Indian Tribes to get Katrina Trailer Homes

There were endless rows of trailer homes purchased to temporarily house the victims of Katrina and Rita.
Who can forget them?

They were left empty while New Orleanians were squeezed into far away shelters.

The white trailers--like the yellow buses--sat as monuments to the sheer incompetence, wastefulness and, given the recent actions of the blackboots at ICE, inhumanity of the federal government.

Those idle trailers are a legacy of the current crop of Democrat and Republican politicians more interested in scoring cheap political points than in solving real problems.

Well, not all politicians.

Consider U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota).

While South Dakota has a small population, it's home to sizable Indian nations. Contrary to current mythology, many of America's first people are desperately poor--and many are homeless. Shameful.

Last year, Johnson urged the donation of the trailers to Indian tribes, but FEMA bulked saying federal law limited their use only for disaster victims. (They must define disaster differently than I do.) So in September, Johnson pushed through a bill to get FEMA to sell or donate the trailers.

Yesterday, Johnson announced that 2,000 of the trailers will finally be distributed to Indian tribes throughout the U.S.

Perhaps what's most instructive about this surprising bit of common-sense government, is that Johnson achieved this important victory while home recovering from a December brain hemorrhage.

See Reservations to receive FEMA trailers.