Louisiana Officials Indicted Before Katrina Hit

I found the following story which should be of interest to anyone paying attention to the Katrina mess. It would be more appropriate in ATSNN, but as I just found out, only selected personnel can post those stories.

Senior officials in Louisiana's emergency planning agency already were awaiting trial over allegations stemming from a federal investigation into waste, mismanagement and missing funds when Hurricane Katrina struck.

And federal auditors are still trying to track as much as $60 million in unaccounted for funds that were funneled to the state from the Federal Emergency Management Agency dating back to 1998.

In March, FEMA demanded that Louisiana repay $30.4 million to the federal government.

For those who don't read the whole article, these are the last few lines (struck me as a very interesting example of what has been going on down there):

About $2.8 million of the refund sought by FEMA went to consultant fees. Most of that money went to Aegis Innovative Systems, a Baton Rouge firm hired by many parishes to administer the flood buyout program. Aegis owners include Mark Howard, a former official at the Louisiana agency.

State Sen. Reggie Dupre said it appeared that parishes employing Aegis were especially successful in winning money from the state emergency preparedness agency.

"It smells like a horrible brother-in-law deal to me, " he said in a phone interview.

An Aegis attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

This whole issue of mismanagement and accountability would seem to provide additional proof that not all the blame for this mess can be placed on the federal government in general or Bush in particular.


Full article:
www.latimes.com...

Hmmm... Yea....

Corruption all around before Katrina hit. Maybe it wasn't Navy Seals who blew the Levy. Someone could've done it for the insurance companies, who would've been stuck with a big payout to multiple customers, only now they don't have to due to the flooding. Or maybe it was one of these corrupt officials. The list of how and why is getting longer....

I found the following story which should be of interest to anyone paying attention to the Katrina mess. It would be more appropriate in ATSNN, but as I just found out, only selected personnel can post those stories.

Not True Jaryn

Anybody on ATS can post to ATSNN. Use the 'Send News" button on the upper middle right, fill in the boxes and submitt. Once submitted, ATS members get to vote on the story and if approved it is accepted as a submission to ATSNN.

People who have a set number of previously approved stories (I think its 50 or 75) are considered 'Experts" and thier submissions go through without a vote.

If you fell that this has the makings of a good story, i would encourage you to submit it ASAP.

Thanks, I am (obviously) still new to the posting methods (been lurking forever but just registered) and misunderstood the statement about articles posted by ATS staff and editors to mean that only they could post them.

Hopefully this will be approved and added as I think people really need to be aware of this.

This story has been denied for posting to ATSNN due to it being too biased.....

I give up!