Texas mayors blame FEMA

JEFFERSON COUNTY, Texas - The day after Hurricane Rita battered his town, Nederland Mayor Dick Nugent called the Federal Emergency Management Agency with a simple plea: Bring us two generators.

Instead, FEMA showed up with a four-stall temporary shower. No generators.

Throughout Jefferson County, where Rita downed power lines and trees, knocked out communications and damaged homes and oil refineries, mayors and local officials this week voiced similar complaints. They said FEMA failed to keep its promise to deliver emergency aid and avoid making some of the same mistakes that followed Hurricane Katrina.

"There was a lot of frustration on all our parts," said Jefferson County Judge Carl Griffith, who spoke with President Bush on Tuesday when he toured the Jefferson County town of Port Arthur. "And hopefully our government will take a look so no American city will have to go through this."

FEMA is still suffering from Bush's appointments of his incompetant cronies and friends of friends to positions of responsibilities. Dear Prez Bush; You appoint your friends ambassador to Botswana; you don't put them in positions where lives are at stake. The waste(not to mention outright fraud) will be appalling, as bad as it has been in Iraq. Hold onto your wallets; I doube that New Orleans, Lake Charles, Biloxi, Beaumont, Port Arthur will see a tenth of the money the congress appropriates for relief.

How many houses can you buy with a billion dollars anyway? With fifty billion dollars you could build almost fairly nice 350,000 homes. We've already appropriated that much, but most of it will be pissed away trucking ice around the country.