Subject: FEMA

• Adventures in Flood Insurance

  December 18, 2006

• Merry Christmas and Pass Me the Jim Beam

  December 11, 2006

• Is God on 3-1-1?

  July 24, 2006

• So Much for Waterfront Views

  July 24, 2006

• Time Bomb Defused

  April 26, 2007

• Free Press Houston Announces "Summer Fest" Line-Up

  The chill dudes across town at Free Press Houston dropped an awesome bomb this afternoon, announcing their two-day "Summer Fest" shindig, set to go down August 8 and 9 at Eleanor Tinsley Park. Tickets are at $7 for each day, with the line-up spread out over those two days. The headliners that Editor Omar Afra and his team have secured are mind-blowing, in addition to the amassed stable of talent that Houston has begun to build up in the past few years rounding out the bill. This show is some

  June 3, 2009

• Where To Get Supplies From FEMA

  September 15, 2008

• The Men's Club Is Open!

  September 15, 2008

• A Dispatch from Dickinson

  September 15, 2008

• Two Politicians, Two Responses

  September 16, 2008

• Houston Libraries Begin To Re-Open, With Computers For Victims

  September 16, 2008

• FEMA Not Looking Too Good in Greenspoint

  September 16, 2008

• The FEMA Bureaucracy Descends, And Obfuscates

  September 17, 2008

• The Initial Bill For Clean-Up In Houston: Almost $100 Million

  September 17, 2008

• Sunny San Leon Picks Up the Pieces After Hurricane Ike

  September 18, 2008

• Renters -- Don't Get Screwed By Lazy Landlords

  September 20, 2008

• He's Guilty -- Of Generating Good Quotes

  September 29, 2008

• Galveston Releases A Damage-Assessment Map

  October 16, 2008

• No Room At The Inn For Returning Galvestonians

  October 20, 2008

• Fanfare For The Area Man

  October 21, 2008

• Buy Lemonade, Help The Federal Government Out

  October 23, 2008

• Ike-Response Hearings Begin; FEMA Doesn't Bother To Show Up

  November 10, 2008

• He Got His Fraud Conviction Through The Houston Chronicle

  November 12, 2008

• Be Thou Fishers Of Men, Or Scammers Of Government

  There's no scam like a religious scam. And there's no religious scam like one where the church involved has a really churchy name, like Fishers of Men. And that's what we have (allegedly) in Houston -- the US Attorney's office has indicted the heads of Fishers of Men for skimming millions in fake student loans and, just to put the cherry on the sundae, FEMA funds for helping Katrina victims. But hey, the money went to a cause that would please God, as long as God was a big fan of spending

  November 20, 2008

• Bacliff Gets Ready For An Ike Invasion

  Shortly after Hurricane Ike, San Leon resident Tommy Dixon praised the spirit of his hometown and its will to rebuild by saying "All we need now are FEMA trailers and mosquito repellent."We don't know about the mosquito repellent, but they are getting the FEMA trailers. Two hundred of them are slated to be built on a former fish farm adjacent to the relatively tony Chase Park subdivision in adjoining Bacliff, a poverty-stricken town whose pre-Ike drug and gang woes we chronicled three months ago

  December 18, 2008

• Searching for Hurricane Ike Victims

  April 2, 2009

• The Five Least Significant Deaths In Houston This Year

  We've already noted the five biggest local deaths in 2008; now it's time to look at the five deaths that leave the smallest amounts of sympathy or significance.5. The Playoff Chances of the Texans and Astros. Insignificant because really, did anyone expect anything different? The teams blew when they least could afford it, then threw in a bunch of wins late in the year to look like they could be actually getting it together and therefore didn't need much improvement in the off-season. Expect mor

  December 29, 2008

• They're Still Arresting People Who Curse In Galveston County, Gosh Darn It

  Photo by Joe ShlabotnikLast year Kristi Fridge garnered nationwide publicity after being arrested in a La Marque Wal-Mart for cursing. Reasonable people thought that if a vengeful God had somehow decided to mess with you enough to place you in a Wal-Mart in LaMarque, then cursing would be a viable response.The whole thing petered out eventually, and life returned to normal in Galveston County.Until yesterday. When someone cursed again. Authorities did what they had to, and arrested the man.Since

  March 11, 2009

• Closing: The Last Ike Recovery Center Remaining Open

  It's a milestone of sorts: The last Ike recovery center still operating will close its doors Friday.At one time 130 such centers were open, but now the only one left is at the Galveston Island Community Center on Broadway. It's served 28,000 visitors, FEMA says."The recovery centers provided much-needed one-on-one assistance to thousands of Texans needing help after the disaster, and the centers have fulfilled their mission," FEMA State Coordinating Officer Joan Haun said in a release.As with an

