A Christmas Wish That Won't Come True

While browsing through a yahoo search for material this week, a story caught my eye. Found in the pages of the Orlando Sentinel's online news articles, it put a face to the suffering still being experienced by the victims of Katrina and Rita, especially those in New Orleans.

Tammy Carter's mother and father lost their home in Katrina. Her father, now 70, is anxious to put his life and his family, back together and who can blame him. The American dream is that we work hard, we save to buy our own piece of the apple pie and then we retire and live out our golden years in relative comfort. Ms. Carter's father thought he had achieved that goal, and the the levees broke.

The disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi is more than local or state governments can handle. It is for times like these that FEMA was created, but FEMA and our federal government, has dropped the ball.

Pushed off the White House agenda, these people are being forgotten and are slipping, or being pushed, through numerous cracks. SBA has processed only about 33% of the requests for loans sent to them. Of those scant few that made it through the system, 82% have been DENIED. Now granted these are loans and need to be paid back but to put NO on it's feet again every possible benefit of doubt should be granted to those people who lost their homes and businesses.

I fear there an unspoken motives at work. New Orleans will be rebuilt but will it be rebuilt for all that fled or will it simply be redesigned to the advantage of the industry that has long wanted to claim land there?

This information came from a letter sent out by Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Congress has appropriated over 62 billion for the hurricane Katrina and Rita relief and recovery operations to date. Of this amount, 60 billion went to the disaster relief fund which enables FEMA to provide emergency food, shelter and medical care to areas stricken by the Hurricane and other disasters. However, more than 40 billion has yet to be allocated for any specific purpose and only 4.4 billion has been reported spent.

As of October 31, 2005, more than 200,000 people displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita remain in temporary housing. Earlier this year congress allocated nearly 81 million to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for housing assistance to displaced residents. To this day the total amount of reported expenditures from these funds remains nearly zero.

With over a half a million jobs lost as a result of these storms, fewer than 6% of the contracts issued by FEMA for recovery operations have been issued to businesses based in LA and MISS. Local workers,according to the Stafford act, are supposed to receive preferential treatment for government contracts whenever feasible.

So if the money has been allocated, where is the bottleneck? Why isn't much needed help reaching the victims of Katrina and Rita?

One thing that those of us still concerned that aide is not reaching NO can do is write our congressmen and spread the word that help not only is needed but that we believe America wants to offer. It does not make sense to me that we can spend half a trillion dollars on rebuilding Iraq and yet deny our own citizens who are victims.

Tammy Carter's father wants his life back, as do the other victims of Katrina and Rita. The federal government can either make way for these people to return or be up front and buy them out so that they can start life again elsewhere. American citizens should expect and receive timely aid from her government and not be forced to live in limbo.

To read Tammy Carter's article in the Orlando Sentinel click here:

A Christmas Wish Won't Come True