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Posted on 12/29/2005 7:16:21 AM PST by CajunConservative
The blue-tarp roof, a symbol of hurricane damage in south Louisiana and Mississippi as recognizable as curbside debris, may wind up as a post-Katrina emblem of government waste reminiscent of the Pentagon's fabled $435 hammers and $640 toilet seats.
Depending on the extent of damage and the size of the roof, the federal government is paying anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $5,000 to install a typical tarp. The cost to taxpayers to tack up a covering of blue vinyl is roughly the same, on a per-square-foot basis, as what a homeowner would pay to install a basic asphalt-shingle roof.
(Excerpt) Read more at nola.com ...
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--no need to worry--it's "government" money---(sarcasm)--
How big is the union involvement in this? SOmeone should investigate and point out to the "poor, downtrodden" minorities why it takes so long and costs so much to get them back where they belong.
Or is it just Bush's fault here, too.
Yep. Kind of like those expensive toilet seats the Pentagon purchased just because it's the government's money. Sheesh.
I know that in Cameron Parish, FEMA is NOT very welcomed. One overpaid inspector told a woman her house was livable, so the poor lady can't get any temporary shelter. There's only steps and concrete blocks left of her house. There are many similar stories.
The best thing that could happen is that FEMA be phased out.
And people waht us to throw more money down to the corruption in LA.
People understand that this isn't the President's fault. We're not that dumb. He's done a fantastic job, FEMA on the other hand has made a different impression on people.
This isn't Louisiana's corruption. This is showing the exorbitant waste of a federal government operation. Many people who came to work after Rita were not paid by the out of state contractors hired by FEMA.
Good article, thanks.
The cost of this "recovery effort" is insane. It should never have been this high. Federal employees are always asked to "volunteer" down there. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that FEMA does not have pay grades established for the tasks they assign people to do.
Example: A GS-11 employee, having no prior emergency response experience, can volunteer to work 30-60 days and still recieve their base salary rate of about $31 an hour. A GS-5 can do the same thing at $18 an hour. These people work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, thats 44 hours of overtime a week. And they both are doing the exact same job. (debris estimates or roof estimates)
FEMA should have pay scales for the jobs they need filled. It is criminal the amount of money getting thrown away from the people that could actually use it.
Time to kill the myth of the 600 dollar toilet seat.
First, thanks to the literal mountains of documentation the Congress has forced the Government, and particularly the Pentagon, to create for all procurement, of COURSE it costs more.
Then there's the problem of Supply. We built, for example, the B-52 bomber between 1952 and 1961. And at the time, we bought a supply of spare parts for it.
Except, when it was built, we expected to retire the B-52 sometime in the 1970's, and bought parts accordingly. Guess what: it's 2005, 30+ years later. . .and it's STILL flying. And what was an off-the-shelf part back in 1956 is now a custom-order item.
So we order another 100 B-52 toilet seats today. Some custom plastic-injection company wins the bid for about 60 bucks a piece, plus 10K to make a mold of an existing seat so we know it fits. And the Pentagon spends 5K putting it out for bid, 10K on mandated Quality Assurance on the actual seats, destroying 10 of them in the process of testing, and another 20K or so in Congressionally-mandated Acquisition and Logistics Oversight.
And THAT's how, when all the costs are totalled up, that a toilet seat that looks almost like the one you can buy at Home Depot for $15 ends up "costing" $600. . . .
And that's how a toilet
Workers line the top of the Superdome to put on the patches to holes in the roof that occurred during Katrina.
Good explanation :D
Im sure progress is being made.
Im no fan of the government being involved at this point.
It is remarkable how much cost the government oversight we DEMAND adds.
Ahem...
Someone should've gave the "poor, downtrodden" minorities a ladder, some fasteners and a hammer, to put tarps their roofs themselves. I mean, we're not talking rocket science here.
When it comes to the beneficiaries of the "Great Society" and the four generations hence (in their communities that is basically true), anything other than waiting in a check cash line certainly qualifies as rocket science. They have been rendered completely incompetent by Big Daddy Gub'mint.
A hurricane creates a one year backlog at roofing companies. The blue tarps are a stop gap measure.
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