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Taylor Target of Drive By Reporting Alabama TV Reporter Demands Mississippi Congressman Conduct Investigation Into Katrina Victims Who Won’t Work “Because They Don’t Have To.” By Perry Hicks filed 8/08/08 Washington DC- In a strange piece of ambush reporting, Mobile Alabama TV station, WPMI reporter Jenna Susko demanded Mississippi 4th Congressional District Representative Gene Taylor assume an Executive Branch function by conducting an investigation into FEMA fraud. Susko and WPMI had been conducting their own investigation into what they report to be “hundreds” of Katrina families living in hotels with catered meals, “some beachfront” at FEMA expense. The rub with Susko was that a number of individuals on camera made claim that they didn’t work “because they didn’t have to.” WPMI made an issue of Taylor’s refusal to conduct an investigation with Susko asserting that the Katrina survivors were largely having a “good time” at tax payer expense. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Cong. Taylor are shown on camera arguing that there aren’t hundreds of fraudulent cases even out of the tens of thousands recorded. These exchanges along with Taylor’s sound bite, “I don’t have time to investigate fraud” has come to infuriate voters. The problem with WPMI’S reporting is that this was not all that Susko was told. Taylor had directed Susko to report her suspected fraud to the FEMA fraud hotline numbers posted on Taylor’s website. According to Taylor, Susko seemed more eager to make a name for herself. “Of course I am concerned with waste, I always have,” Taylor told GCN by phone, “but my time is better spent going after waste in the billions of dollars.” No fan of the Bush administration, Taylor asserts the real waste is in the way 41 thousand trailers were distributed to the tune of 31 thousand dollars per trailer. “That comes to 1 billion, 300 million dollars,” Taylor said. “The way I figured that is 15 thousand for the trailer and 16 thousand basically to deliver it to the site and hook a hose up. Bush’s friend Riley Bechtel got the contract, check it out,” Taylor asserted. Katrina fraud is hardly limited to the poor as scams and fraud have riddled Katrina relief right up to the highest levels. Accordingly, the FEMA Fraud Task Force is headquartered in New Orleans with various agency units including Homeland Security operating all across Mississippi. Accordingly, attempting to initiate an individual action could interfere with and therefore jeopardize an ongoing official investigation. Susko’s demands just weren’t prudent under the circumstances and appeared to be part of an effort to garner viewership far beyond that of a legitimate public service. While Jenna Susko is a WPMI general assignment reporter who must take on a variety of stories as they arise, daily, Google searches do return quite a number of sensational subjects. For example, in 2006, she narrowly missed death when she requested to stay out awhile longer causing her to miss the ill fated Flight 5191 out of Lexington, Ky. All but one person aboard the flight was killed. Rather than return to Atlanta immediately, Susko stayed on in Lexington to cover the crash for which she was almost a victim. Other hot Susko subjects have been hooker houses, sex offenders, and a soda bottle removed from a man’s backside. As the calendar moves closer to the second Tuesday in November, voters can expect gottcha journalism to increase in the hopes it will influence election outcomes. Operatives from both parties will be doing everything in their power to help this process along. As far as the admissions that Katrina survivors won’t work “because they don’t have to,” it would be naïve to think that none of them could be telling the truth, it also would be foolish to think that pride could not be the motive to hide some other personally embarrassing reason for their idleness. Because of the privacy act, no one but the principles can have unfettered access to their medical records. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi could not be reached for comment but a spokesman from her office, Nadeam Elshami, was present with the speaker during WPMI’s reportage. Elshami said, “Waste is absolutely abhorrent to Congressman Taylor as it is to Speaker Pelsosi.” When asked about the level of support Speaker Pelosi has had for Taylor, Elshami said, “Speaker Pelosi has been very supportive of Taylor’s legislation and while a lot of funding has been passed thus far, she also recognizes that there is much need that still has to be met.” When contacted, WPMI TV news director Mike McCormick did not return GCN phone calls- one to the news desk and one directly to his voice mail by the time of the article posting. However, witnesses present who did to want to be cited said the news crew apparently had all of their answers arranged pretty well in advance.
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