The Counter-deception Blog
Examples of deceptions and descriptions of techniques to detect them. This Blog encourages the awareness of deception in daily life and discussion of practical means to spot probable deceptions. Send your examples of deception and counter-deception to colonel_stech@yahoo.com.Saturday, November 19, 2005
Fraud in Faulkner Country
Three worthwhile essays for deception-istas on the past and the future, post-Katrina.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Making Sure the Cleanup Is Clean
By THOMAS D. THACHER II
How to stop fraud as we rebuild the Gulf Coast.
Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans has already appointed a private sector committee to assist in the rebuilding effort, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has announced that $400 million in contracts it previously awarded on a no-bid basis will now be subject to competitive bidding. These are steps in the right direction, but more must be done to protect the process from fraud, waste and abuse. The Gulf Coast recovery program should commit to using integrity monitors. Doing so will spare citizens in the region, and taxpayers everywhere, from being victimized once again - this time by a storm of corruption.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By JIM HOOD
Why the State of Mississippi is suing insurers that won't
pay.
For years these companies have sold policies that insure Gulf Coast residents against loss from the effects of hurricane winds. The people who bought these policies reasonably believed that they were covered for damage ranging from a blown-off roof to a four-foot surge of water in the house. But now that the homes and businesses of many policyholders have been destroyed or seriously damaged, these insurance companies are denying coverage on the ground that their policies excluded water damage.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
By JAMES C. COBB
Hurricane Katrina demystified the good and bad of
the New
South.
Indeed, while Katrina may have bared the lie behind the New South's supposed prosperity, it has also highlighted a remarkable shift in racial attitudes. The small towns throughout the hurricane area where the rabidly segregationist Citizens' Councils once flourished produced some striking scenes of black and white Southerners in physical and emotional embrace, commiserating about what they had lost and sharing what they had left.
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