Not a WORM: The New York Daily News Exposes “4-Year Scandal of 9/11 Billions”

Dec. 5 Welcome and Correction: Welcome Michelle Malkin readers! Michelle does a great job at her post itemizing some of the gory details of the 9/11 aid abuse. This post is about how The Daily News’ report is an example of the kind of work only MSM is (currently) up to. Also, I should have known that Michelle did a related column on New Jersey’s misuse of Homeland Security funds.
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This is the kind of reporting we used to get routinely from The Mainstream Media in the US.

Since many of them are now WORMs (Worn Our Reactionary Media), they would treat this story, and apparently have treated it, like Superman treats Kryptonite, because much of it ultimately goes back to the conduct of New York’s two Democrat senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, as well as New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor George Pataki, both in the early days after the World Trade Center Towers fell, and in the past four years as the federal government has meekly and occasionally attempted to provide adult supervision over the $20 billion-plus given to New York State and New York City for 9/11 recovery.

Not The New York Daily News, and major kudos to them.

The only hint (update–see top) that I have seen all these years that the 9/11 money has not been well handled is one column written by Michelle Malkin in December 2001, three months after the terrorist attacks, about excessive funds of relatively nominal amounts in relation to the total federal aid (a few hundred thousand) distributed to Asian-American social services groups assisting people somehow affected by 9/11 in Chinatown, which is far (in Manhattan terms) from where the attacks took place. Other than that, I’ve only seen occasional stories of money disputes between Uncle Sam and the City and State that apparently were resolved and quickly disappeared from coverage.

But let’s face it. Michelle Malkin is only one person (though it sometime seems like she’s three), and even she knows that to fully vet bigger stories you need to work with others, as she has with Brian Maloney of Radio Equalizer exposing Air America’s ongoing financial and other problems (Michelle and Brian began their collaboration shortly after Brian broke the story).

To dig into a story like the use of the 9/11 money, you need lots of bodies, something the blogosphere simply does not currently have assembled in one place (though developments are, as they say, ongoing). You also need a consistent attention span of many months, if not years, on the part of everyone involved. The Daily News has the troops (their investigative team had five reporters and a managing editor), they used them, and they’ve busted the doors wide open.

Here are links to the Daily News’ work published yesterday:

• Index Page: “The 9/11 Money Trough”

(replaced original home page link on Dec. 5–Ed.)

• 4-Year Scandal of the 9/11 Billions
• Fat Cats Milked Ground Zero
• Rich Got Richer as Poor Got Crumbs

The Daily News’ introduction to the story says “Today, the Daily News Investigative Team begins an in-depth examination of the federal government’s Sept. 11 disaster recovery program for New York City.” So it looks like they’re not done.

Here’s the bottom line:

….. a four-month Daily News investigation of the $21.4 billion disaster recovery package reveals that major elements of the aid process were procedurally flawed — from the determination of how much money was supposedly needed, to how it was distributed, to how it was actually spent and ultimately, to how little oversight there was over the spending. In effect, no one was watching.

As a result, 9/11 recovery aid was used to finance a plethora of projects that taxpayers elsewhere could be forgiven for characterizing as old-fashioned pork-barrel spending.

Read the items published today and the ones that are to come. Make sure there’s cold water around, because the content might otherwise make you reach your boiling point.
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UPDATE, Dec. 5: 9/11 Families for America is calling for, among other things, an “immediate recall of all remaining federal funds from the LMDC. Further, we ask that the building of the 9/11 memorial and museum be turned over to the National Park Service. And we ask for a full audit and investigation of monies spent by New York state and city, as we as by the LMDC, to date.”

UPDATE 2, Dec. 5: Whoa–The Daily News series index page now has five more stories in its series at the index page, including mob involvement, bribery and kickbacks, no-bid contracting, and politicians’ calls for an investigation.