The $7.5 billion program to rebuild Louisiana by helping residents repair or replace their flooded homes has gotten off to a slow start, frustrating government officials and outraging many homeowners who say they are still in limbo 14 months after Hurricane Katrina hit.
Though nearly 79,000 families have applied to the program, called the Road Home, only 1,721 have been told how much grant money they will receive. And just 22 have received access to the cash, which was provided by federal taxpayers and is being distributed by the state.
“I don’t know of anyone who has actually received any money,” said Cassandra D. Wall, who is active in a group of homeowners from the eastern part of New Orleans. Ms. Wall said she planned to attend a protest Nov. 17 in Baton Rouge, the state capital, “to go public with the outrage and the outcry.”
If there is anything more annoying that big government, it is incompetent big government.
Prince Roy
But gee, at least the federal goverment spent 115 million to rebuild the Superdome so the Saints could play eight home games there this year.
Pb
Heh. You know, I heard about this a while back, but I find it interesting that the New York Times is reporting it now instead of, say, last week. I question the timing. :)
craigie
Does the NYT have a book to sell?
foolishmortal
Mission Accomplished.
Keep in mind that more than a few will miss out on the distinction, and you will find a powerful political device.
The benefits are numerous: that money that isn’t spent on rebuilding houses is ending up somewhere, and free money is always useful (even if its only delayed there’s interest accumulating somewhere).
There is also a message being sent to the Katrina victims: “The government can’t help you, and when it ‘tries’, it will screw you over.” There is a message being sent to everyone else: “Governments trying to help anyone are counterproductive”
Lastly,I hesitate to mention this out of fear of excessive cynicism, but recent experience has proved all such fears unfounded: Katrina constitued a naturally ocurring gerrymander. In terms of destruction/forced relocation, NOLA was hit hardest. That is to say, urban voters are now doing their urban voting elsehwere. I do not expect the current administration to do anything to restore the last blue state in the South.
Goddamnit I feel dirty just thinking it. But am I wrong? I mean, is there a good reason to think otherwise? I wish that there were. Help me out.
TenguPhule
When you think Bush and his cronies can’t make things any worse…they do.
searp
I think the problem is the channel for the money. The Louisiana Recovery Authority was stood up post-Katrina, undoubtedly staffed with new people, and then eventually told to spend 7.5 billion dollars.
They don’t know how to spend such large sums, and cannot get the money out the door. They probably aren’t graded on efficiency. The authority to spend the money probably came late. There is a built-in tendency NOT to spend, because you may give money to the wrong people and end up on the front page of the Times-Picayune.
Bottom line: good government is efficient government, big or small. To be efficient, efficiency has to matter. I would like to suggest that Al Gore’s re-inventing government initiative made a difference on a Federal level, although it was pretty well dropped in 2000.
Anyway, for wonkish types: this is an efficiency issue that is fixable, if people want it fixed. It isn’t a small government/large government issue.
jake
They gave the money to Iron Babs because “those people” didn’t have much anyway…
I suspect the LRA’s staff were chosen based on their loyalty to Bush, since that seems to be how things are done these days.
“Got any prior experience with disasters?”
“Well, I voted for Bush.”
“Welcome aboard!”
I admit even my dark and cynical heart was shocked and disgusted when I heard the Superdome was all fixed and functioning. Fine, maybe the thought was it will bring revenue into the city but damn, people need their homes. And didn’t the Saints blow their first game there? I think it was a month ago they finally got drinkable water to the entire city, and now this? I’d be interested to see how much of that money went to office furnishings and the oh-so-handy Miscellaneous Expenses. But here’s an idea: Put the whiz-kids who got the Superdome up to spec in charge of distributing funds.
Excuse me if I seem excessively ignorant but if the displaced people vote absentee, won’t that keep LA blue? However, and not to make you feel any dirtier but I think it goes a lot deeper than wanting to change the colour of a state. I think it’s just one more thing the Admin. would like to ignore for the next two years. I think this Admin. would breathe a sigh of relief if LA and every person displaced from the state were to blip off the map. How dare they interupt Bush’s 500th vacation (of this term)? They don’t deal well with admitting to blunders and “Stay the Course” in this instance would have involved keeping the city flooded.
grumpy realist
And what was that about how “we don’t need no checks and balances” on wiretapping, national security, who we put on the no-fly list, etc.?
