Dog bites man, FEMA wastes money

You'll be shocked to hear this, but FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency, also known as "Fix Everything My Ass"), which has done such an efficient job with Hurricane Katrina, has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on past disasters.

The Journal Sentinel has an abbreviated version of an in-dept series done by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You can read the whole series here.

It was interesting last week to hear federal officials and their right-wing network raise questions about whether Katrina aid would be siphoned off by corrupt state and local officials. How many stories did you hear about corruption in Louisiana, as conservatives tried to build a case for opposing aid?

The fact is that most of the fraud, waste and abuse is likely to come from the federal government itself, either by FEMA or by no-bid, cost-plus contracts with Halliburton, the Bush administration's favorite contractor.

The solution is not to oppose aid to a million hurricane victims; it is to put some systems in place to make sure FEMA and Halliburton don't rip off the taxpayers. So far, we've heard no proposals on how to do that, even from Rep. F. The Victims Sensenbrenner, who voted no on Katrina aid because of "lack of accountability," but has offered no solution.

There has to be a way to help victims without pouring money down the toilet. So far, the silence is deafening.