In its continuing effort to undermine the current White House, the New York Times published a sob story from a Katrina victim on March 8th, claiming that she was being mistreated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA):
Donna Fenton no longer consults the scrap of paper in her pocketbook when she needs the phone number for the Red Cross, or New York City's welfare office, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. ''I know them all by heart,'' said Ms. Fenton, 37, who left Biloxi, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home there. ''I call them every day. That's my job.''
She starts in the morning, calling from the rooms she and her family share at a Ramada hotel near La Guardia Airport, or from the hotel's basement conference room. She knows what numbers will lead to someone helpful and the ones that will plunge her into a thicket of indifference or incomprehension. She keeps going for hours, sometimes until 3 o'clock the next morning.
The days and nights can blur together, a fog of dial tones, beige wallpaper and overly cheerful automated voices. ''Everything they asked for, I sent in,'' she said. ''I sent it in the second time, and then I sent it in a third time.''
What she wants, she says, is enough money to move into a new apartment in New York, so she can begin anew the life that Katrina ripped apart. ''It wasn't like we had any luxuries,'' she said. ''But we were scraping by.''
Of course, it was all FEMA's fault:
A Red Cross worker placed Ms. Fenton, her husband, and four of her five children — Akreem, 16; Ashley, 14; LaTanya, 10; and Danielle, 9 — at the Ramada, and gave her a debit card with a $1,565 limit. The children were placed in public school, but debit-card money quickly dwindled. "That doesn't go far for six people," she said.
So Ms. Fenton began working the phones. A $2,358 check for rent assistance from FEMA arrived in October. But a second check, for what the agency calls "immediate needs," never materialized. She also got no response from the Small Business Administration to a loan application she filed almost as soon as she arrived in the city. The FEMA check was soon used up — on clothes, food, and transportation, and for her family, as well as for her oldest son, William, 21, and his fiancée, Amanda McGee, who also live at the hotel.
Twice, Ms. Fenton said, she found apartments, but was afraid to sign leases because she was not sure FEMA's promised rental assistance would arrive.
Filing paperwork was a constant headache. Faxes to and from agencies seemed to disappear regularly. "It was like Russian roulette," she said.
FEMA granted her an extension to stay at the hotel, she said, but then forgot to issue an authorization code for the second of the two rooms her family occupied. That meant more time pleading on the phone.
Only one little problem: The woman was arrested yesterday for allegedly falsely claiming to be a victim of Hurricane Katrina and taking thousands of dollars in aid from state and federal agencies.
The New York Times reported the news today:
The woman, Donna Fenton, 37, was charged by Brooklyn prosecutors with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny, the latest additions to a long record of fraud, arrests and legal disputes stretching from Mississippi to New York.
Ms. Fenton was the subject of an article in The New York Times on March 8, more than a month after Brooklyn prosecutors, prompted by suspicious officials at the city's welfare agency, began investigating her.
That article described what Ms. Fenton said were her efforts to re-establish her family in New York after fleeing from Biloxi, Miss., in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. In the article, Ms. Fenton, who said she had attended high school in New York, described what she said were her efforts to obtain rent assistance and emergency cash aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other government agencies and several charities.
The article was based on interviews with Ms. Fenton, caseworkers with the Salvation Army, employees of the Ramada Plaza Hotel in Queens, where Ms. Fenton lives, and Amanda McGee, who described herself as the fiancée of Ms. Fenton's oldest son. Ms. Fenton said that she lived at the hotel with her five children, and that her husband had come with her from Biloxi but was living elsewhere in New York.
The Times did not verify many aspects of Ms. Fenton's claims, never interviewed her children, and did not confirm the identity of the man she described as her husband. [Editors' Note Appended]
As Mary Katharine Ham points out at Hugh Hewitt:
The Times didn't even go so far as to verify that the woman had the children she claimed she did. Why check the story if the narrative already, so conveniently tells the story you want told?
This would be considered an extraordinary screw-up and embarrassment at any newspaper. The tiniest weekly would discipline its reporter, mourn for the credibility lost, and apologize profusely to its readers.
At the NY Times, this is commonplace.
Read more at Hugh Hewitt and Captain's Quarters.
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