Cape Karen
This situation with the eleven thousand, fully furnished mobile homes sitting idle in AR is really bugging me! The utter insanity of the situation is what's holding my interest.
Think about it: here we have FEMA, claiming that they are out of money, and that they cannot afford to continue paying for emergency motel rooms, or to keep maintaining the lovely Tent City in MS. Therefore, this week and in MS before March 15th, all the Katrina homeless are being shoved out into the streets; thousands of devastated American families, most with no money and nowhere to go, all stranded because FEMA claims they are too broke to help them any longer.
BUT - at the same time, FEMA is now going to spend another nine million dollars to put gravel under the "homes for the homeless," so they won't sink into the mud and buckle the walls. Gee ~ it seems that FEMA has "found" nine million dollars lying around somewhere ~ to buy gravel ~ but, they said they had no money to keep people housed in motel rooms and tents? Hmmmmm?
Okay. That stinks!
But, think about this: the rainy season is coming to AR, and those homes are not hooked up. They are not heated or air conditioned, and they have no running water. They are each just $35,000.00 shells, filled with appliances and furniture, sitting on nine million dollar gravel piles. (Do the math . . . it's just mind boggling!)
But, that's not the worst of it.
I'll bet you a dollar (all I can afford) that in the next 2-3 months we will hear another news report that the mobile homes sitting in AR have begun to fill with mold and mildew. On the nightly news, they will show us all the new furniture sitting inside the homes ~ it will be covered with ugly green fuzz, and the sturdy, unbuckled walls will be crawling with nasty black mold. FEMA will then announce that it will cost another fifteen million (that they will 'find' somewhere) to destroy all the ruined homes, and to haul the "debris" away to a landfill. (Talk about throwing money away!)
By the time this happens - and if something isn't done soon, it will happen - the entire homes-for-the-homeless project will have cost US taxpayers $364 million . . . and not one penny of that money will have helped any of the Katrina families to move into a home.
Thanks FEMA - Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency - you do us proud! We all look forward to seeing your plans for helping the American people when the next disaster strikes.
Sleep tight, Michael Chertoff . . . sleep tight.
Wasn't there a song about that a while back - a long while back? I have had that song refrain running through my mind ever since watching the news last night, and seeing the 11 thousand (!) manufactured homes sitting in a muddy, no man's land in Hope, Arkansas. FEMA "dropped them off there," against the advice of the locals, who told them beforehand, that the ground was too 'boggy' there to hold them. Soon, they'll be renaming their little town, Hopeless, Arkansas.
FEMA now says they couldn't bring them to New Orlean's because it is in a flood plain. (Mr. Magoo could have told them that one!) So, now they are considering just destroying all of them. Perfectly good, brand new mobile homes - $380 million taxpayer dollars ~ to be destroyed?
Excuse me?
There are plenty of homeless people all around the USA who would be more than grateful to have a brand new mobile home to live in. If they can haul 11 thousand homes to a little southern mudhole ~ then they can damn well move them around the country, and give them to people who have no homes ~ rather than destroy them.
What are they thinking?
Those are OUR trailers - WE are paying for them - and they say they "belong to the Federal Government?" I think it would behoove us all to SCREAM about this foolishness, to each and every Senator, Congressman and Congresswoman we can reach on the internet.
Maybe we need to call on Ty Pennington and ask him to MOVE THOSE TRAILERS!
As the New Orlean's homeless move out of the motel rooms, and possibly into back alleys and cardboard boxes, can't we find some way to give them those mobile homes? Why not create a whole new town of 11 thousand residents, somewhere, if nothing else? Oprah did it - she built and created an entire new neighborhood for displaced people from the hurricane ravaged areas - so, maybe we need to call on her, as well as on Ty Pennington?
Obviously, the people of FEMA aren't functioning with any firing brain cells. That entire organization needs to be destroyed - not the homes.
They toss millions and billions of dollars around as if they were pennies from heaven - and those are OUR pennies! Every single dime comes out of our paychecks and our retirement accounts and our pocketbooks. It's so easy for them to spend our money with utter and complete disregard, and call it "federal spending;" and, for the last five years, our government officials have been doing a really great job of it.
I think it's time for us all to say, "The buck stops here! No more wasting our hard-earned money with your stupid, political inefficiencies. Enough is enough, already."
Flood plain, huh? Well, let's flood them with our outrage! Give those mobile homes to people who need them ~ no matter how you have to go about it!
And, get this . . . e-bay already has a page set-up and ready to go for selling the FEMA mobile homes. Going once . . .
to be continued . . .
I haven't got a clue what I want to write about today? I could write about the big snowstorm we had yesterday, but today it's sunny and the ground is clear again. More snow is predicted for the weekend, and around these parts that makes for news! The temperature is falling into the 20's at night now, so I guess winter is finally here. I was wondering if we'd ever see it arrive this year? All the schools shut down whenever there is a flake or two ~ I guess because these back mountain roads are too hazardous for the buses to drive on when slightly slippery.
