Disastrous Aid

As I wrote earlier in Let The Taxpayer Gouging Begin and Let The Taxpayer Gouging Begin Part II, FEMA is continuing to spread our tax money over the countryside with wreckless abandon.

Spending on things like $350 per night motel rooms and $3,500 per week cruise ship accommodations for workers and displaced citizens are continuing and the excess money will never be recovered.

Then there is the matter of scumbags misrepresenting themselves as storm victims in order to receive illegal cash loans and grants from FEMA.

What's the opposite of kleptomania? Giftomania? Santamania?

Whatever the affliction is called, FEMA's got it, and it's got it bad: an irresistible impulse to give away taxpayer money for no good reason.

In a series of investigative reports, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel has documented that the Federal Emergency Management Agency over a five-year period gave more than $330 million nationwide to people who had not experienced disasters. Last year it wasted $31 million on Miami-Dade County residents for relief from a storm that missed the county.

You'd think FEMA would learn. But the same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast this year. Once again, for thousands of Americans, Christmas came early.

A week after Katrina hit, FEMA began issuing $2,000 checks and debit cards, which were supposed to go to displaced people. Payments were to be limited to one per household. But the Sun-Sentinel has found that in three parishes in Louisiana, the agency issued more checks than there were households, costing taxpayers at least another $70 million. In a total of 36 parishes and counties in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, the agency gave $102 million to at least 51,000 more applicants than were displaced by the storm.

So when is FEMA going to learn?

Probably never, but the good news is that they are attempting to find these scoundrels and when they do they’re prosecuting. You can read about it here, here, here, and here.

The maximum fine for making false claims for relief funds is FIVE YEARS in prison and a $250,000 fine. They aught to hang a giant sign out front of the temporary FEMA offices stating the penalties. The should also make every single person that applies sign a separate form that makes them acknowledge the potential penalties.

I believe that most people aren't willing to risk five years in the slammer for taking two thousand bucks, and I think that FEMA could cut the level of fraud in half with very little effort.

FEMA...we're waiting...