Steal from the Poor

Today, Ana Radelat of Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger reports that Gov. Haley Barbour is trying to redirect $600 million in hurricane housing money toward enlarging the Port of Gulfport. The money would be attached to a bill that would fund the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

"This transfer is unreasonable in light of the fact that the state has not met all of its housing needs," the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Rep. David Obey (D-WI), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Mississippi received $5.4 billion in HUD Community Development Block Grant money.

6,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers are still occupied in Mississippi, which has fewer than 1,500 affordable housing units.

Rove's strategy: “Praise Haley Barbour (R-MS)” and Blame Louisiana

Paul Alexander’s new book Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove published by Salon, explains how Karl Rove used spin and outright lies to place “blame” for slow government response to Hurricane Katrina while 1200 people in new Orleans drowned .

This “review” is taken from

From Dan Froomkin’s “White House Watch” of June 6

"Instead of supplying relief to the city, Rove had devised a scheme whereby he could blame the failure of government to take action on someone besides Bush. . . .

"Here was Rove's strategy: Praise Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi; praise Michael Brown and FEMA; blame [Louisiana governor Kathleen] Blanco, the Democrat. . . .

"Rove sold the story, as he had in the past, through the media. On Wednesday, while Blanco was trying to get help from the White House, her staff began receiving calls from reporters questioning her handling of the disaster, almost all of them citing as their sources unnamed senior White House officials."