Until you get used to them, the little roads winding through this area can be pretty hazardous anytime. They're narrow, with no guard rails, and have either big ditches along their sides or, in many cases, deep drop-offs down a mountainside. Just ask my son, Bob. He discovered that I am a white-knuckle passenger on these roads last summer ~ as he whipped along in his van at breakneck speeds through the National Park; causing his wife, Theresa, and I to "gasp" and clutch our seats in fear. (City driver! Lead-foot! )
I don't know when I last drove in a real snowstorm? I think it was back in 1989, on the Cape, when I was selling health insurance to small businesses. I went up to Hingham, MA in a snowstorm and was merrily riding along beside a lake, on my way to an appointment, when my tires hit black ice. Whirling around and around on the ice-covered road, I ended-up with the front of my car smashed into a snow-covered bank of trees on the other side. Luckily, no other cars were coming as I went into the tailspin, or I wouldn't be here writing about it today.
That was the end of that job! And, I think it was a deciding factor in my eventual decision to leave New England winters behind. I've never regretted that part of my decision ~ but, don't talk to me in the middle of August, or when I'm craving a Maine lobster dinner.
I look forward to the little snowstorms here, they "pretty-up" the area, and give me that down-home feeling. But, you won't catch me driving around on these back roads until the snow has melted away - which usually takes about 3 hours;
and Bob - please, don't ever come to visit in February!
The EPA has recently put out a warning to consumers about a common chemical that is found in many household products we've all been using ~ for over 40 years!
I can't help but wonder what took them so long to decide this stuff is dangerous to our health?
(Why now, brown cow?)
First of all, I doubt that most of us are being exposed to dangerous amounts of PFOA; unless we happen to live in close proximity to a manufacturing plant that spews out clouds of this toxin on a daily basis ~ or if we are really inattentive cooks, and tend to leave our teflon pans burning on our stoves and in our ovens so that they reach temperatures of 600ยบ or more. If that's the case, then we've probably already burned down our houses, along with all our teflon pots, pans, cookie sheets and microwaveable popcorn bags, etc.
Is this just an over-reaction on the part of some chemist named Rip Van Winkle, who's been asleep at the switch, or what? According to the EPA: "PFOA is very persistent in the environment, and has been found at very low levels both in the environment and in the blood of the general U.S. population, and has caused developmental and other adverse effects in laboratory animals."
But, as soon as we read that EPA statement, we also come to this one, issued only after the big alert went out over the new wires last week.
"At present, there are no steps that EPA recommends that consumers take to reduce exposures to PFOA because the sources of PFOA in the environment and the pathways by which people are exposed are not known. Given the scientific uncertainties, EPA has not yet made a determination as to whether PFOA poses an unreasonable risk to the public. At the present time, EPA does not believe there is any reason for consumers to stop using any consumer or industrial related products that contain PFOA."
So why the alert? So why the news broadcasts? So why say anything at all? It sounds like a bunch of double-talk, double-speak, to me. I'm not throwing away my spatulas or teflon pans today. As a matter of fact, I'm going to go bake a big batch of chocolate-chip cookies on my double-lined, air-cushioned teflon cookie sheet right now.
If you don't hear from me for a while . . . call the EPA!
. . . well, Mr. Bush did include the word "environment" in his address. But, it wasn't about preserving endangered species, or even about the problem of global warming; it came at the end of a sentence about the billions and trillons of dollars he will be asking Congress to allocate to try and develop better hybrid automobiles by the year 2025.
And, I almost choked when he said, with a straight face, "We've become addicted to foreign oil." Gasp! Who has become addicted to foreign oil? (Can't you just envision a motorcade of these little Nissan hybrids winding their way through the streets of D.C.?)
I loved the line from commentator, Mayor Tim Kaine (D-VA), when he said: ". . . we don't ask or expect our children to pay the family mortgage. . . " referring to who will end up paying for all these lofty plans our President outlined in his speech. Everything was about money. Money this country does not have. The budget is busted! Everything President Clinton accomplished during his term in office to put us in the black has been undone by this President ~ in record time ~ and in an unprecedented fashion!
That's all his speech was about - spending, spending and spending some more ~ like a slap-happy drunken sailor using a stolen credit card. Obviously, this man has no concept, or concern, about the average American family. He is so far removed from our reality, that we might as well be living on a distant planet.
Aliens have landed; low and middle-income American citizens are the 'aliens' in this country today.
As Mayor Kaine pointed out so succinctly, the federal failures of this administration have been unlike anything we have ever seen in our lifetime, and we will pay the price for their blunders and their poor judgements for years and years to come. I don't know who will inherit this mess and become our next President ~ but it better be someone with a good grasp of how to restore and balance a federal budget ~ without draining the pockets of the already drained.
Canada is looking really attractive these days. . . too bad it's so darn cold up there!