GovernmentExecutive.com

The New York Times tallies up the Katrina waste fraud and abuse today, pegging the total at $2 billion. The paper calls it "one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history," but it was more scams and schemes than bungles. Most of this was fairly run-of-the-mill fraud, just on a very large scale. But the examples of government officials, including some at FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers, who helped orchestrate scams are simply unconscionable.