The Things You Find When You Look At State Contracts

On July 28, 2008 the Commonwealth of Kentucky gave the City of Powderly $1,000,000.00.

Powderly best known as the birthplace of actor James Best, no pun intended.

The money was to be used to “Rehabilitate/reconstruct twelve (12) low and moderate income (LMI) owner-occupied structures with new replacement homes on existing lots.” I’m not sure how you rehabilitate/reconstruct new replacement homes but it looks like it costs an average of $83,333.33 per house.

According to the 2000 US Census Powderly had 256 owner occupied houses with a median value of $42,100.

The numbers just don’t work for me. It just seems a bit expensive when you factor in that the home owner already has to have the lot so there is no land cost. So the value of the houses would be somewhere in the area of $100,000.00. I wonder who got new the new houses.

Maybe that was what Ed Whitfield and Rand Paul were discussing when they were in Powderly. Rand was probably wanting the town to give the money back since it did originally come from the federal government.

On a side note Rand does kind of favor James Best.

Should We Give The Money Back?

FRANKFORT, Ky. (Feb. 2, 2011) - The Commonwealth of Kentucky has received notice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of approval and award of an "enhanced" status for the State Hazard Mitigation Plan.

This enhanced plan allows the Commonwealth to continue to receive increased funding for the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program following presidentially declared disasters. Enhanced states receive an additional 20 percent of the value of federal disaster expenditures compared to 15 percent without an enhanced status. Over the past three years, because of this enhanced status, Kentucky has received more than $21 million in additional hazard mitigation project grant funding, which has in turn been awarded to communities across the state.

Did anyone check with Rand Paul about this? Should we give this money back? People should stand on their own two feet and not be taking government handouts. Oh, wait a minute I forgot FEMA is part of Homeland Security, so this money must be to help us fight the Mexican Muslim Menace in Kentucky.

But wait another minute, isn’t FEMA a big government plot to take over our lives?

Some people have referred to it as the "secret government" of the United States. It is not an elected body, it does not involve itself in public disclosures, and it even has a quasi-secret budget in the billions of dollars. This government organization has more power than the President of the United States or the Congress, it has the power to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and hold them without trial, it can seize property, food supplies, transportation systems, and can suspend the Constitution.

So why isn’t Randy protecting us from the conspiracy? Why hasn’t Mica Sims, a Lexington Tea Party organizer, run to the parapets to rally the troops against this conspiracy?

I mean really, who needs to plan ahead and try to avoid a disaster?

The bottom line is we won’t hear a word from Rand Paul or Mica Sims or any other Tea Party types about this spending, because if they did speak out it would only highlight the morally objectionable elements of a fiscal policy designed by people that can’t do math.

They already support a fiscal policy that would slash $42 billion from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food stamp program and eliminate the Departments of Energy and Housing and Urban Development and most of the Department of Education.