Patters

I don't think Republicans have much experience running large government programs so they really can't be blamed for their ineptitude.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/wa...erland&emc=rss

WASHINGTON, June 26 — Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

Gregory D. Kutz, a G.A.O. official, testified before a House panel about fraud and held up one of the $2,000 debit cards given out by FEMA. A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

patsfan13

Hi Patters this is a bipartisan problem, when it could to distributing emergency funds. Political pressure to do
something' + lots of goveremnt money + dishonest people = robbing the tazpayer in the name of feeling good.

If you really want to see wide spread waste and fraud check out medicare and medicade. That make this tyoe of corruption looks like childs play.

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"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

Patters

patsfans, its sounds to me like the Katrina aid programs are well beyond the norm. I could be wrong, but the extent of abuse seems to be pretty astonishing.

patsfan13

There was a story in the last year (MTY IIRC) about meidcare fraus being ~20% of the budget spent in NY state, this number ran into the billions every year. If you are giving away someone's elses money you areen
t are careful as with your own money and there are lots of people looking to get a piece of the bucket of money.

This is an intrinsic characteristic of large goverment programs. Not that what is happening here is right or that it shouldn't be corrected, just that I've been around enough to have seen this many times.

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"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

IcyPatriot

So this is a great example of why whenever anyone wants to privatize something everyone screams FOUL!!!