Katrina fraud: Don’t blame the "victims"!?
McQ
The QandO Blog
Sometimes you read an editorial and wonder what the writer was smoking at the time of putting the old -30- at the end.
In an LA Times editorial entitled "A Hurricane of Fraud", is a subtitle which says "FEMA did mismanage Katrina relief, but it’s wrong to blame victims for spending irresponsibly."
It is? Why in the world is that? And just to be clear, it wasn’t "irresponsible" spending. It was fraudulent spending. To the tune of about 1.4 billion dollars.
In the first paragraph you get an indication of why this sort of thinking is on display in the subtitle.
<<< MOVE OVER, RECKLESS CONSUMERS. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has outdone your irresponsible spending by racking up a debit card bill so outrageous it could have been created using Mad Libs. Sex-change operations, vacations to the Dominican Republic and wild nights at strip clubs were all bought on the government’s dime by both con artists and legitimate victims of Hurricane Katrina. But try to keep that knee from jerking — although FEMA’s oversight was lacking, wasted money is an inevitable byproduct of providing rapid emergency assistance. >>>
First of all, it wasn’t the "government’s dime". It never is. It was mine. And while FEMA may not have done the best job in oversight, what those who bought vacations and sex change operations did was commit fraud on my dime. Secondly, those who committed this fraud weren’t "victims". They were con artists.
I’m sorry, contrary to the LA Times editorial advice, I do blame them, just as I blame a car jacker or a burgler for his or her acts. And every effort should be made to recover the money and to prosecute those who fraudulently misrepresented themselves and spent it. While it is fine to rake FEMA over the coals for its inept oversight it is not fine to excuse those who defrauded the real victims who were actually in need of those funds.
<<< It’s easy, and necessary, to criticize FEMA’s across-the-board incompetence in responding to the largest displacement of Americans since the Civil War. But obsessing about the spending habits of refugees comes perilously close to blaming the victim. >>>
This is just nonsense on a stick. Those that used the money for things like vacations, strip clubs and sex change operations weren’t "victims". They are crooks. And the LA Times should know better than to try to cast crooks as "victims".
qando.net
latimes.com |
