On the January 8 broadcast of his show, Newsradio 850 KOA host “Gunny” Bob Newman falsely claimed that U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) recently “said that the president has ordered certain parts of our government to conduct ethnic cleansing operations in Louisiana to kill African-Americans.” In fact, Frank criticized the Bush administration's lack of response to the housing crisis in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a “policy [of] ethnic cleansing by inaction.” Frank further clarified: “It's not ethnic cleansing in the sense they're killing people or driving people out.”

Frank made his remarks in a recent speech that blogger Matt Stoller videotaped and posted on the MyDD weblog. In the speech, Frank further explained what he meant by “ethnic cleansing by inaction”:

What they [the Bush administration] recognize is that they're in this happy position for them, where if the federal government does nothing, Louisiana will become whiter and richer. Because, well, not only black people needed housing assistance [after Hurricane Katrina], but they were predominantly the ones who needed it. So, by simply not doing anything to alleviate this housing crisis that was so greatly exacerbated by Katrina, they achieved -- they get a hurricane for the ethnic cleansing. And their hands are clean because all they're doing is not resisting it. That's why I call it ethnic cleansing by inaction.

According to a January 7 article in The New York Times, Frank has recently “informed” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that “he intend[s] to schedule oversight hearings quickly on administration problems in replacing housing along the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Katrina.”

In addition to Frank, others criticized the Bush administration for failing to rebuild working-class and lower-class neighborhoods along the Gulf Coast. As The Washington Post reported on February 9, 2006:

About 400 survivors of hurricane Katrina arrived in the nation's capital for two days of rallies, protests and meetings with lawmakers about the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

[...]

The crowd, many of them working-class New Orleanians whose families have lived there for generations, thundered when Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) called the lack of progress in rebuilding less-affluent neighborhoods “a policy of ethnic cleansing by inaction.”

In criticizing Frank, Newman also referred to him as “the homosexual involved in the homosexual prostitute ... whorehouse scandal.” As Media Matters for America has noted, an investigation by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (known as the Ethics Committee) cleared Frank of allegations that he had any knowledge of the alleged prostitution activities that purportedly took place in his Washington, D.C., apartment.

From the January 8 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Gunny Bob Show:

NEWMAN: Oh, by the way, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Franks -- the homosexual involved in the homosexual prostitute, cathouse, you know, whorehouse scandal, who keeps getting elected somehow -- last week he said that the president has ordered certain parts of our government to conduct ethnic cleansing operations in Louisiana to kill African-Americans. Barney Franks, still a member of Congress in the Democratic Party. There's an ethical guy, right there.