It is always a source of amazement that the same people who run around shouting gov’t bureaucracy is so inefficient and evil are also immediately willing to assume perfection on issues of security.
pie
They always wanted to expand government, just not in the same directions the liberals wanted to.
Then again, they also want to privatize a lot of the security, so it’s almost as much a case of a smash-and-grab act on behalf of independent contractors as it is of government expansion. If Bushco continued to get its way, I think we’d see a future where private security firms, possessing far more power than any government security entity has in the history of this nation, protected us with nerve-wrackingly erratic efficiency while costing exponentially more than their publicly-funded equivalents did.
I guess this is what comes of a CEO President who treats us all as customers rather than constituents. Bush has run government the way he ran his businesses- into the ground. Now, as was the case in his private endeavours, he’s relying on his father’s friends to swoop down and save him from his own ineptitude.
It would be an amusing process, if not for the thousands of American lives his incompetence has cost us. One wonders if this man will ever be held accountable for anything, or ever have to answer for any of his failings.
Just Me
I suspect the LRA’s staff were chosen based on their loyalty to Bush, since that seems to be how things are done these days.
Are the other state given funds through HR 2863 for post hurricane relief experiencing the same problems?
The state government of Louisiana set up this commission, not the Bush administration, and Louisana is controlled by the democrats, not the GOP. I doubt loyalty to Bush had anything to do with it.
As for the Superdome getting fixed, not sure how that happened, other than to say it is probably easier to apprpriate funds to fix something like that, because it leaves out the middle men. Not that it should have been the top priority, but in general fixing one huge thing is probably easier to do than create a committee and an application proccess and then provide the funds.
jcricket
As PJ O’Rourke pointed out:
Unfortunately, people like Norquist actually think this is good policy, because it “poisons the well” against government in the long-term, so they’re happiest when big government programs like this are judged as failures.
Ding, Ding Ding! There are very few actual “small government” people. People just want different areas of the government to be big (defense, education, etc.). I think outside of hardcore libertarians (read: people who believe in magic), everyone wants the government to do what they believe government should do.
I’d be happy to have an honest debate about where the government should be and where it shouldn’t, because I’m a pragmatist and a realist about government. There are some things the government can clearly do better than the private sector – mostly because of short vs. long-term profit vs. community issues, and other times because of structural issues. There are also some government I’m not willing to outsource for privacy or national security reasons, even if it would be “more efficient”. And then there’s lots of stuff the government probably shouldn’t be in (I’m glad we don’t have totally regulated air travel anymore). But discussing of regulations and government shouldn’t start with “government is the problem”.
I for one, would love to see honest debates on tax collections, healthcare, education & infrastructure spending.
ThymeZone
This isn’t rocket science. Look at the South and at things like Tennessee Valley Authority. How about getting rid of that kind of example of Big Government? How about shutting down FAA and NTSB?
So what turned the South against government between, say, 1948 and 1980? Failure of government? Or imposition of government in the form of the Civil Rights Act?
What turned the Yellow Dog Democrats into Reagan Republicans? Intelligent ideology and policy genius? Or demagoguery and resentment over interference with the South’s apparent inability to get itself socially into the Twentieth Century?
jcricket
Yep. When we wonder why our kids can’t read or fall behind on science it’s because we have sizable portions of the population that still want us to teach “young earth creationism” or that “global warming is a hoax” in school. The fundamentals of science are under attack from people who can’t/won’t move into the Twentieth Century (let alone the 21st), but I see no reason to “appease” those people by leaving everything up to them. I’m fine, frankly, if they get dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world or choose to be “left behind”. Frankly, I think a stance of “no benefits of evolutionary theory or ‘old earth’ if you deny either” is a good one. No fossil fuels, antibiotics, etc. for you.
scarshapedstar
People this fucking backwards are truly hopeless, but let’s not forget who’s responsible for letting them crawl out from under their rock. They are home-schooled, their children will be home-schooled, they listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News and will never set foot outside the country, or even outside their town of 2,000. Left to their own devices, they will eventually wither away as their gene pool simply becomes too polluted to sustain itself, and no civilized person will even notice their absence.
Well, at least they would have, except one political party became so desperate to get their hands back on the levers of government for one more crime spree that they taught them how to vote.
