FBI investigating HUD secretary over Katrina contracts.
FBI investigating HUD secretary over Katrina contracts.
In May, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson told Congress, “I don’t touch contracts.” But now the FBI and HUD Inspector General Kenneth Donohue are investigating whether Jackson “lined up a contract” for his “golfing buddy”:
The investigation appears to focus, in part, on whether Jackson misled Congress when he testified earlier this year that he had never intervened in awarding HUD contracts. “I don’t touch contracts,” the HUD boss told a Senate panel on May 3.
Investigators are exploring whether Jackson, despite that testimony, had actually lined up a contract at the HUD-controlled Housing Authority of New Orleans, or HANO, for a golfing buddy and social friend from Hilton Head Island, S.C. The friend, William Hairston, was paid more than $485,000 for working at HANO during an 18-month period, according to figures provided by HUD and a former HANO official. The work was not competitively bid.
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Is there no level to which this corrupt administration won’t sink?
October 4th, 2007 at 5:31 pmBoom…boom…boom….another BushButt bites the dust!
October 4th, 2007 at 5:32 pm#1 Absolutely NONE!
October 4th, 2007 at 5:32 pmThis is sad. We have been reduced to a level of a Third World country by these bastards.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:35 pmI’m shocked. Shocked! Bush administration officials engaging in such shoddy behavior? It boggles the mind.
Wait. No, it doesn’t. It’s just exactly what we would expect.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:43 pmI’d be more surprised if he HADN’T lined up a contract for his golfing buddy.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:45 pmCaughtcha
October 4th, 2007 at 5:46 pmRedhanded
Only
Now
You’reGoingtoJail
Perhaps this “golf” should be banned. It seems to lead alot of good men into corrupt business practices.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:47 pmVenezuela requires under the table payment to move anything, build anything etc. Saw this first hand in the mid-80s’ working for a Venezuelan company. How is the U.S. any different now ?
Only contributors to the Republicans get any contracts, do shoddy work paying sub standard scale to illegals, (check it out with a tradesman) they leave the area and the taxpapers will pick up the problems down the road.
Got to love the Republican motto of fiscal responsibility…guess that means anyone other than a Republican.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:49 pmWe are the legendary banana republic, where patronage trumps everything.
October 4th, 2007 at 5:51 pmPerhaps this “golf†should be banned. It seems to lead a lot of good men into corrupt business practices.
Comment by Menehune — October 4, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
Not to forget the horrors wrought on the environment and the waste of water.
October 4th, 2007 at 6:04 pmDon’t get me started on water usage and golf courses.
October 4th, 2007 at 6:23 pmIn Santa Barbara in the 1970s the six major golf courses got as much water as they needed for pennies on the acre foot, while there was a housing moratorium for new development because of the ‘water shortage’. Rents were astronomical. F*(k golf.
Isn’t this the way Bush&Co have always operated?
October 4th, 2007 at 6:32 pmIt makes no difference who has needs, who suffers, who pays, or what the tragedy or the circumstance. It only matters how many of your friends and cronies can benefit.
They have 15 months more to make all they can – I expect the corruption, graft and greed to prevail to the nth degree until Bush is gone.
Shades of “Sleepy Sam” Pierce! Another Bushite tries to best a Reagan record.
October 4th, 2007 at 8:18 pmGAO study denounces housing program
FEMA awarded Miss. lion’s share of money
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
By Bill Barrow
The Times-Picayune
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1191392691129840.xml&coll=1
BATON ROUGE — A new government accountability report criticizes the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency handled a controversial alternative housing program, bolstering the claims of Louisiana elected officials who say the state was shortchanged.
…
A different path, according to the report’s authors, could have steered more than $140 million to three separate housing projects in Louisiana, rather than the $74.5 million directed to one project in the state that still has not broken ground.
…
As it is, two projects in Mississippi got $281 million or three-fourths of the grant pool, dwarfing Louisiana’s share for one project. One plan each in Alabama and Texas roughly split the rest.
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That memo included three financing options, one of which would have spread the $388 million to 10 projects in the same four states. … Besides bumping Louisiana’s take past $140 million, that formula would have added a third project in Mississippi and cut the state’s overall award to about $150 million.
“By selecting and funding the five projects it did, rather than the 10 under this option, FEMA awarded the vast majority of the available funds (about 71 percent) to one project in one state,” the report states.
…
October 5th, 2007 at 8:37 am