Wednesday, June 13, 2007

No good deed goes unpunished--Katrina refugees destroying the FEMA trailers loaned to them as aid.

Sometimes I wonder why we should even bother.

Here we (the taxpayers) go, buying brand new travel trailers for around $20,000 each and giving them to those who claim to be in need following hurricane Katrina, and apparently a lot of the recipients of this aid program have decided to show their respect and gratitude by destroying the trailers through theft, neglect, or outright vandalism, or else they've stolen the trailers outright--either selling them, dragging them off to hunting leases or turning them into illegal meth labs.

And what is FEMA doing about this? Well it may surprise you (but it probably won't) to find out that FEMA's doing absolutely nothing about it beyond sending letters to the trailer recipients asking them to pay for the damages. And that only in cases where FEMA actually knows who they gave the trailers to, which is not always the case. And since FEMA has no legal authority to prosecute people who have ruined the trailers to the point where they aren't ever usable again, it's just falling on us taxpayers to suck it up and eat the losses while the welfare sponges who got the trailers and wrecked them go off scot-free, no doubt proud of how they've gotten over on the rest of us.
And let me be fair here. It's not just inner-city hoodlums and lifetime welfare recipients from New Orleans this time. Many of those trailers went to rural residents, including homeowners in Arkansas, Mississippi, rural Louisiana and Texas. One would think that at least some of these people still own property which could be attached to cover the costs of the property that they've ruined but apparently FEMA's content to just let them ride because it's easier to stick you and me with the bills. You see, while FEMA might not have a clue as to who they loaned many of these brand new trailers to, they definitely know your billing address and mine.

Related article

Related article

Related article

No comments:

Post a Comment