In the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, it’s understandable that FEMA would give a higher priority to helping the needy than to assuring that they really were needy. It’s more difficult to excuse wasteful payment of fraudulent claims that came months after the hurricane dissipated.

A GAO audit shows that FEMA has an ineffective oversight process and therefore continues to pay fraudulent claims. FEMA has wasted or been cheated out of at least $1 billion. At the same time, it hasn’t always put the money where it’s really needed, resulting in a recent court order “to resume housing payments for thousands of people displaced by Katrina.”

Not all of the loss resulted from fraudulent claims. FEMA can’t seem to keep track of the equipment that its employees purchased:

Criminal cases in New Orleans remain backlogged, yet the District Attorney’s office insists on pursuing possible charges against Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses who are suspected of engaging in mercy killings at Memorial Medical Center during the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Pou denies the accusation. The evidence against her is flimsy, and the judge assigned to the case thinks it’s time to file charges or move along to other cases.

"With all due respect, I'm tired of this case," District Judge Calvin Johnson said during a hearing on whether documents in the matter should be made public. "This case needs to either go forward or end." He said he was frustrated by the length of time he has spent dealing with the case, since neither Dr. Anna Pou nor nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo have been indicted. ...

Johnson's frustration comes at a time when criminal cases in New Orleans remain backlogged because of a shortage of public defenders and other problems created when Katrina's floodwaters destroyed evidence and shutdown the court system.

Prosecutors say they might convene a grand jury next year. Or not.

by TChris

The Louisiana State Medical Society has come out in support of Dr. Anna Pou, accused of ending the lives of four bedridden patients during the aftermath of Katrina. Meanwhile, Dr. Pou protested her innocence in a 60 Minutes appearance:

"No, I did not murder those patients," said Pou, who's been practicing medicine for more than 15 years. "I've spent my entire life taking care of patients. I have no history of doing anything other than good for my patients."

Here's the TalkLeft background on this ill-advised prosecution.

by TChris

Ethel Freeman is more than a symbol of the Bush administration's incompetence.

[Ethel Freeman's son] began pushing her toward the Superdome. A passing police officer told them to head instead to the riverfront convention center, where buses were expected to arrive. There were medical supplies, food and water at the Superdome, but people who took refuge at the convention center had none.

"He told me, 'The buses are coming. Wait here so you can get your mom on first,'" Freeman said Friday outside the building where his mother died.

Her last words were a supplication: "She asked me if the buses were coming," Freeman said. "I said 'Yeah, they're coming. And then I said, 'Ma, I'm going to pray to God to help me. And you pray to God to help you," he said.

A few minutes later, he realized she had stopped talking.

At a memorial today, Ethel Freeman's son recalled her death.

A fleet of buses arrived four days after she died - and when they did, Freeman was not allowed to take his mother's body, forced to board the bus at gunpoint. "It was like cutting me open and adding salt in the wound," he said.

by TChris

What to think of Michael Brown? His job with the Arabian Horse Association didn't work out, and only cronyism can explain his appointment to manage FEMA. Brown seemed less informed about conditions in New Orleans than CNN viewers, and more interested in fine dining than in the grueling work of disaster relief.

After being thrown overboard by the president who assured him he was doing a heck of a job, Brown worked hard to rehabilitate his image, with some success. Many of his criticisms of the Bush administration are justified, and the monumental failure of the federal response to Katrina cannot rest on Brown's shoulders alone. Still, there's little doubt that "Michael Brown was completely in over his head in running a federal agency and dealing with an actual disaster," and it's fair to argue that he "can't bring himself to actually take responsibility for his own failures."

A new series, "AIR: America's Investigative Reports," takes another look at Michael Brown, exposing "a pattern of Brownie's incompetence that merely foreshadowed the breathtaking malfeasance to come."

What else on the anniversary of Katrina? Two very different versions: Johnny Cash and Arlo Guthrie singing the City of New Orleans.

Johnny Cash

Arlo Guthrie

I haven't yet had an opportunity to watch the Katrina and New Orleans coverage but I'm sure you have. Here's an open thread on all things related to Katrina -- the devastation and the Adminstration's woefully inadequate response. Will this tar Bush's legacy for good?

by TChris

Racism -- or more broadly, intolerance based on characteristics of race, national origin, religion, and sexuality -- remains one of the most compelling challenges confronting the United States. The anniversary of Katrina drives the point home.

To live in the real world is to not be shocked when learning about how relief trucks passed by East Biloxi, a predominantly black community, to get to D'Iberville, a predominantly white middle-class community.

To live in the real world is to understand why the Red Cross station in East Biloxi barely served food, had no mobile health-care unit and was located in a depressing run-down building, while the Red Cross station in D'Iberville was pristine, well-stocked with food and supplies, and a full-service mobile health-care unit.

by TChris

The White House wants voters to believe that the president has played a significant role over the past year to help New Orleans rebuild. Despite all the president's speeches, disapproval of his response to Katrina remains high. As it should.

A year after Katrina, "only half of the New Orleans courthouse's 12 courtrooms have come back into service since judges returned to the flood-damaged building in June." Jail inmates are waiting for trials; many are waiting to meet their public defenders. And they've been waiting for a year. Judge Arthur Hunter is right to think that they shouldn't be kept waiting any longer.

Hunter says that especially given a shortage of public defenders, many indigent prisoners locked up even before the hurricane haven't talked to lawyers or been charged with crimes; he believes their rights have been being violated for too long and that therefore their releases warrant consideration on a case-by-case basis.

Next week's Katrina anniversary poses a huge vulnerability for Republicans as they head into the November elections. The White House has already started a massive PR campaign to spin the facts. Don't be fooled. Think Progress has published a timeline laying them all out.

Spike Lee's four hour film on Hurricane Katrina and the government's woefully inadequate response airs Monday and Tuesday nights on HBO:

One of the most poignant interviews in the Hurricane Katrina documentary "When the Levees Broke" is given by a man who lost his mother in the aftermath of the storm, filmmaker Spike Lee said Sunday. In the interview, Herbert Freeman recalls his mother's death at New Orleans Convention Center and the moment he had to leave her body there as he and other evacuees were taken out of the city.

"Before he got on a bus _ he had a piece of paper, wrote his name, his cell number and her name and placed the paper between her fingers, her body," Lee said on ABC's "This Week."

Just unbelievable. Here's a little action alert that should be easy to do.

It's too bad American media doesn't care enough to make this kind of documentary. Cheers to the BBC who Sunday night will be airing Prisoners of Katrina at 2200 BST on BBC Two.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, while thousands fled New Orleans, the city's prisoners were trapped. Fresh eye-witness accounts reveal what really happened to those left behind, and how crucial forensic evidence was simply washed away.

In September 2005, long after most people had fled a devastated city, inmates of Orleans Parish Prison - many of them shackled - were still waiting to be rescued from the blazing heat and the stinking floods.

One man, a chef jailed for an unpaid fine that should have at most netted a week's term, ended up spending 103 days in the jail, "abandoned without food, drink or sanitation as the waters rose."

"We were just left there to die," said Cardell Williams, a prisoner who spent two months in jail without ever being charged.