Judge demands answers on Katrina housing

[deminks]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061213/ap_on_go_pr_wh/katrina_housing_1

WASHINGTON - A federal judge called the Bush administration's handling of a Hurricane Katrina housing program "a legal disaster" Wednesday and ordered officials to explain a computer system that can neither precisely count evacuees nor provide reasons why they were denied aid.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who ruled last month that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had violated evacuees' constitutional rights by eliminating their housing payments without notice, admonished the government for not moving fast enough to restart the program for between 3,600 and 5,500 storm victims

"Let me make this clear," Leon told government attorney Michael Sitcov. "Tell FEMA that I'm expecting them to get going on this. Like immediately."

(snip)

"This is a legal disaster. People's rights are being denied," Leon said. "I don't want us to get so mired in the minutiae and the law while, in the meantime, people who need help are not getting help."

[rodeodance]

1. ho ho , go gettum judge

[nashville_brook]

2. i've read that the Katrina fiasco has the potential to be a bigger Bush crime than Iraq

finally someone is scratching the surface. if the whispers are correct, the trail of corruption in the wake of Katrina was not covered-up entirely.

maybe this action marks the beginning of the code being cracked.

[Suich]

3. Thank you, Judge Leon!!!

One can only hope that this will light a fire under FEMA!

:thumbsup:

[Paranoid Pessimist]

4. Somebody somewhere someday should be held accountable

for the sad mess down there. Disaster response barely registers on the priority scale when Africans or people of African descent are involved. The message they get is "Who cares what happens to them" and someday that message is going to cause major problems here in middle class U.S.A. -- if global warming, peak oil, currency devaluation by the Chinese, etc., don't get there first.

Think we'll all survive till the 2008 election?

[jus_the_facts]

7. Makes me wonder....wouldn't take much of another epic disaster....

....especially since this one is still F.U.B.A.R. :grr:

[Eugene]

5. "It's not as adept at doing these kinds of machinations"

This is a worthy contender for the lamest excuse of 2006.
FEMA work is unacceptable by any standard of professional
or administrative practice. Their excuse borders on
contempt of court.

I'd like to know the contractor who got away with this.
That kind of work wouldn't get a passing grade in a
Comp Sci 101 class.

[WindRavenX]

6. damn "activist judges"

:sarcasm:

(good to read about someone still remember the pain of katrina--too many people have forgotten)

[KamaAina]

8. Whose side is FEMA on, anyway?

Clearly, not ours:

FEMA has appealed Leon's order and is hoping a higher court will block its enforcement until the appeal plays out.

So what, they're gonna stall until all those inconvenient poor black people just, uh, go away?! :grr: :banghead:

Apparently all that's changed at FEMA is that the horse's asses are no longer Arabians... :P

edit: spelling

[Beetwasher]

9. We Are SOOO Friggin' Lucky There Were No Major Hurricanes This Year

We got lucky, very, very lucky.

[progressoid]

10. Couple problems here

First that FEMA will "get going on this. Like immediately." The only thing they are going to get going on is dragging this out for a couple more years. They are already appealing it.

Which brings us to problem #2. How is it that housing payments a constitutional right? To be clear, I feel for the Katrina victims and heartily agree that FEMA/the * administration fucked up big time. And, I'm certainly not a constitutional scholar, but I would think that is one of the first things FEMA's lawyers will attack.

[deminks]

12. It's not the right to housing payments,

but I gather it is the right to due process which is the constitutional issue here. The payments were stopped without notice. More arbitrary, racist, corrupted BS from the section of government designed to protect us.

Text in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments

No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....

No State shall ... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process

Just my unedumacated guess.

[progressoid]

13. I had that thought also but

It seems to me that the aid is simply a potential gift from the govt to the victims and not life, liberty or property. How does due process apply to an un-kept promise?

Clearly the govt is incompetent and racist and needs to be fixed, but I think the charge of unconstitutional may be the wrong argument.

If it is true that the removal of this aid is unconstitutional, then maybe I should file a suit to get the college grant money that I was promised but never received 25 years ago.

Of course, I only had two hours of sleep last night so...

[dbt]

11. Meanwhile, in Hope, Arkansas,

Ten fucking THOUSAND mobile homes sit at the municipal airport, EMPTY. They're sinking into the dirt and gravel because they can't be sent to flood victims who live in a flood prone area.

As a nation, we are Too Stupid To Live.

:freak:
dbt
Remember New Orleans