FEMA's trailer 'boneyard' blasted: Taylor blows up about Bechtel

[jobycom]

Another unreal story involving corporate Bush cronies and the Republican desire to see people suffer.

BTW--Gene Taylor for President (or at least VP).


-----------
HARRISON COUNTY - Rep. Gene Taylor was already near the boiling point, and now, hundreds of unused travel trailers are forcing his frustrations to bubble over.

Pushing Taylor's buttons are several hundred defunct trailers being scavenged for spare parts in a temporary-housing graveyard, just off Interstate 10 near Menge Avenue.

On Monday, Taylor's office sent a letter to Sid Melton, head of FEMA's housing effort in Mississippi, wanting to know why "more than a million dollars worth of trailers are not being used," and whether they will be repaired and delivered to needy residents.

There are at least 50 worn-out trailers, at what Taylor called the "boneyard," that have been cannibalized for parts to use on other trailers already installed in South Mississippi.

Taylor said the pricey homes-on-wheels are now useless, but they could have been repaired at a reasonable cost.

In addition, Taylor said about 250 more trailers have been brought to the site for repair, and he is hoping they won't suffer a similar fate.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/13394657.htm

[merh]

1. Gene Taylor is not happy with FEMA and all of their

incompetence.

He has been calling them on it at ever turn. Go get them Gene!

A photo is worth a thousand words!

[jobycom]

2. Is that right off the Interstate, by the flea market? nt

[merh]

3. Yep -- and FEMA hasn't paid the landlord any rent yet

and has threatened condemnation proceedings to take the land from her for the government.

These creeps are crooks, evil, greedy crooks. No rent for over 40 acres of lands with hundreds of trailers being housed on the land for over 3 months now.

:argh:

[jobycom]

5. I saw that area. I wondered what was going on. They didn't seem

to be lived in, and they were just sitting there, which didn't seem right...

[merh]

6. There is no organization to the distribution, delivery and set up

of the trailers.

Some folks had the trailers on their lots for weeks, with no keys, no access. They were waiting on FEMA (through its contractor - Bechtel and Bechtel's subcontractors) to come out to inspect and/or do final set up and to give them an orientation.

I was delivered a trailer and given the keys with no electrical pole set up and I had to pay for the electrician to set up the pole and then the approval from the city and then the power company to come out. I had a trailer for weeks with no electricity.

Those are just sitting there, they are trying to build fema cities for those in the hotels, but they can't get the land. They are offering cheap rent and the fema cities are in areas near other housing that will depreciate the existing neighborhoods.

It is one big clusterf*ck. :grr:

[Warpy]

4. They also had scores of foreclosed houses

that Fannie Mae offered to them to house evacuees rent free. FEMA accepted the offer but didn't place a single family until one of the netwroks broke the story and shamed them into it.

Lots of the houses they showed on local news were upper middle class McMansions in Texas. I guess the folks at FEMA didn't want black folks moving in and getting all uppity.

[jobycom]

7. FEMA is stuck in an ideological crisis.

BushCo hates government assistance, so they are doing all they can not to provide it. They want privatization, and they are doing all they can to funnel the contracts to their buddies. Somewhere along the way they are hoping that to prove that privatization works, and they are hoping that all this poor people will just struggle through it all and find work and shelter without their help, and then BushCo can claim that they've proven that government assistance only traps people into poverty and laziness.

Same mentality that drove Hoover's response to the Great Depression. Just ignore it and hope it goes away. Breaking that Hoover/Coolidge mentality made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. So naturally BushCo and the Evil Bloodbath Gang wants to return to the Hoover era.

[merh]

8. kick

:kick: