Did the President Lie About Relief to New Orleans?

I am again indebted to one of my favorite writers and a brilliant economist, Thomas Sowell, for the following exposé.

On Nov. 23, 1988, Public Law 100-707, known as the “Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act,” referred to now as simply the Stafford Act, was signed into law. The Stafford Act requires a community affected by disaster and receiving federal funds in response to such disaster to provide 10 percent as much aid as the federal government provides in disaster relief in any emergency relief effort.

As has happened on a number of occasions, the Stafford Act requirements to provide 10 percent of disaster relief funds locally can be waived by a vote in the Senate. Such occurred with regard to federal disaster relief funds provided to New York after 9/11 and to Florida in the wake of Hurricane Andrew.

So, why didn’t New Orleans receive a waiver after Hurricane Katrina did its dirty work? Some others have raised this question as well. In fact, our president, Mr. Barack Obama, when still a senator from the great state of Illinois, while on the campaign trail for the presidency in 2007, addressed the problem. Mr. Obama informed his listeners that the people of New York affected by 9/11 and the people affected by Hurricane Andrew in Florida were considerd “part of the American Family” and thus deserving of our help without the restrictions of the Stafford Act due to the exceptional carnage wreaked in those two disasters. The good people of New Orleans, however, were somehow excluded from such equal sympathies. Mr. Obama’s searching questions about this horrible discrimination can be found in a search for the transcript of his campaign speech delivered at Hampton University in Virginia on June 5, 2007. Actually, Mr. Obama went off topic and did not actually follow the released transcript so you might have to dig. You can find the pertinent verbiage here.

So, on that date and in that place, Mr. Obama raised the searching question as to why such an injustice had been perpetrated.

If Mr. Obama knows how to do one thing exceptionally well it is to campaign and to win the sympathies of his audience to his causes. Given the large percentage of black people in attendance that day, Mr. Obama knew exactly which talking points to hit to win them over. He informed his audience that, in fact, he perceived that the injustice perpetrated on the good people of New Orleans, predominantly black like his audience, was due to the very fact that they were predominantly black and as such the federal government, in the words of the president, well, “they don’t care about us as much.” We know it to be a fact that concern for black people is lacking because the candidate, Mr. Obama, informed us of such.

One other curious part of what happened and what was said that June day in 2007 was that Mr. Obama tweaked his speaking style and delivered his speech in what another prominent black man referred to as “a ghetto-style accent;” something you don’t normally hear from the man that Joe Biden identified as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy…a storybook (image).”

It appears that Mr. Obama might have been a disappointment to Mr. Biden if Joe had heard the cadence that Mr. Obama affected for his audience on that day. But as telling as that little tweak that Mr. Obama affected in his speech that day was, there was something deeper that was going on.

Contrary to the whopper that Mr. Obama foisted on his audience that day in June 2007 while trying to woo them to his cause, the Stafford Act was, in fact, waived for New Orleans in the wake of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. In addition, New Orleans received more disaster relief funding than New York after 9/11 and Florida after Hurricane Andrew…combined!

Figuring into this conversation and of special note is the date on which Mr. Obama made his revelations at Hampton U. The date of that speech, as related above, was on June 5, 2007.

Why is the date of candidate Obama’s speech at Hampton U., where he revealed the dire injustice foisted on the good (predominantly black) people of New Orleans, important? Because on May 24, 2007, two weeks prior to candidate Obama’s Hampton speech, the United States Senate, as related above, waived the restrictions of the Stafford Act as relating to New Orleans. In fact, the Senate voted 80 to 14 in favor of waiving the Stafford Act. Only 14 twisted senators voted against waiving the restrictions on federal relief aid desperately needed to mitigate the disaster that had occurred in New Orleans, thus allowing the money to reach New Orleans unimpeded.

Is it important who those evil Senators were, people who obviously “don’t care about us (the people of New Orleans) as much" (as the New Yorkers or Floridians who received unimpeded aid)? Maybe…maybe not…

Would it surprise you to learn that one of the senators who voted against waiving the restrictions of the Stafford Act that would limit what aid New Orleans received was then-senator Barack Obama? Some will claim that he knew the vote would pass and was against other provisions concerning the Iraq War that were folded into the bill…and that might be so. But why did Mr. Obama tweak up his audience that day by asserting that the government refused to waive the restrictions for New Orleans when that was patently false?

Does it surprise anyone that this is the same man who lied at the debate about Gov. Romney’s positions, was shot down by Mr. Romney himself denying the false facts, and then continued perpetrating the same lies the day after the debate when Mr. Romney was no longer present to set the facts straight?

I think Mr. Romney said it best at the debate when he informed the president that although he is entitled to his own house (the White House) and his own airplane (Air Force One), he is not entitled to his own facts; facts that he makes up as he goes along to justify his own twisted view of reality.

No, Mr. President, a lie is a lie no matter how many times you say it thinking that you can make people believe you. If fact, as the chief law officer of the United States it is even more deplorable that you would engage in such outright falsification to make yourself something that you are not.

Mr. Obama has been caught in what is an insidious predicament in that not only did he lie when he said that New Orleans did not receive a waiver of the Stafford Act restrictions on federal aid because they were predominantly black but he registered a vote of “nay” against lifting the restrictions of the Stafford Act with 13 other Senators. It's on the record.

What kind of scam is it that the Obama White House and the lapdog media are trying to foist on the American people?

What else have you lied about, Mr. President?

Finally, why does the impetus to bring this issue to our attention fall to Mr. Sowell? What has happened to the media? If you get any of your news from the mainstream media, you are sorely lacking in information and this is, no doubt, one of the reasons, among many, why the nation’s once great newspapers are dying a slow and painful death. Rest in peace old Gray Lady…and good riddance.