Riddle Me This, Batman...
I apologize in advance to Iced Tea Not Coke because she already heard this little diatribe at the softball All-Star game earlier today. She is excused from reading any further.Most of us are aware that FEMA f’ed up royally during the Hurricane Katrina debacle by not checking identification or verifying loss before giving applicants $2000 debit cards for short-term government aid. In case you didn’t know, $2000 was the maximum amount one could receive. As a result, there was massive fraud that resulted in $1.4B of misallocated funds.
I will preface the rest of this by accepting that those numbers would indicate that 700,000 people applied for money to which they were not entitled. Shame on even one person for stealing from a neighbor who is actually in need…let along 700,000. It’s disgusting when you think about it and the number itself is quite staggering.
Knowing that we will surely have another catastrophe on the same level as Katrina*, this is a problem asking, nay, BEGGING, for a solution. So what do you suppose the think-tank at FEMA came up with?
- A better process that would check I.D. and verify loss?
- A plan to quickly, but temporarily, put the proper resources in place to carry out said process?
- Perhaps even a clause in the application about holding claimants accountable and prosecuting, should fraud be discovered within a certain time after the catastrophe?
- Oh…or maybe fine folks at FEMA could do their jobs?
All good, logical thoughts. Fix the problem.
FEMA’s solution? Decrease the maximum amount of aid from $2000 to $500. Five hundred dollars. They didn’t cut it in half….no, this consortium of nitwits cut it down to 25%. Five hundred dollars.
What the hell is someone going to do with $500 if his/her house is under water? It’ll barely pay for a week in a hotel, plus meals.
Let’s not fix the problem, let’s punish the people who might actually need the help.
The bright side, of course, is should 700,000 people do the same thing after the next disaster, only $350M would be wasted. That’s much better.
* It will happen. If you’ve been unconvinced of global warming affects up ‘til now, check out “An Inconvenient Truth” or the latest issue of National Geographic.
posted by Cherry Indigo (Cindy) @ 7/30/2006 10:17:00 PM
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