I noticed this on the website for the Houston Chronicle, under the headline Baseball star among 8 held after scuffle with police at isle hotel:
Houston Astros pitcher Brandon Backe was among about eight people arrested early Sunday after a fight at the San Luis Resort, police said.
So far, just your basic sports fracas. But what REALLY caught my eye was this, the second para into the story:
FEMA coordinator Jamie Forero was also placed in custody after the incident, which occurred shortly after midnight at the hotel's swimming pool bar.
Aaaaannnd that's all the Chron has to say on that. The rest is just the usual -- tasering, fistfights, pepper spray, bloody cops and choppering a man to the hospital. Sounds like th' good times are back in Galveston!
And according to the Galveston Daily News:
[Galveston PD Lt. Joel] Caldwell said during the melee he saw Jaime E. Forero Jr. refuse an officer's order to leave the scene.
"He identified himself to me as the 'director of FEMA operations,'" Caldwell stated in his report.
Caldwell reported he removed Forero's identification with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Forero continued to try to pull away from police before he was placed in a patrol car.
"Forero stated we were making a huge mistake, and we would both be without jobs in the morning," Caldwell reported.
Police charged Forero with failure to obey an officer.
(Seriously, though -- rioting FEMA coordinators? Anybody have a followup on this story?)
I felt it was high time for me to pay a call to our esteemed U.S. Senators to inquire about the recent financial melt down on Wall St. Since as a taxpayer I will be expected to step up and bail out a bunch of corrupted greed mongers I believe I deserve an explanation from those who got us into this unbelievable mess in the first place.
Dear Senator,
In the past two weeks I feel as if I have been hit by two devastating hurricanes. Many residents in the Houston and Galveston areas are still without power and most continue to struggle with Ike's aftermath. The nation's fourth largest city and its surrounding areas have taken a tremendous beating.
Just when we were beginning to think we could see the light at the end of Ike's tunnel we now find ourselves suddenly blindsided by another hurricane. This one did not sweep in from the Gulf. This unexpected monster came hurdling down from Wall St. and its aftermath could prove far more cataclysmic than Ike.
What is this business about a financial bailout using the taxpayer's money? It seems to me that a group of greedy and corrupted fat cats on Wall St., with the blessings of their supporters and cheerleaders in Congress, raped and pillaged the United States and now taxpayers are being asked to pay for the carnage. And we're supposed to turn over nearly $1 trillion and say "we trust you to clean up after yourselves."
Please.
See what Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine has to say about the Wall Street debacle.
As confusionabounds over who was responsible for the difficulties surrounding the deployment of PODs (Points Of Delivery) for ice, water, and food in Harris County following Hurricane Ike, State Sen. Mario Gallegos (D-Houston) says the blame rests with the state.
Gallegos, whose senate district included the hardest hit areas of Harris County and Houston, told Burnt Orange Report that the difficulties began Sunday around 3 p.m., shortly before a major press conference in Houston.
"Yesterday, just before that press conference, someone from the state called the city, the county, and FEMA and said that they were not participating in the PODs program," Gallegos said.
Until Sunday, the state had planned to participate in the deployment of the PODs. Who exactly from the state placed the call hasn't yet been confirmed. Some sources tell Burnt Orange Report the call came from State Emergency Management Coordinator Jack Colley.
After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last year, I volunteered down at the Astrodome with evacuees and met a woman named Dorothy Broussard. She's eighty-eight years old and is living on $600 a month from Social Security and SSI. Aside from a great granddaughter in Hawaii, she doesn't have close relations with any of her family. I visit her pretty regularly at a low-income housing place for seniors up on I-45 North, and it was quite a shock to come to her door at her apartment last week and find a posting on her door notifying of that FEMA was cutting off her utilities aid at the end of May:
FEMA is moving evacuees from the emergency assistance program, which provides vouchers that cover rent and utilities, to an individual assistance program that only covers rent. As many as 20,000 Houston evacuees recently received letters from FEMA stating that they were ineligible for the individual assistance program.
FEMA granted emergency assistance to survivors of the storm, promising a year of rent and utilities until people got back on their feet. Now that they're reneging, churches and organizations like The Metropolitan Organization have been organizing to challenge FEMA's ruling, saying that it's unfair to pull out the support ladder from underneath evacuees feet when they were promised otherwise:
"What we're asking FEMA to do is keep its written promise of one year rent and utility assistance for evacuees," said Anna Babin, president of the United Way of the Texas Gulf Coast. "Evacuees were counting on this assistance while they got employed and settled in Houston. It's very hard when the rules keep changing to get settled."
So why has FEMA decided to discontinue this aid? More below the fold.
