So let's assume for a minute that FEMA had problems with Katrina based in the sheer size of the storm, which was exceptional and extraordinary. Normally, FEMA would be running like a well oiled machine that was run by professionals who knew what they were doing, right? OK, so I guess we can look back and see how well FEMA implemented its long term plan in Florida and how well the feds looked over the poor in the devastated areas. We know that plenty of wealthy folks made out like bandits last year, courtesy of taxpayer money and GOP cronyism but the president and his sheeple tell us that he cares about all Americans, not just the wealthy and ultra-wealthy. So how does one explain this mess?
"FEMA City is now a socioeconomic time bomb just waiting to blow up," said Bob Hebert, director of recovery for Charlotte County, where most FEMA City residents used to live. "You throw together all these very different people under already tremendous stress, and bad things will happen. And this is the really difficult part: In our county, there's no other place for many of them to go."Between this and the extensive problems of cronyism, suspension of minimum wages, no-bid contract and political pork by this team, can we really trust them to rebuild the Gulf Region? When are the Democrats going to start putting up a serious fight to protect Americans? What about an independent commission to investigate Katrina? Spine please, Democrats.
Most troubling, they said, is that while the badly damaged town of Punta Gorda is beginning to rebuild and even substantially upgrade one year after the storm, many of the area's most vulnerable people are being left badly behind.
Then as the apartments were slowly restored -- a process made more costly and time-consuming because of a shortage of contractors and workers -- landlords found that they could substantially increase their rents in the very tight market.
As a result, the low-income working people most likely to have been displaced by the hurricane are now most likely to be displaced by the recovery, too.
Many residents are excited by the changes, but others -- especially the poor and some in Punta's Gorda's long-standing African American neighborhood -- worry they will be permanently priced out of their old home town.
"That land was just too valuable to have poor people on it," said community leader Isaac Thomas. He said that the local government is trying to help him and other black leaders save some of the modest but historic homes in the African-American East End, but that "it's a really uphill fight."
