Was FEMA Buying Support for Bush in Florida?

By DHinMI

Lisa Simpson: Didn't you wonder why you were getting checks for doing nothing?

Grandpa Simpson: I figured 'cuz the Democrats were in power again.

That line is from a brilliant Simpsons episode from 1993, but if it were to air today, there's reason to think Grandpa could say 'cuz FEMA was doling out cash to help Bush win Florida: 

The chief of the federal disaster relief agency on Wednesday defended his office's response to victims of Florida's hurricanes against allegations of fraud and overpayments.

An audit showed that thousands of people who did not need aid cashed checks that totaled more than $31 million. The allegations were based on "marginal cases" and did not reflect the typical response to disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael D. Brown told a Senate committee...

The audit cited allegations that FEMA paid $720,000 to 228 applicants for personal property items based only on the applicants' verbal descriptions.

It also found that FEMA paid $97,500 to replace 15 automobiles with a combined Blue Book value of $56,140. The agency said the cost of replacement transportation, rather than the market value of cars, is its basis for the awards.

There's been a bit of coverage of this issue over the last few days, but everything I've seen has taken the standard "government waste and ineptness" angle.  But nobody, to my knowledge, has questioned whether there was a deliberate policy of loose disbursement of funds to residents of one of the two most crucial state being defended by the Republicans on behalf of George W. Bush.  I doubt many people would decide to vote for Bush becuase they discovered it was easy to defraud FEMA.  But flinging money around in excess of what was required certainly would have helped prime the pumps of the Florida economy, and help keep voters from getting dissatisfied with the conditions of the state governed by the President's brother and required for the reelection of the President. 

FEMA has generally been thought to be a relatively well-run agency.  Hopefully some enterprising journalists well-acquainted with DC bureaucracies will poke around at FEMA and see if there's any reason to believe that FEMA's response to the Florida hurricanes was politicized, becuase there's certainly good reason to suspect that it was.

Comments

[Mimikatz]

One characteristic of Bush Jr is his tendency to try to anticipate and avoid the mistakes his father made. Recall that Bush Sr's tardy and inadequate response to Hurricane Andrew was a factor in Clinton's success in FL in 1992. Bush always tried to show up and look concerned, at least at disasters in states he stood a chance of winning. Avoiding his father's mistakes, plus brother Jebbie, plus the need to hold the state would provide sufficient rationale for being less stingy with aid than in some other places. Not that it's right, of course.

[Chris]

See our coverage of this at Facing South: Blog of the Progressive South:

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2005/05/hurricane-politics-in-florida-and.asp

The few media outlets that have covered this have mentioned the political angle, but usually at the bottom of the story. As we point out, though, the politicization of disaster aid is nothing new. In fact, everything about "natural disasters" is highly political. But that doesn't make it any less outrageous.