Do you support the right of return for all New Orleanians?
Okay, so I'm shocked, just shocked to learn that influence peddling and blatant fraud is going on in Washington, DC. And I'm shocked to find out that Secretary Alfonso Jackson of HUD is handing out contracts to friends of Bush and only friends of Bush to rebuild the city of New Orleans.
We all know that influence peddling at the expense of ordinary Americans all over this country happens everyday in so many egregious ways, but now we have it on record thanks to the National Journal.
Follow me below the fold for the latest outrage in the horrendous mess that New Orleans has become.
First some background, I traveled down to New Orleans twice this year to do some guerrilla video blogging as a citizen journalist because nothing going on in this country is worse for me personally than what is going on all over the Gulf Coast today. Many things are as bad, but nothing is worse.
An area the size of Great Britain was wiped out and what Katrina spared Rita then took. I've learned a lot through my first hand discussions and interviews with regular people in the city. And I've learned that affordable housing remains one of the highest hurdles that residents and former residents have to overcome in order to rebuild the city they still call home.
I tell people that I don't think the media get the story of Katrina and New Orleans right. I ask people to speak to me on tape for these vlogs (vee-logs) and then I ask them:
- What's next for NOLA?
- What do you want to say to people in this country living outside of the Gulf Coast about your city today?
The MSM meme that people are not back simply because they fear the next storm is not true. Some have left and will never return because they can't go through "it" again, but so many more just lack or lacked the financial resources to make their return a reality. Those FEMA checks and the outpouring of support for so many of the evacuees might have taken the edge off their precarious financial situation in the fall of 2005, but the money and the help did very little to return the citizens of New Orleans to the city of New Orleans.
The Road Home program is a joke; it's called the "Road Out of Here" program in the city. Trailers now visible all over the city are poisoning the occupants. Insurance companies deny claims, contractors rip the homeowners off with impunity, the city has jacked up taxes and assessments in nearly every neighborhood, they bulldoze homes "abandoned" and don't even notify the people who might be living outside the city when in fact they haven't returned yet because they're waiting for Road Home money. It's a horrendous and unconscionable mess and we should be asking questions.
Furthermore, any money received by homeowners to rebuild doesn't cover the increased costs of building contractors and materials because the award is based on pre-Katrina prices and prices have gone up triple-fold. For renters it's even worse. No rent control was put in place after the storm and consequently the cost to return is that much higher. Although wages in many jobs, especially at the low end, have increased considerably they have not kept pace with the increased cost of living. As a result a tent city has sprung up right off Jackson Square in front of city hall in a city not known for it's homelessness before the storm. There was a lot of poverty, but not homelessness. Now they have both. We have to ask why.
All this government intervention locks out the former residents of the city effectively barring their return. And they want to return. They really do.
But it's not just Bush's fault because we as a country have turned the page on New Orleans. We think that because so much money has been spent and because they should understand the danger of living on the "sliver by the river" that they should just get on with things.
The past is the past, just let it be bygones. Right? Why ask stupid questions now?
We think that Katrina happened in the past because that's what we remember: the Superdome and the Convention Center; the people languishing on their roofs; the bodies floating in the street; the abandonment and complete breakdown of society; the Bush flyover. To us, "Katrina" is just the immediate aftermath of the storm but for anyone who lived in New Orleans at the time of the storm Katrina is everyday regardless of where they have a lease now.
We heard a little bit about trailers in the summer of 2006, but not much and that story was soon forgotten. Joe Lieberman, then ranking member of the Senate committee on Homeland Security, made a big stink in front of the cameras for his constituents at home about FEMA oversight and the response to the disaster, but as soon as his hypocritical ass was safely re-elected the now chairman of the committee decided not to investigate any further. He decided to just go ahead and take Bush's word for it.
Bush’s Best Democratic Buddy
Jan. 11, 2007 - Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans...
Last year, when he was running for re-election in Connecticut, Lieberman was a vocal critic of the administration’s handling of Katrina. He was especially dismayed by its failure to turn over key records that could have shed light on internal White House deliberations about the hurricane, including those involving President Bush.
Asserting that there were "too many important questions that cannot be answered," Lieberman and other committee Democrats complained in a statement last year that the panel "did not receive information or documents showing what actually was going on in the White House."...
