Turkey Loot

$1.4 billion dollars.

That’s the amount of fraud FEMA let go in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Does is bear repeating?

Yes.

It bears tattooing the butts of every official representative of every state.

$1.4 billion dollars.

Vacations. Wine. Resort hotels. Sex-change operations. Okay, only one. Still.

$1.4 billion dollars.

That’s YOUR money. Next time your kid gets a D on a report card because there are 40 kids in his classroom and the teacher had to spend seven days making sure Johnnie Assbritches doesn’t get “left behind,” you remember where your money went.

And I’m not even mad at the government. FEMA, as ridiculously inept as they may have been, was in a position where they could help people and be screwed or not help people and be safe. And they said, I will help, and many will benefit, but I will accept some measure of bendover.

And the people said, bend over more. This is like the guy at work who takes all the bagels from the honor box, and then takes the box.

I said many time over how the people of the south were the best people you’d ever meet. I met a man who loaned his truck to two complete strangers so they could collect a few things out of their aunt’s house. I met a woman who drove a 90 year-old woman she had never seen to a pharmacy for her medicine (and some hair dye, don’t tell anyone). I met a family who were selling their house in Gonzales (away from the destruction) after the hurricane, and refused to raise the price EVEN THOUGH THEY COULD HAVE MADE A FORTUNE.

And still, there are these people. The ones who took the money out of the hands of poor families. The ones who took the money YOU GIVE so that all can have a little security.

I try to hope that some of these people were so distraught that they used the money as some kind of breather. I hope that some man who lost his house and his dog, and watched while the US govt did zip, and saw that the TOURISTS were rescued before he was, and found out that GW Bush promised to rebuild TRENT LOTT’S house before his, and three months later STILL doesn’t have water or electricity or even a goddam street, said – Screw it all. I’ve got nothing, I’m going to buy a bottle of decent wine.

I don’t want to hate people who took the money. Maybe they lost more. But – you know there were some jackals out there. And for those bastards, I wish… I wish…

Enlightenment.

All right, jail time with Billy “Two Knives” Blunthead.

But I really don’t want to feel that way. And I’ll tell you why. This is a photograph of all the belongings my aunt has after Hurricane Katrina left her house under water for 2 weeks.Call it the “after” picture.

It’s pitiful, and remarkable at the same time.

Please look carefully at the picture. The floors are swept, the items are stacked neatly. You can’t see it, but there’s jewelry in some of those drawers. Photographs. Even some money.

Before I tell you how it came to be this way, I want you to look at another photograph. That’s what my cousin and I found when we first stepped into the house in October. We scrounged around. We had to clear a path through part of the house. It LOOKS bad. It WAS worse. I thought I was prepared, but you can’t prepare yourself for the smell, the rot. EVERYTHING in the house was floating around for two weeks. Everything.

Think about your home. Not just furniture and clothes. Everything under your sink. All the food in your cabinets. All the food in your refrigerator, which would probably (as here) open and spill all its contents to rot. Everything in the bathroom, including medicines and soaps. Everything in your laundry room. Electronics and broken pipes. Then all the stuff from the outside would seep in. Gas and oil from the cars. Rotting material from all the dead plants. Stuff in the lake and canals that were already toxic. Then the rotting begins. All paper, fabric, wood, and carpeting would rot. Mold would climb up throughout the house. Any animals? Ants, termites, roaches, worms, rats, gophers, squirrels, raccoons. THEN, the ceiling collapses and covers everything in a very moist shroud. For weeks.

That’s what we found. It was all I could do to haul out the few bits of china that remained.

So what happened? Did we clean it? Nope, I wrote the whole thing off as a total loss. Did the government clean it? That’s about the dumbest question anyone will ever ask. Then who did?

The Mennonites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennonites. Check them out. They volunteer in disaster relief. They went into this place and for no other reason than they are DECENT people, they cleaned it out. They threw out everything that was unsalvageable, and they kept ANYTHING that might be of value. And they left it behind.

I’ll say this, even though I’m not a religious person: God bless the Mennonites. They made me cry.

So this is who we have in the world. People who steal from the most needy… and people who give to them. Maybe the jury’s still out on us. Maybe we have a chance. Or maybe we’re just more complex than we pretend.

In any case, to the Mennonites who cleaned up my aunt’s house, my most heartfelt thanks. And to those people who stole from her – and us – please acquire bird flu.