ThymeZone
Another view is that they’ll breed like rats, millions of tiny Darrells will pour forth from their warrens, and we’ll be doomed.
scarshapedstar
Also, John, I must quibble with using this as an example of “big government”. That’s sort of like referring to the Wizard of Oz as a “big man”. No, he was an ordinary man with a projector. Similarly, when the government says they’ll hand out 200 billion, or 7 billion, or whatever, and then does nothing… that’s not big government. That’s more like a mirage government. Or a bullshit government, which is to say, no government at all. New Orleans is living the Norquist dream, the very first to be drowned in the bathtub.
I really cannot wait until we finally have the investigations to tally up the cost of the $100 loads of laundry; $30 gallons of gas; trucks set on fire because they got a flat, or simply because a contractor “accidentally” ordered the wrong truck; translators who can’t translate; Blackwater mercenaries paid 10 times more than soldiers… everything that the Republicans have encouraged so that their “private” defense contractor buddies (if a firm exists solely due to government contracts, can you really call it private with a straight face?) could pad the bill and kick a couple hundred million back their way… and then compare it to the $0 that we’ve set aside for the former residents of my birthplace, a city that was destroyed because our coke-addled, unelected President can’t be bothered to do anything other than clear brush at the ranch.
Actually, I don’t know why I’m deluding myself; the dead-enders will keep his approval rating around 30% even if he fucks a dead rat on camera in the Oval Office and then eats it. But at least there will be a few more ugly old white guys wearing orange jumpsuits.
SPIIDERWEB™
Folks just put this in perspect and feel some empathy.
Today you will lose your house and all belongings. Ya think 14 months waiting is ok? Just asking.
Paul
7.5 billion. We care about these Americans in need with about as much money as we spend on Iraq in two months.
It was embarrasing to watch the press conference with Bush and not a single question was asked about Katrina recovery or New Orleans. How must that make the people struggling to rebuild their lives feel?
The contrast between our governments preocupation with Iraq, in money, time and resources, and it’s concern for the well-being of their citizens is so glaring that the media choose to look away for fear they be blinded.
Scarshapedstar, your comment about New Orleans being the first victim of Norquists “drowned in a bathtub” ideology is classic. I am sure I will use it in debating my fellow Americans.
Just Me
I will point out again the Bush isn’t in charge of Louisana recovery that Feds just provided the dollars, the government of Louisana is in charge.
raj
A wag might wonder, why should the Americans living in New Orleans expect any better from the US–their–government, than the Iraqis should expect from the US–a foreign–government?
But, I’m not a wag.
jcricket
That’s what happens when you refuse to properly fund and staff FEMA, and also oppose making it an cabinet-level post (Bush put it under Dept. of Homeland Security). Local/state governments, with the exception of NY & CA just aren’t properly equipped to handle disasters of this magnitude. It’s sort of the same reason we have the “National Guard” we can call in to supplement the state police.
Now, a libertarian would say if you live in Flood City, Tornado Villa, Hurricane Alley or Fire Cove tough luck, no bailouts. I actually have some sympathy, in that we shouldn’t encourage people to live in areas prone to chronic disasters (this includes rich people in CA who live near forest-fire zones). But until we all agree to that view, a properly staffed and funded FEMA (with oversight from the GAO and others) is the right solution to natural disasters of this magnitude.
jcricket
Here’s some more about what happened when Bush consolidated FEMA under DHS
Again, I’m open to the idea that there are some government agencies that can never achieve their goals. But most current ones that don’t are a result of inefficiencies or chronic under-funding. Improvements in Medicare and the VA in the last 10 years are proof that even disastrously run government programs can be improved to a level where they exceed the performance of their private sector counterparts.
Bathtub drowning not required.
jcricket
Oh look, right on cue – Republicans attack another successful, worthwhile, universally supported government program. So far we’ve established:
* Polling has a well known liberal bias
* Government Programs have a well known liberal bias
* Science & Scientific Inquiry have a well known liberal bias.
Good to know.
Just Me
This isn’t a FEMA program.
It is money that came from congress to help rebuild.
The money was given to each of the States affected by the Hurricanes.
The State governments created the comissions and the proccess by which the money would be distributed to those in need.
In short, this isn’t a Federal program-it is a State created program. Which is why I was wondering if the other states involved were experiencing similar problems distributing the money where it was needed.
As for FEMA I would argue that it doesn’t belong incorporated with Homeland security-while they both may deal with crisis management they aren’t the same thing.
But the government that should be the focus of complaint on this is the State of Louisana, the only involvement the Fed’s had was appropriating the money for the program.
BIRDZILLA
How much will go for real rebuilding and how much for pork. It will be this way 10% for rebuilding 90% for pork