But now that he chairs the homeland panel—and is in a position to subpoena the records—Lieberman has decided not to pursue the material, according to Leslie Phillips, the senator’s chief committee spokeswoman. "The senator now intends to focus his attention on the future security of the American people and other matters and does not expect to revisit the White House’s role in Katrina," she told NEWSWEEK.
Past is the past, just let it be bygones. Right? Why ask pointless questions now?
Here's the story from National Journal, it's not behind their firewall at the website so you can read the whole thing:
KATRINA AFTERMATH: Questionable Contracts
By Edward T. Pound
Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007
In April last year, Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson traveled to Dallas to deliver a speech to a group of minority real estate executives. The event should have been pretty routine stuff. But Jackson -- and these are his words -- shot off his mouth by describing how he believed contracts should be awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The secretary recalled, for instance, how he once had killed a contract award because the contractor had disparaged his friend President Bush.
The subsequent investigation concluded that: "Although Jackson had, in fact, urged senior aides to consider the political views of contractors in doling out department business, 'no direct evidence' linked political favoritism to such awards. Jackson, it seemed, had dodged a bullet."
But perhaps not, because federal investigators are once again on Jackson's trail. And this time, the investigation seems more serious... The investigation appears to focus, in part, on whether Jackson misled Congress when he testified earlier this year that he had never intervened in awarding HUD contracts. "I don't touch contracts," the HUD boss told a Senate panel on May 3.
Okay? So they have this guy on lying to Congress. That's a worse crime than engineering a cesspool of corruption and enabling a few good Bush men to reap enormous profits from the incredible amount of human suffering that Katrina has caused so many for so long. It's an old story, friends get the deals and a former company that Secretary Jackson used to work for are front and center with their hands out for federal dollars spent in the rebuild, but it's so much more egregious because HUD and HANO are doing nothing whatsoever to support the right of return for the citizens of New Orleans.
Jackson and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., engaged in a verbal shoot-out on May 3 during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies.
Lautenberg, who wants Jackson out, asked the secretary if he believed that "contract awards should be based on political favoritism." Jackson responded, "I do not interfere with any contract that is given in HUD -- period." ... And a short time later, Jackson threw down the gauntlet: "Senator, I have not touched one contract; not one. Now, if you can prove that I interfered with a contract, then you should do that."
Can anyone say Gary Hart? Donna Rice? Monkey Business? Game on.
Nadine Jarmon, then HUD's appointed receiver at the New Orleans housing authority, is quoted in the article. She was working in New Orleans at HANO, the housing authority of New Orleans, which is run by HUD. She didn't see "eye to eye" with Secretary Jackson's personal friend, William Hairston, who is at the center of the investigation. He was then on her payroll at $175/hr and at a meeting in DC, she was "called to the carpet," about her working relationship with Hairston and other issues:
Three weeks after the meeting Jarmon's work with HANO ended... Jarmon also said that a HUD investigator and an FBI agent had interviewed her in August at a New Orleans hotel. "They were very straightforward," she said. "They said, 'We want information on William Hairston.' "
I sure hope they got it. Jackson and Hairston are good friends and often spend time together at Hilton Head, SC where they both own homes but never talk shop.
But Hairston left no doubt that Jackson aided him in getting the job at HANO. Describing events that led him to HANO, he said he understood that a friend of his in Congress had recommended him to Jackson for work at the New Orleans housing agency. Sometime in 2005, he said, Jackson called him on the phone. From that conversation, he said, he understood that HANO "didn't have any construction experience -- they did not have anyone on their team that knew anything about construction."
Although his business had been slow at times, Hairston said he was working on a big project when Jackson called, and that he did not solicit Jackson's help. Asked if Jackson recommended him for the HANO work, Hairston responded, "It was Mr. Jackson who recommended me."
Mr. Hairston is a stucco contractor and was charged, in part, with overseeing the redevelopment of St. Bernard Housing Project a large grouping of brick buildings. To be fair, the city has signed agreements with private firms to turn St. Bernard into a golf course but there's not a lot of stucco rehab going on either way down there. Hairston gets reflective about the predicament that he finds himself in today as the central focus of investigators.
Millions of dollars, he said, are being wasted on contracts at HANO, and he wonders, "Why worry about some dumb chump change that I was getting?"
Past is the past, just let it be bygones. Right? Why ask dumb questions now?
Today, the time is right more than ever. Katrina is not what happened then it's what's happening today all over the city.
Do you support the right of return for all the citizens of New Orleans?