Show Me The Money!!!

I will bet most of you didn't know anything about this. Turns out that while Hurricane Katrina was commig towards New Orleans, there were top officials in Louisiana's Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness department waiting to go to trial. What for you say? How about corruption and fraud.

It seems that these official either misspent, missplaced, or stuck 60 million federal tax dollars in their pockets. Here are the details from According to the Los Angeles Times.

In March of this year, FEMA, was asking for the return of 30.4 million that the feds sent to Louisiana for emergency planning and preparedness. The money was sent to Louisiana's Office Of Homeland Security and Preparedness under a federal program called the Hazard Mitigation Grant program. Now that is the program that is suppose to help states improve flood control facilities... Did someone say flood?

I don't know a whole lot, I mean I do not have a college education or anything, but something tells me this would have been a great deal for New Orleans... but no one seems to know where the money went!!!

Ok so lets follow the money trail. 15.4 million dollars was spent by the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. That 15.4 million was part of the 30 million grant, your money, that was sent to Louisiana for flood control facilities. Uh Oh, wait a second, we can't follow the money trail. The Louisiana officials say they awarded that money to sub contractors for 19 major hazard mitigation programs, but they can't find the receits to account for 97 percent of the funds. Now I did some math, 97% of 15.4 million is 14.94 million. That is 14.94 million of your tax dollars, gone, and no one knows where it went.

I wonder how many lives could have been saved, how much flooding could have been prevented. Don't you just love big government.