An editorial in yesterday's New York Times looked askance at the way the federal government has allowed Mississippi to divert funds from disaster aid meant to assist moderate and low-income people on the coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina more than four years ago. In Mississippi's Failure the Times writes about a report from the Steps Coalition, "Hurricane Katrina: Has Mississippi Fallen Further Behind?" which JFP Assistant Editor Lacey McLaughlin mentioned in a story we published Sept. 2.

The Times agrees with the report that federal money hasn't gone to the people most in need:

This is not what Congress envisioned when it approved an initial $5.5 billion in disaster relief for Mississippi. It was disaster aid. The law required states and localities to spend 50 percent of the money on low- and moderate-income families. Over time, however, the state managed to get waivers and found other ways to spend the money on different projects.
…
While many Mississippians languished without help, the Bush administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development allowed the state to shift $600 million of the recovery money to the refurbishment and expansion of the Port of Gulfport — a pet project of local politicians that was conceived long before Katrina.
…
The report paints a distressing picture of the affordable housing market in the state. It says the state was slow off the mark in spending federal money and once it got started, spent a large proportion on projects that were not targeted on the poorest people, who were "last in line for less relief."

Two years ago, Adam Lynch detailed what was happening on the coast in A Recovery for the Rich?

The Times editorial concludes with this paragraph:

Federal lawmakers reacted to the Mississippi problem in a subsequent disaster allocation by requiring that states set aside specific amounts of money for housing. They are also considering new laws that would tighten waiver provisions and prevent the states from using disaster aid as a goody bag of funding for pet projects. These legislative changes can't come soon enough.

Can I hear an "Amen."

Previous Comments

ID

152311

Comment

I remember debating the merits of "investing" CDBG funds in the Port of Gulfport with some "right-leaning", "trickle-down theory" advocates here a few months ago. The problem with this kind of "top-down" thinking is that it does more to enrich the rich at the expense of the poor, which is why the gap between the rich and the poor gets wider and wider. When you consider issues like "tort-reform", "deregulation", and "free-trade", what we see is a policy pattern of welfare for the rich while the poor get demonized and degredated because of the supposed "moral failings", as evidenced by their lot in life. The fascinating thing is that it is public policies like these that do way more to characterize their "lot" than any percieved or purported "moral failings" on their part. Thanks JFP for all of you real journalistic work. Its publications like this that truly serve as the basis for the 1st Amendment.

Author

Renaldo Bryant

Date

2009-09-25T12:57:17-06:00

ID

152312

Comment

I'm with you, Blackwatch. I've said it before and I'll say it again: as a country, our priorities are frequently upside down and inside out. In addition to a clear preference for the rich, our domestic policies heap benefits on corporations and property instead of people. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston wrote an interesting piece about how the GOP favors a public option for property instead of people yesterday, comparing flood insurance in Mississippi after Katrina with the current health-care debate. Here are a few quotes: In Mississippi the relief for flooded buildings came with a requirement that owners buy flood insurance. It went further, requiring a covenant be added to their property deeds requiring the current and all future owners of that property to maintain public option flood insurance. There is another word for that: government mandated insurance. ... Along the Gulf Coast ... our federal government is there using tax dollars to help take care of damaged property. But people? Providing a public option so people can buy health insurance through the federal government is "socialism," according to Senator John Kyl, the Republican senator from Arizona, a desert state where flash floods are as permanent a feature of reality as sickness and injury. Will someone ask Kyl why he favors what he calls socialist policies for property, but not people? Worth a read ...

Author

Ronni_Mott

Date

2009-09-25T13:20:38-06:00

ID

152313

Comment

An easy answer to that question is profitability. The actuarial numbers for flood insurance don't add up to a suitable profit margin for insurance comapnies, thus they won't write flood insurance. But, they also don't want to get caught up in all the litigation that would inevitably come from home owners who think that their homeowners' insurance would cover flood damage, so they demand that the government write the flood insurance. But, since this is more profitable for insurance companies, you won't see Rush or Sean touting this as "socialism". It is similar to public education. The reason why we have it is so that we can insure that there is a mechanism in place that would educate citizens for the democracy. If this were left up to "the market", there would be no public education and I would ventrure a guess that less than 10% of the population would ever get a "formal" education. So, there are only certain necessary services that are profitable enough that the market would "provide" for them, thus there is a need in all industrialized and civil societies for government services. Yet, very few people who argue for "market fundamentalism" would ever admit that.

Author

Renaldo Bryant

Date

2009-09-25T13:52:12-06:00