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The residents of Belle Harbor Manor spent four miserable months in emergency shelters after Superstorm Sandy's floodwaters surged through their assisted-living center on New York City's Rockaway peninsula. Now, the home's disabled, elderly and mostly poor residents have a new headache: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked at least a dozen of them to pay back thousands of dollars in disaster aid. (snip) osenberg said the FEMA workers who urged him to apply for assistance during the period when residents were staying at the armory never explained that the money could only be used for housing. "Everyone asked, 'Do...

A program designed to help Rhode Island's older adult population prepare for climate change threats is one of several projects that will receive federal money as part of the state's disaster recovery action plan. This program will receive $150,000 over the next two years. Julia Gold, the health department's climate change program manager, said the agency and its partners will develop these plans during a pilot project to kick off this fall in Washington County. The grant to support this program comes from federal money designed to help long-term recovery efforts related to Hurricane Sandy.

The American Red Cross has employed an expensive New York law firm in an attempt to hide information about how it spent Hurricane Sandy donations, ProPublica reports. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wrote to the Red Cross last June requesting information regarding how the organization spent the money it received for Hurricane Sandy relief. ProPublica filed a public information request for the information given to the attorney general’s office, but Red Cross attorneys stepped in. Gabrielle Levin, of New York’s Gibson Dunn, appealed the request and wrote to the attorney general’s office to block the release of information. Levin...

Though the federal government allocated more than $1.8 billion in Hurricane Sandy disaster relief aid for New Jersey more than a year ago, less that a quarter has been distributed to cash-strapped residents struggling to rebuild, according to a new state report. State officials, however, say they are making considerable progress with recovery programs, addressing concerns and making changes where needed to speed up the delivery of aid. But advocates claim a botched rollout of major housing recovery programs has taken its toll on distributing funding more quickly. More than $1.3 billion of federal aid is "in the pipeline or...

Video at link. Almost all the mortgages bought out the same day: 12/25/2009.

The once-budding friendship between President Obama and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reached its zenith in May on a storm-ravaged boardwalk in Point Pleasant, N.J. After Obama missed four throws at a carnival game, Christie stepped in, picked up a football and tossed it through a hoop, winning the president a stuffed bear. “One and done,” the governor said as a crowd cheered and the two men exchanged a high-five. On Thursday, however, Christie used an appearance before the Conservative Political Action Conference to blast Obama in personal terms, as a weak leader. Accusing Obama of sitting on the sidelines...

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie may stand accused of using Sandy money as both carrot and stick in his political battles, but that's not stopping him from asking the federal government for more help. The Star-Ledger reported Wednesday that Christie sent a letter to President Obama asking FEMA to extend its housing program. The program, the paper reports, would not directly bring money into the state, but instead cost the Federal government thousands in maintaining temporary homes for displaced victims. The housing, located in the Central Jersey facility of Fort Monmouth, currently houses 49 families but takes care of 80...

The perpetrator of the heinous crime that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012, called an Oregon radio show on December 11, 2011 and talked about about mass murder. The show was Anarchy Radio, and Lanza called it using the pseudonym "Greg." In audio provided by the NY Daily News, Lanza can be heard talking about Travis, the chimpanzee who attacked and ripped Charla Nash's face off in 2009.

Beleaguered New Jersey Governor Chris Christie faces a federal probe into the misuse of Superstorm Sandy relief money after his government supervised the funding of a 'Stronger Than The Storm' ad campaign featuring the governor and his family just weeks before his re-election, it was revealed on Monday. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development officials are probing the use of $4.7m of hurricane rebuilding funds on the self-congratulatory tourism ads. Christie is already under fire in his home state following revelations that at least four of his aides and political appointees were involved in a scheme to manipulate traffic...

U.S. investigators are looking into whether embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie misused about $2 million in Superstorm Sandy relief funds for an ad campaign that put him in the spotlight in an election year, a lawmaker said on Monday. Already enmeshed in a scandal over snarled traffic at the George Washington Bridge, Christie, a rising star in the Republican party, is now being audited by the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone Jr., a Democrat. The inspector is focusing on a federally financed $25 million Jersey Shore marketing...

