Under the provocative headline "Did FEMA 'Buy' Votes for Bush?," IPS asks if political considerations influenced FEMA's priorities -- in particular, the disparity between FEMA's response in Florida (politically valuable) and Louisiana (not). Here's an excerpt: As Michael Brown resigned his post as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Monday following a relentless beating in the press for his mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina relief and rescue efforts, details on FEMA's past missteps began emerging. Possibly the most egregious of these largely under-reported fiascos was the revelation that FEMA made 31 million dollars in questionable payments to residents of Florida's Miami-Dade County for damage from Hurricane Frances in September 2004, even though the storm caused only minimal damage in that area. J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, who was a top federal flood-insurance official in the 1970s and 1980s, said that the Frances overpayments "are questionable given the timing of the election and Florida's importance" as a battleground state. Hunter was Texas insurance commissioner in the 1990s under then-Gov. Ann W. Richards, a Democrat.