Sunday, June 10, 2007

Corrupt Bastards

I don't usually join in blogswarms, but this one got me going. Via http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/, the New Orleans pump situation is appaling:
Yeah, the ones that Jeb!'s buddies supplied. They were messed-up to begin
with, and are still dysfunctional. The Corps embargoed the report while the
National Media was in NOLA for the start of the Hurricane season, and are still
holding back the truth.

http://first-draft-blog.typepad.com/ has the rundown:

Beginning with what Oyster says for the overview...

In a blockbuster post, Matt McBride outlines his initial impressions about the Army Corps of Engineers' internal investigation on the floodgate pumps. In short, New Orleanians are at risk because the pumps haven't been fixed properly. Please read the whole thing; it's mega-important.

Then on to the post by Matt at Fix the Pumps for details. First he states..."The report is stunning in its breadth and depth. Things are way worse than I knew. [...] The amount of crap this investigation uncovered is breathtaking." Matt then details what is wrong with the pumps among other things. There is this regarding what has been known...

Colonel Bedey, Jim St. Germain, and Dan Bradley have been lying to us in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish, all of the media (local and national), and the entire nation for a year, right up to and including Bedey's assurances during General Van Antwerp's "Truth & Honesty" tour last Thursday. There is a critical fix (as in, the pumps could fail without it) that needs to be applied to the drive units. The New Orleans Corps has known about it and has not performed that fix since June of 2006! I don't see how these men can keep their jobs.

And this regarding the pump contract...

The contract administration has been a travesty - perhaps even criminal - and there appears to have been an active effort to cover that up. MWI was writing change orders - including prices - and the Corps was sending them back to MWI with a bow on them. Duplicate payments have been made to MWI. There appears to be no written justification for most of the payments. There appear to be millions of dollars unaccounted for.



This whole administration has been one massive ripoff. Profits are more important than lives to these assholes.

2 comments:

--mf said...

Thanks for bumping another aspect of this awful, awful story of ridiculous story, Py.

There are so many horrible branches of corruption involved with this story, I just shotgunned the whole issue.

I appreciate your taking another tack on this.

--mf

pygalgia said...

I'm repeatedly appalled by the blatant corruption of this administration. Iraq, Katrina, lack of food inspection, mine safety deregulation, etc.
Sometimes I can't post because I hit outrage overload.