Call For La. State Officials Criminal Neglect Investigation, 50000 Victims
On Hurricane Katrina’s 8-year anniversary tis week, Louisiana state sent 50,000 survivors another blow, a letter in the mail citing them for “non-compliance” regarding aid money from notoriously mismanaged Road Home fund.
Outrage over Louisiana’s latest human rights abuse, on top of BP’s Gulf oil catastrophe abuses and Louisiana’s monster oil and gas 24-acre sinkhole scandal, has prompted a call Sunday for a full investigation, actual funding of the fund for all who suffered displacement, and state government crimes, including criminal neglect.
The Road Home funds were mismanaged. Victims who lost everything, living in tent cities without aid waited months that turned into years for aid in many cases.
“That’s why a counter-response could help reveal what really needs to happen,” stated New Orleans activist Elizabeth Cook in an email, adding a call for “a full investigation and the actual funding of the right of return for all who suffered displacement, crimes by our own government, and criminal neglect.”
“The federally funded, state-managed rebuilding effort, which earned a notorious reputation for shoddy record-keeping, mailed “final notice” letters to grant recipients it suspects failed to properly spend their money,” the Times Picayune reported on its front page Sunday.
“The letters demand that the homeowners prove they complied with the rules, by submitting documents or data that the Road Home said is missing from the grant-recipients’ files.”
Now, victims who cannot find and provide evidence of how they spent the aid must repay it.
The state has to prove what it actually did with the funds: ”According to HUD, the state must track down each noncompliant scofflaw to recoup misspent grant money, a doomsday scenario the OCD is working feverishly to avoid,” the Picayune reported, so they are going after the victims, instead of those charged with The Road Home program.
“This adds insult to injury for thousands of New Orleanians and others who have done their best to rebuild or come home,” Cook said. ”We should call for a full investigation of the Road Home program, from its inception to the present, and what happened to the funds, where were they swallowed.
“The hypocrisy that this state agency would issue a statement claiming that they are ‘trustees of the fund’ and so should insure that all is being done correctly, is unbelievable given the history of this fund.”
[Watch The Untold Story about Katrina here.]
The angry criticism comes along with a host of non-profit organizations revealing this week that Louisiana’s governor is more of an oil and gas industry puppet than people knew. He has received over $1 million dollars from oil and gas companies, earning Jindal the new title of “Million Dollar Man.”
[See: Jindal’s $1M Hookers Control La. Sinkhole, Wetland Destruction]
More oil covered Katrina’s drowned New Orleans than oil leaked in the Exxon Valdez. This fact was covered up by media and the state. Victims and taxpayers had to pay for that. The oil companies paid not one penny for that part of the Katrina catastrophe.
Over 1,800 died in Hurricane Katrina when it hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. The total figure is still unknown.
Meanwhile, Governor Jindal and his state officials are preparing to throw a huge party in New Orleans for their oil and gas cronies, stating on invitations, “‘Laissez les bons temps rouler!’ (Let the good times roll)
Sources: Times Picayune, StopOilDisaster, Before It’s News
Photo Credit: gotoplaces.com
See Deborah Dupré’s other articles on Before It’s News.
Read Dupré’s latest book, “Vampire of Macondo, Life, crimes and curses in south Louisiana that Powerful Forces Don’t want you to know,” – 450 pages of heavily-referenced facts and victim’s accounts of how the U.S. petrochemical-military-industrial complex, that was also involved in Hurricame Katrina, was and is highly involved in the 2010 BP oil catastrophe. The book is packed with mainstream media-censored stories about the BP-wrecked Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico that continues catastrophic human and environmental devastation. (Hard copy and Kindle)
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Whistler Blowers, Insiders
This is disaster capitalism (See Naomi Klein, “Shock Doctrine” for an account of Katrina profiteers) at the bureaucrat level. It’s not just corporations who cash in on disasters.
