Katrina II headed toward Louisiana - Commentary by Jim Dean, Heritage TV

Jim Dean, Heritage TV producer/host

Jim Dean is the producer of Heritage TV and Vice-Chairman of the Georgia Heritage Council.

Katrina II headed toward Louisiana – Commentary by Jim Dean

Dear legal Americans,

Another huge disaster is headed our way...Katrina II. But this one is another form of national disaster, the mother of all looting. By that I mean that we need to slam the brakes on putting $100 billion plus in the pipeline to the most systemically corrupt state in the country. Their political crooks are all having hot flashes over how rich they are going to get. They may all resign anyway to become 'consultants.'

Congressman Tancredo has written the letter below to Hastert which tells it all. None of this national money should have a Louisiana pol's hand touch it. It would be an insult to all the other projects that will now go unfunded. We have a duty to those who are going to get hung out to dry on their needs (New Orleans is getting all the extra money we have) to assure them that it is not feeding the fat cats.

Don't forget that Louisiana had the only governor's race where James Edwards put out his own bumper sticker 'Vote for the Crook.' Massive corruption was accepted as a way of life down there. The only thing I have seen similar is in Mexico and the Caribbean where everyone expects and understand that those in charge will loot to their heart's content. The whole focus of politics there is to gain control over the looting.

We here at GHC are always trying to spotlight the backroom deals that go on in Georgia politics. The Democrats did all the robbing for many many years, and now the Republicans are trying to show that they have all the wrong stuff, too. But Georgia pols are altar boys compared to the Louisiana crowd.

We already have situations where difficult-to-care-for people in shelters, like old infirm folks, are being taken to church shelters and dumped off. FEMA provides zero funding for anyone in a church. So they are dumping the expensive care people off on the churches to save money.

That is a Louisiana deal for you with a Fed twist to it.

In all the mass confusion with charges and counter charges, they are planning now to rob us blind, probably the biggest heist in American history ($60+ billion and counting). The veterans over there tell me the system is hopelessly corrupt...to the point that their emergency evacuation plan was a myth.

It was nothing more than a flow chart organizational table with no funding or real execution behind it. They took the emergency planning money and just used it for seminar junkets. I personally see a lot of criminal negligence in all of this. A third of the New Orleans cops going AWOL gives you a good idea how extensive the rotten element is.

On another note, the horrible response of FEMA and Homeland Security has a lot of their people coming forward with their own stories of corruption and contractor fraud...big time. Every political entity will want to investigate someone else while giving themselves a free pass. We must be diligent to fight for this not becoming the modus operandi. I am proposing special prosecutors head all of these investigations... and I mean plural. One to look at the Feds, one for the state, and another for New Orleans. That is the only way you are ever going to get to the bottom of this...the bedrock.

The Pols will all join hands to block this because they will all know what a mortal threat this is to them all. This will be the big fight folks. The pile of bodies and the massive cost of this will provide us the biggest incentive for what should be the largest corruption investigation in the history of the country. The money should be built into the massive funds they are appropriating now.

I have been monitoring Homeland Security corruption for over a year now with a lot of military and retired Intel patriotic Americans who are just sickened about what the NeoCons have done to the country's national security. It is their looting tool and they aim to make it last forever if they can. It's a new form of slavery for us, our children and our grandchildren, where if we run out of money to pay for it they will just pass the bill down a generation or two.

It's grand larceny folks...delivered with a smile and 'I'm here to protect you' smokescreen. You make people scared and then rob them blind to feel safe again.

On a sad day,
Jim Dean...Heritage TV...jimwdean@aol.com

Jim Dean is the producer of Heritage TV and Vice-Chairman of the Georgia Heritage Council.

Letter from Tom Tancredo to Speaker Dennis Hastert

WASHINGTON, DC. - Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) wrote a letter to Speaker Hastert, urging him to direct federal hurricane relief aid through channels other than Louisiana public officials. Citing incompetence and a history of corruption, Tancredo said a bipartisan select committee of the House should administer the aid and provide accountability for the $52 billion requested. The letter is reprinted below:

Dear Mr. Speaker,

Given the abysmal failure of state and local officials in Louisiana to plan adequately for or respond to the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans, and given the long history of public corruption in Louisiana, I hope the House will refrain from directly appropriating any funds from the public treasury to either the state of Louisiana or the city of New Orleans. Instead, reconstruction and relief funds dedicated to the people of New Orleans should be administered by a private organization or a select committee similar to the historic Truman Commission.

Public corruption is a well known problem in Louisiana. The head of the FBI in New Orleans just this past year described the state´s public corruption as "epidemic, endemic, and entrenched. No branch of government is exempt." Over the last thirty years, a long list of Louisiana politicians have been convicted of crimes; the list includes a governor, an attorney general, an elections commissioner, an agriculture commissioner, three successive insurance commissioners, a congressman, a federal judge, a State Senate president, six other state legislators, and a host of appointed officials, local sheriffs, city councilmen, and parish police jurors. Given the documented public corruption in the state, I am not confident that Louisiana officials can be trusted to administer federal relief aid.

Clearly the federal response from FEMA in the aftermath of the hurricane was hampered by bureaucratic ineptitude. Making matters worse, the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana have demonstrated mind-boggling incompetence in their lack of planning for and response to this disaster. According to one recent media report, "A year ago, as Hurricane Ivan approached, New Orleans ordered an evacuation but did not use city or school buses to help people evacuate. As a result many of the poorest citizens were unable to evacuate. Fortunately, the hurricane changed course and did not hit New Orleans, but both Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin acknowledged the need for a better evacuation plan...[but] did not take corrective actions. In 1998, during a threat by Hurricane George, 14,000 people were sent to the Superdome and theft and vandalism were rampant due to inadequate security. Again, these problems were not corrected."

The city of New York, by comparison, had no advance warning of 9/11. Yet Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki displayed tremendous leadership in managing a chaotic situation in the city. Their leadership inspired confidence in their ability to manage the emergency and coordinate federal aid In contrast, despite knowing days in advance about the coming hurricane, Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin seem to have done little beyond encouraging residents to leave the city or gather at the Superdome. City school and transit buses could have carried 12,000 persons per run out of the city, yet they sat idle in parking lots under water - while both the Mayor and Governor criticized the federal response.

In the coming days, tens of billions of dollars will likely flood Louisiana to address the costs of rescue, clean up, and rebuilding. The question is not whether Congress should provide for those in need, but whether state and local officials who have been derelict in their duty should be trusted with that money. Their record during Hurricane Katrina and the long history of public corruption in Louisiana convinces me that that they should not.

Sincerely,

Tom Tancredo