Someone once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Apparently the government is here to help types need a few more trials to figure it out.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Government has been and can be effective. This government is not, and is notorious for its ineffectiveness. In fact, this administration has achieved its only superlative - most corrupt ever. Social security and FEMA both received awards for the top 10 most effective of both private and public organizations during the 90s. However, whether you think Clinton policies were responsible for this or not (I do, but then, I read "Re-inventing Government"), from the getgo W's policy has been "defund or otherwise trash anything Clinton could possibly get credit for". Government has a purpose and that purpose includes protecting citizens from the tyranny of mega-corporations as well as the tyranny of other nations. Unfortunately, power has always corrupted. That's why regular elections were a design feature of the American system.

[Hogeye]

Government (in the non-statist Jeffersonian sense) has the purpose of protecting against tyranny. Giving away tons of money does not do so. Expecting such massive redistribution not to mainly favor the politically well-connected is naive.

Government can be effective, so long as it is voluntary. But monopoly government is nothing more than the institution of legalized theft.