Things That Drive Me Nuts

My mom passed on a couple of tidbits of information. She heard this one on the Nancy Grace Headline News show... and here is that tidbit (click anywhere in the quote and it will take you to the entire transcript):

And yet, you still had the leadership in New Orleans giving up an Amtrak train, 1,000-passenger Amtrak train -- Amtrak called up the mayor`s office, said, We`ve got a train that`s empty, it is leaving today from Saturday, it`s going to go to Macon, Mississippi. We can take 1,000 people. It could be 1,000 old people, 1,000 young people, doesn`t matter. We`ll take 1,000 people. The mayor`s office -- the man who runs the mayor`s office for emergency preparedness, a guy named Matthews, he passed on it. He said, No, it`s all right. Go ahead.

She also passed on this one. Where were the checks and balances?

Taxpayer dollars Congress appropriated during the Clinton administration that were meant for FEMA to develop a comprehensive evacuation plan for New Orleans instead was diverted and used to study the causeway bridge that spans the city's Lake Pontchartrain, officials say.

"They never used it for the intended purpose," former Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., told the Associated Press. "The whole intent was to give them resources so they could plan an evacuation of New Orleans that anticipated that a very large number of people would never leave."

Posted by vw bug at September 23, 2005 06:33 AM | TrackBack