The photograph below, likely taken in mid-December, shows the remains of the Sandy Hook Elementary School crime scene, where all evidence has now been destroyed. The demolition of the 57 year old structure commenced in October, shortly after a $50 million appropriation made by Connecticut Governor Dannell Malloy to rebuild the school and a $2.5 million payout by President Obama’s Department of Justice to local and regional law enforcement agencies participating in the December 14, 2012 event. http://i0.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BN-AJ905_nyhook_G_20131113171915.jpgFor additional information and research please consult the Sandy Hook School Massacre Timeline and the Sandy Hook Massacre Compendium of Research and Analysis.

...only a fraction of the aid money earmarked for recovery has been used, in what some claim is a painfully slow and opaque process. Only $5.2 billion of the pledged $47.9 billion had been tapped by cities and states by the end of August, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And tracking those funds has been complicated, lawmakers said. "Transparency is woefully lacking. We don't know where the money is. We know people have been approved for grants, but the money has not been distributed," said New Jersey Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer, chair of the environment...

CGI Federal Inc., the mastermind behind healthcare.gov, is assisting the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the distribution of $1.7 billion in relief for Hurricane Sandy. In a memo obtained by FreedomWorks titled, “Minutes of the 295th meeting of the members of the Housing Trust Fund Corporation held on May 9, 2013, at 8:30 a.m.,” CGI Federal is tasked with implementing the Disaster Housing Assistance Program. Additionally, they are asked to aid in the implementation of the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program, an assistance program that had recently obtained $1.7 billion.

Evidence points to a December raid of the Riverview Gun Shop in East Windsor, Conn., where Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer Adam Lanza’s mother reportedly purchased the Bushmaster rifle used in the massacre, as being an event staged more for media fanfare than for public safety, legal documents issued to authorize the raid indicate. Gun Rights Examiner has been sitting on much of this information since since the evening of the raid, but has held onto it pending further corroboration of certain information. With the publication in this column on August 29 of such information, further details can now be...

A Rockaway octogenarian and polar-exploration pioneer says a pair of charities left her high — but not dry — after Hurricane Sandy. Barbara Hillary, 82, is fighting nonprofit Habitat for Humanity to finish the sloppy job volunteers did on her damp basement, which is covered in mold. She’s also battling the Red Cross, which wrote a $10,000 check to an unlicensed contractor who promised to fix her kitchen and then flew to Nigeria. “I’m not a whiner. I’m not a crybaby. I was raised in Harlem during the Depression — I was raised old-school,” Hillary said. But she added: “I...

This video is super awkward ... Anthony Weiner was put on BLAST Friday by an ex-school teacher for his raunchy, sexting ways ... and it all happened while cameras rolled. Weiner was visiting homes damaged by Superstorm Sandy, when he walked into a s**t storm himself ... in the form of Peg Brunda a retired teacher, who went off on him. You gotta watch the heated exchange -- but to give you an idea just how PISSED Brunda is that Weiner refuses to drop out of the NYC mayoral race, she says, "Had I conducted myself in the manner in...

A poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that after the storm in New York and New Jersey, friends, relatives and neighbors were cited the most often as the people who helped them make it through.

This story is a chilling reminder of the evil alliance of Democrats and unions. When super storm Sandy slammed into the northeast last October it left destruction and dangerous debris in startling amounts. Homes were folded up and rolled down streets. Civil buildings and churches were flattened and dangerous toxic materials covered the landscape. The enormity of the clean-up was such that local governments had to work fast and work cheap to clean up their streets. Since “fast and cheap” are not words associated with unions the emergency demanded non-union labor as the only available and affordable course of action....

Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican Chris Christie Friday shared a stage on the final day of the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago, where the former president praised the New Jersey governor for his "bipartisan" response to Superstorm Sandy. "The enduring image most Americans have of you is standing there in your jacket, grieving with your people, working with them and working with the president," Clinton told Christie, who was sitting by his side. Instead of attending the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, Christie chose to be with Clinton on Friday, about a month after the governor toured the...

Many coastal New Jersey residents are resisting a $1 billion state plan to shield shore-front towns from storms with towering dunes and a mix of protective measures. As some cite fears the sand-replenishment projects would drag down their property values, about 1,800 landowners have declined to sign agreements to allow construction on their property, said Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection. The state Supreme Court last week heard arguments on a resident's lawsuit seeking more money for the agreement, known as an easement, and Gov. Chris Christie called dune opponents "knuckleheads."