  April 8, 2009

• A Pleasure Cruiser and The Worst Song in the World

  On the Trailer

  February 26, 2009

• Hurricane Ike's Wake

  Forgotten and overlooked, Galveston and the Texas Gulf Coast struggle on in the storm's aftermath

  January 8, 2009

• Hobby Bloggers at the Chronicle Spark Controversy

  April 16, 2009

• RIP, Some of Our Best Of Houston® Winners

  Hardly Knew Ye

  September 25, 2008

• Hurricane Relief

  Houston doesn't roll over for Ike

  September 25, 2008

• The Long Goodbye

  It sounds so simple: FEMA purchasing homes flooded by Tropical Storm Allison. Then come the bureaucratic blizzards and personal angst over giving up and getting out.

  October 24, 2002

• First They Came For Our Teabags: The Slideshow

  Photo by Katharine ShilcuttWe promised, and we are Promise Keepers! (of a sort).Here's the slideshow of the tea-party protest at Jones Plaza yesterday. Check to see if you made the cut. We are not responsible, however, if the fact that your photo is posted here puts you on a Department of Homeland Security watchlist and is the first step to sending you to one of those FEMA concentration camps that Glenn Beck can't disprove.

  April 16, 2009

• Have a Nice Summer!

  June 4, 2009

• Debate Club

  KTRH's shouter has a hissy fit

  July 6, 2006

• Juvenile

  Reality Check

  March 30, 2006

• La Mordita

  Check cashers and furniture rental companies take a big chunk out of post-hurricane FEMA checks

  January 26, 2006

• System Failure

  Tropical Storm Allison destroyed houses that never quite got fixed, thanks to bureaucratic bungling and cheaters

  December 8, 2005

• Against All Odds

  A group of unsupervised mental patients running from Katrina made it from New Orleans to Houston. Victor Fruge led the way.

  November 3, 2005

• Out of Control

  The City of Houston requires developers in the floodplain to elevate and mitigate -- build houses on higher ground and dig detention ponds for runoff. Except, not always.

  December 20, 2001

• Not Worth A Dam

  Clear Creek is on the rise, and local flood-protection methods have been helpless against it. Soggy residents, tired of being perpetual victims, are ready for a fight.

  September 13, 2001

• Added Costs

  Houston finally moves on a flood program that could have saved residents millions

  May 18, 2000

• Three Hurricanes, Three Fraud Schemes

  Wherever there's a hurricane, ma, I'll be there...Wherever a FEMA official's handing out a form to fill, I'll be the person scamming them...Wherever -- Well, we don't think the Tom Joad speech at the end of The Grapes of Wrath goes exactly like that, but it would if Phyllis Ann Taylor was saying it.Taylor, 28, was sentenced today to 33 months in prison for running FEMA scams during Katrina, Rita and Ike. (Hey, once you've established a specialty, stick with it.)The US Attorney's office here says

  May 27, 2009

• Ripping Off FEMA And Oprah: Not A Good Idea

  ​It's one thing to defraud FEMA in the wake of a hurricane. It's another to mess with Oprah.That's the sad, heavy lesson learned by four people named in indictments unsealed this morning by the U.S. Attorney's office. They're charged with, as the feds put it, "wrongfully obtaining rental assistance from FEMA after having purchased new, fully-furnished homes that were financed by Oprah Winfrey's 'Oprah's Angel Network.'" (Hey, nice plug and product-placement for the Big O.)Darlene McGruder Pool

  August 19, 2009

• Life, Post-Ike

  September 10, 2009

• Guilty Pleas From The Sisters Who Dared To Defraud FEMA And Oprah

  This summer we told you about two locals who had not only been accused of defrauding the federal government, but something far, far more powerful: Oprah Winfrey.​Sisters Darlene McGruder Poole and Lashone McGruder Victor were charged in August with filing false information to FEMA in order to get rent money after already receiving houses from Oprah's Angel Network.Today they pled guilty in a Houston federal court "to conspiring to defraud FEMA of more than $14,000 in connection with Hurricane

  October 2, 2009

• Two Pastors And A Deacon Admit That Their Church Was One Hell Of A Scam

  ​Some blog items never die.Almost a year ago we wrote about the fraud charges filed against officials of the Fishers of Men Worship Center in Houston. To this day, barely a week goes by without someone throwing up another comment on the case, either defending the officials or saying they got what they deserve. Go ahead, peruse the 200-plus comments if you like. We gave up on it a long time ago.And the winner in the great Critics vs. Defenders debate is....The Critics!!The U.S. Attorney's offic

  October 29, 2009