If you travel along the Gulf coast now, you can see all the formerly small-owner properties that were bought up at fire sale prices after Katrina and converted into resorts, casinos and other high-profit ventures by corporate disaster capitalists. This happens after every disaster, worldwide (the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean is another example cited by Klein).
I like to tell people who claim this is a Christian country that that’s an insult to Christ. Better to call our national religion unrestrained capitalism, which embraces all faiths.
uncle sam’s money is always tainted and comes with dangerous strings
Indict Louisiana oil mafia and their selected bought politicians – including Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Thanks for rehashing the article in the Times-Pic, and while I think BP is disgusting for its recklessness that led to the Gulf Oil Spill, I would like to point out that your so-called “fact” that “More oil covered Katrina’s drowned New Orleans than oil leaked in the Exxon Valdez” is patently untrue. Not a drop of oil touched the Crescent City, although the perception you wrongly parroted did hurt our tourism industry.
@sandstep, Patently untrue? You are incorrect about oil spilled from Katrina. “They were hoping to prevent — or at least quickly clean up — what would become America’s largest oil spill since the 11-million-gallon Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 (see sidebar, page 35 Print Exclusive).” – Geotimes. ****”Major oil spills alone were 8 million barrels of oil.**** (Also see below what Environmental Attorney at Tulane stated (further below) and if you want to see other documentation of professionals speaking the truth as I have, see the movie “Fuel” by Tickell.
Geotimes:
“Damage to oil facilities from Hurricane Katrina caused four medium spills (more than 10,000 gallons) and 134 minor spills, in which 8 million gallons of oil leaked onto the ground and into waterways from Louisiana to Alabama. The largest single spill was at the Bass Enterprises Production Company site in Cox Bay, La., where 3.78 million gallons of oil spilled. Another large spill was at the Chevron Empire oil terminal in Buras, La., where the roof of one storage tank was ripped off and the foundation of another ripped out, leaking 1.4 million gallons of oil.”
On top of that was all the oil from less major spills that brought the total over 11 million, the Exxon Valdez amount.
As Bush and McCain, like you, told everyone the oil spill was no big deal, in May 2006, “the U.S. Minerals Management Service (MMS) published their offshore damage assessment: “113 platforms totally destroyed, and 457 pipelines damaged, 101 of those major lines with 10″ or larger diameter.”
“In addition, the hurricanes caused disastrous spills onshore throughout southeast Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast as tanks, pipelines, refineries and other industrial facilities were destroyed, for a total of 595 different oil spills.” That plus oil from vehicles and other sources brought the actual amount over the Exxon Valdez amount.
However, the public (and apparently including you) bought corporate-owned media propaganda:
– George Will: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed or damaged hundreds of drilling rigs without causing a large spill.”
– Wall Street Journal editorial: “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flattened terminals across the Gulf of Mexico but didn’t cause a single oil spill.”
– Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne: “When Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast where we have about 4,000 oil and gas platforms, 3,000 were in the direct line of the storms – the most significant storms we’ve seen ever – and 3,000 of those had to be shut down. We had no significant oil spill. The system worked.”
– Fox News’ Dick Morris: “And by the way, the safety concerns, Hurricane Katrina didn’t cause any leakage or any spill in the Gulf of Mexico oil wells.”
To see actual documentation with NO environmental attorney at Tulane, Houck explaining the truth as I’ve written, see the movie, “Fuel” by Josh Tickell. Houck about Katrina: “More oil spilled in a week than occurred during the whole of the T/V Exxon’s Valdez oil spill.”
Also see The Guardian article,
The Guardian reported soon after Katrina, “Katrina oil spills may be among worst on record” and explained why. Since then, its speculation was proven true.
“he extent of the political damage was underlined yesterday in a column on the federal response by a conservative columnist and former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan. “The White House was spinning when it should have been acting,” she wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “In this area the administration has gotten way too clever while at the same time becoming stupider.”