This is the perfect story:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will halt nearly $30 million in grants to a program aimed at helping Mississippi recover from damage caused by Hurricane Katrina after the agency’s inspector general raised questions about oversight.
In a report to the regional FEMA administrator charged with overseeing Mississippi, Assistant Inspector General Thomas Salmon said the state had not been properly overseeing over the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.
The program set aside nearly $30 million to repair 2,000 homes devastated by the 2005 storm. But Mississippi says it has spent $31.5 million, more than the total grant program, to repair just 945 damaged homes.
More troubling, FEMA’s inspector general said, Mississippi had only documented $957,776 in spending. The state has not provided documentation to account for the remaining $30.5 million.
What better way to demonstrate why Mississippian supporters of the Republican Party can simultaneously be addicted to federal handouts and utterly convinced that the Fed spends their money imprudently?
They take the money willingly and then essentially pocket it.
I’d say that I hope the conservative Democratic governor of Louisiana will do better with his FEMA money, but I don’t believe that.
In Louisiana, graft and corruption is completely bipartisan and those who aren’t conservative grifters are crooks, also, too.
