The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

One of the criticisms that I hear that has become yet another entry in the vocabulary of those who are anti-anything that is not sanctioned by Liberals is that black Conservatives (and other non-Democrat minded black individuals) tend to spend way too much time talking about the problems that ail black Americans instead of providing solutions. Although this may be true in some instances, I have yet to see my black Liberal friends even acknowledge when solutions are being offered by Conservatives. Let me provide for you just one of many examples:

Here at BlackInformant.com, I make it an everyday effort to seach for good news stories of black individuals who are making strides (big or small) to better themselves and the community around them. I provide links to people and organizations that will show you how to be sucessful. I even go into self-help issues as it relates to our health. Then there are the hard to find historical links, consumer tips, etc. All of which is done on my free time (something I love to do regardless if I was getting paid or not)

Guess what postings get the most traffic? Let me give you a hint, NONE of the ones mentioned above.

Out of the thousands of readers that come to this site on a regular basis, the majority of the clicks to this site go to the postings where I am being somewhat critical of the black community at any level (This is a trend that has been going on since day one of this website).

Although this site is nowhere near the level of a CNN/Fox in terms of traffic, the numbers here can be used as a indicator of what many black people (regardless of political background) want to know. Search the black blogosphere. You will notice that the most commented postings are post that are somewhat critical of the black community while posts that inform readers how to improve themselves get a big 0.

This morning, I wanted to take the time to search for at least some type of analysis of the latest Katrina report from some of the black news sources with an online presence. The most that I could find is a focus ONLY on the failures of the Federal government followed by some coverage on the recent Cheney hunting incident (shootings go on in the hood everyday, so why does this get any significant coverage in OUR media? Another example of how most black news media has reduced itself to an echo chamber of mainstream media). As far as the negligence on the part of state, local, and even a signifficant precentage of the Katrina victims (by the way, we need to stop calling them “victims”) themselves, as expected little to nothing.

Below, you will find an overview to the GAO’s report on how the government botched up at ALL levels in its response to Katrina. I am also providing you with a link to the full report. Read it and make up your own mind.

PS: What I especially found amazing about the government’s swiftness in producing this report is that they have yet to do the same thing in other areas such as the financial mismanagement in medicare, public education, transportation, welfare, etc.

On the menu to your left–at the very bottom, you will find links to organizations that will provide you with that information…

…if you really want to know.

EXPEDITED ASSISTANCE FOR VICTIMS OF HURRICANES KATRINA AND RITA

FEMA’s Control Weaknesses Exposed the Government to Significant Fraud and Abuse

We identified significant flaws in the process for registering disaster victims that leave the federal government vulnerable to fraud and abuse of EA payments. For Internet applications, limited automated controls were in place to verify a registrant’s identity. However, we found no independent verification of the identity of registrants who registered for disaster assistance over the telephone. To demonstrate the vulnerability inherent in the call-in applications, we used falsified identities, bogus addresses, and fabricated disaster stories to register for IHP. Below is a copy of one of the $2,000 checks that we received to date for our bogus telephone applications.

We also found that FEMA’s automated system frequently identified potentially fraudulent registrations, such as multiple registrations with identical social security numbers (SSN) but different addresses. However, the manual process used to review these registrations did not prevent EA and other payments from being issued. Other control weaknesses include the lack of any validation of damaged property addresses for both Internet and telephone registrations.

Given the weak or non existent controls, it is not surprising that our data mining and investigations to date show the potential for substantial fraud and abuse of EA. Thousands of registrants misused SSNs, i.e., used SSNs that were never issued or belonged to deceased or other individuals. Our case study investigations of several hundred registrations also indicate significant misuse of SSNs and the use of bogus damaged property addresses. For example, our visits to over 200 of the case study damaged properties in Texas and Louisiana showed that at least 80 of these properties were bogus—including vacant lots and nonexistent apartments.

We found that FEMA also made duplicate EA payments to about 5,000 of the nearly 11,000 debit card recipients—once through the distribution of debit cards and again by check or electronic funds transfer. We found that while debit cards were used predominantly to obtain cash, food, clothing, and personal necessities, a small number were used for adult entertainment, bail bond services and weapons purchase, which do not appear to be items or services that are essential to satisfy disaster related essential needs.

The full report goes into examples of how taxpayer money was wasted on things like sound equipment, condoms, jewelry, etc. Of course this did not happen in all cases and neither did all this incidents involve black folks. But since folks out there want to continue to preach the message that all those that suffered in Katrina were black, why do they hold back when dealing with these unfortunate incidents?