Lies the government told you by Andrew Napolitano (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

We don’t need your help.” Anyone who has seen pictures, videos, or stories about Katrina would tell you that the government needed all the help it could get. But instead of admitting its incompetence, FEMA’s administration acted like stubborn children. FEMA claims that it did not let the supply trucks in because they posed some sort of safety hazard, but it really just didn’t want anyone to steal its thunder. Economics Professor William L. Anderson wrote about the issue:

Now, it did not matter to FEMA officials that a large number of people needed the provisions that the Wal-Mart truck was carrying. While I am sure that any member of FEMA would employ rhetoric to the contrary, but I stand by my point. It does FEMA no good at all for Wal-Mart to do something for which FEMA receives no credit. Furthermore, this “securing the area” business is nonsense, and the people at FEMA know it. Yes, there are risks that people take going into areas just after something devastating like a hurricane or earthquake has occurred, but the vast majority of people who put themselves into such situations know beforehand about the nature of the dangers they are facing.5

Even after the storm had passed, FEMA was not out of the hot water to which it subjected itself. The agency did a wonderful job of proving itself to be as wasteful and bungling as ever. In an effort to provide a source of temporary housing for Katrina victims, tens of thousands of residential trailers were issued by FEMA. But, in its ineptitude, FEMA handed out trailers from a supplier who used a high concentration of formaldehyde in building the structures. Almost immediately after the trailers were doled out, hundreds of displaced families called FEMA to complain of health issues such as rashes, bloody noses, breathing difficulties, and illness probably due to the concentrated level of formaldehyde used to manufacture the trailers. Additionally, there were allegations that exposure to high levels of formaldehyde could be linked to serious long-term health issues, like cancer or miscarriages. There is also some speculation that FEMA tried to sweep the connection between formaldehyde exposure and cancer under the rug.

In May 2006, FEMA asked the National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to do a “health consultation” on the trailers. ATSDR’s chief of toxicology, Christopher De Rosa, M.D., told FEMA that cancer risks and other possible health problems would need to be included in the report. In an effort to save face, FEMA cut out Dr. De Rosa and forced some of his staff to prepare a consultation that would omit information on the risk of cancer and other key health information. De Rosa wrote to FEMA:

I am concerned that this health consultation is incomplete and perhaps misleading . . . Formaldehyde is classified as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen.” As such, there is no recognized “safe level” of exposure. Thus, any level of exposure to formaldehyde may pose a cancer risk, regardless of duration. Failure to communicate this issue is possibly misleading, and a threat to public health.6

In June 2009, USA Today reported that there are still thousands of families living in the temporary trailers, but that FEMA and HUD announced programs giving trailer residents $50 million (of taxpayers’ money) in housing vouchers in an effort to make some amends for their formaldehyde catastrophe.7 So, in the spirit of Reagan’s words, the government was here to “help,” and it was terrifying, corrupt, and quite expensive. The American people wound up paying the price for the government’s deception, both in their health and in their taxes.

FEMA’s disingenuous and blatantly corrupt practices did not end with the trailer fiasco. In fact, this incident was just the beginning. Serious misconduct, such as racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and cronyism, are among the allegations made about the FEMA office in downtown New Orleans.8 Even more disturbing, that type of “toxic” office culture has greatly hampered the Katrina recovery. In one year’s time, more than thirty employment-related complaints were filed against Doug Whitmer, the chief of staff at the New Orleans FEMA branch.

Amidst these allegations, the head of FEMA, Nancy Ward, did not even fire the chief of the New Orleans office. Instead, Ward opted to reassign him to a FEMA office in Texas (with the twisted logic that he can cause further damage somewhere else?). After the corruption, poor management, and wasteful use of government funding was exposed, FEMA announced in April 2009 that the New Orleans Recovery Office was being shut down.9 So much for helping people in need.

In September 2008, Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast area. Did FEMA learn from the myriad mistakes it made in Katrina by 2008? No, it seems that FEMA made nearly all the same blunders with Ike. The Disaster Accountability Project had a hotline in September 2008 whereby Ike victims could provide information regarding their experiences with FEMA and problems with hurricane preparedness. Some of the common complaints were: People had no ice to cool insulin, baby formula, or other medications, and FEMA never publicized the location of shelters and places to get necessary supplies like food and water. Others said that when they had been trying to call FEMA, they received a recording saying that it was not a valid number. Another caller said that once she did get through to the FEMA hotline, she was instructed to go on the Internet for more information, even though simple logic would tell you that most hurricane victims did not have Internet access because electric power was lost for weeks.10

Carey Giudici, a guest blogger on the Disaster Accountability Project’s blog, said it best, “Most agreed that the storm itself was much less of a problem than what has come afterwards.”11 Much of the reason why the storm wasn’t the worst of things was because FEMA failed on many counts. She and other people quoted discussed communication problems between hurricane victims and relief services, because many did not