Small business owners in New Orleans lost a big-screen TV here, a DVD player there. The biggest victim of Hurricane Katrina looters wasn't Best Buy, or Circuit City, or Radio Shack. It was Uncle Sam. The Government Accountability Office reported on Wednesday that the $1 billion estimate of fraudulent Katrina claims "is likely understated." What's more, the federal government lost about one in three laptops brought to the area and can't account for numerous global positioning system devices.
What a bunch of chumps! Well, on second thought, maybe not. They're not paying the tab, are they? There's a correlation between wasting money and earning money: People who didn't earn the money they have are more likely to waste the money they have.
George W. Bush did the wrong thing on Katrina, and got hammered for it--just for the wrong reasons. He lavished billions of dollars on the Big Easy, as if the federal government were an insurance company for insurance companies (and for people without insurance). The aid neither silenced his liberal critics nor meshed with the Constitution. Now we find out--not that we needed the GAO to tell us this--that in offering free money to hurricane victims, the federal government got taken. Andrea True sang "More, More, More," and, unfortunately, that's the lesson politicians will learn from Katrina--even in the wake of the fraud, waste, and abuse. The next president will try to outdo the last one. And there will be more fraud, waste, and abuse. If it's a Democrat in the Oval Office, people will again regain their senses and blame Mother Nature instead of the Great White Father for the natural disaster's destruction.
"The DC looters have the gall to label their acts 'charity,'" I wrote last year. "The Big Easy looters were at least honest enough to concede their smash-and-grabs constituted theft." You may not know it, but if you pay taxes you were the victim of a Hurricane Katrina smash-and-grab.
I can't agree more.
I don't mind govenment spending on copters to save lives and emergency medical care, but bailing out people who should have had insurance is just insane.
Personally, I don't even think NO should be rebuilt, it will just fall on the taxpyers to pay up the next time its destroyed.
Of course I feel the same way about Florida, where preverse regulations make it possible to build a home in a hurricane zone without assurance.
This is what happens when common sense and logical control are overridden by pandering politicians falling all over themselves to grease the squeaky wheel.
Nagin got them on the run, didn't he?!
HeHe, you are wrong on the Florida insurance issue. I live in St. Petersburg (Pinellas County), and if you live near the water, you must carry hurricane/flood insurance. This was a big issue for alot of FL residents during this past election. Insurance companies are doing what they do best (Price-gouging). By the way, where isn't there a hurricane zone in FL?
No the insurance coumpanies are just trying to cover their costs becaus Florida is so hurricane prone.
And the problem is Florida is underinsurance, led by the State of Florida providing both cheap plans and a bail out for people who didn't have enough when the hurricane hit.
Government medling at its worst.
At least on the trans fat issue the govenment is TRYING to save lives.
Here is subsidising rich people to be richer, live dangerously, and stick the taxpayer with the bill if it doesn't work out.
Oh, so government meddling is ok as long as it's a cause where YOU think meddling is justified?! What an f'ing hypocrite! One thing about you hehe: you are consistently inconsistent.
