The Los Angeles Times, in keeping with its long-standing tradition of leaning Left and, more recently, ridiculous editorial stances, unfathomable columnists and, as a result (like other DEM print papers), its hemorrhaging of readers, does not fail to disappoint with its current stance:
Sure, Hurrican Katrina victims misspent FEMA money but, know what? It’s not their fault!
COMMON CURRENCY
A hurricane of fraud?
FEMA did mismanage Katrina relief, but it’s wrong to blame victims for spending irresponsibly.
June 17, 2006For every “Girls Gone Wild” video purchased, thousands of families used their cards for clothing, food and temporary shelter without having to deal with federal red tape. Bad spending decisions are an unfortunate side effect of a clever and responsive policy.
The 16% of improper expenditures is indeed high for a federal aid program — food stamps and unemployment insurance, by comparison, had respective rates of 5.9% and 10.1% last fiscal year. But these are established programs, not on-the-fly responses that had to process a sudden rush of 2.6 million claims. Unlike a permanent safety net, disaster relief’s top priority is to help as many people as fast as possible, which comes at the price of reduced efficiency (bold emphasis is mine. BZ).
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.
Blaming The Victim?
The LA Times is incompetent. Of course I blame the victim. Yes, the government response was lackluster. But the greatest lackluster performance was at the local and state level, not the national level. FEMA is not a first responder. No federal government agency is a first responder.
On one hand, the Times labels FEMA has having “across the board incompetence” and, on the other hand, writes: “Bad spending decisions are an unfortunate side effect of a clever and responsive (FEMA) policy.”
So which is it, Times? Is FEMA incompetent or not? Clever or not?
Come on, give me a break.
This is simply what happens when you give people things they had nothing to do with earning. Allow me to be frank. The greater bulk of persons requiring the aid were black. Ray Nagin said so, so it must be true. Many of these persons were on various local, state and federal programs already, whereupon they were provided with a level of substance for free. Items acquired for free allow little investment by the receiver nor an appreciation of how it is these items came to be budgeted. Let me provide a little hint: these programs and items were funded by me and you; the TAXPAYERS.
Giving anyone, at any time, a “pass” for their stupidity and/or illegal actions is doing nothing more than enforcing the thought that money and programs are literally free, that government somehow has an unlimited source of funding (hey, they can print more money, right?), and that there is no responsibility, discipline or even appreciation attached. It is why they are called entitlements: they are expected.
This is the federal government, once more, training people to depend on the largesse of its coffers and chaining those who receive this largesse into a permanent, enduring, generational underclass that will consistently vote for more and free.
“Good job, Katrina Victims; good boy; good girl! Here’s a biscuit!“
Thanks, LA Times, for merely continuing to ensure The Pygmalion Effect will proliferate at its happy, rapid rate.
You morons.
BZ
Mr Zep, Quit blaming the victim or you will be branded a hate monger and inspire the likes of Cindy sheehan to picket your home.
“Godless” by Mrs Coulter is a great read and explains alot of this type of liberal victim perfecion theory.
You must not blame the victim unless the victim is a Republican.
Bushwack: AHA!! Good point! Blaming a Republican — what a sound tactic!
BZ
Yes, those poor people who had no choice but to spend the money on non-essential items, then go back and sign up for welfare and get more…
BUshwack, I am reading “Godless” and it is pretty incredible/truthful. Don’t even believe what the libs are saying about it because if you read it in context, it isn’t hate-filled at all. She uses sarcasm and satire to make her truthful points. The libs don’t get her at all.
If I may expand a bit??? For example, when she said to go to the middle east and convert them to Christianity, she was making a point and a good one at that, yet they keep bringing it up Like Christians are going to go over there and force people to convert by the knife.. Kind of like extremist muslims do. That is not what she means.
Ann is saying that Christians are so confident that Christianity is the truth, that Christians don’t have to oppress people and force them because Christians know that all the other religions are man made and they come up empty. Because of that, not everyone, but a lot of people will find emptiness in other religions and eventually come to Christianity. So, since Christianity is truly peaceful, if the leaders of the rogue nations in the middle east were converted it would straighten out a lot of the crap going on over there.
I heard Ann explain this a long time ago on Cspan..
Oh yes, and I forgot she also said that Christians know that it is not up to them to change a man’s heart, only God can do that, so that is why they are confident in their faith that they don’t have to force people to believe, or kill those who don’t.
Sorry,left that part out.
Agree with you completely, zep.
Another in the long list of proving Ann’s point!!
I don’t even bother with that rag.
There are far better things to read. Like the grafitti in the bathroom.
Revka: once more the attacks on Ann Coulter continue because she is a Wordsmith (sorry, Wordsmith!) of the First Degree, because she can hold her own in any verbal sparring match, and because she has the guts to say, in explicit language, the things that need to be said — calls a spade the proverbial spade.
Were she an organ for the Left, she would be classified as Spirited!, Dynamic!, A Legend For Our Times!, Unassailable!, Courageous! However, as a pawn for the Right, she is nothing more than a Quisling Bitch for the GOP toadies.
Sometimes Coulter makes me cringe and I wouldn’t disagree that many feel she is Way Over The Top; but when you examine the specifics of her comments you cannot help but realize: she’s just correct.
BZ
I often find it strange that the very people who, on the one hand, will say that the government is completely incompetent will often be the very ones to turn around and want some huge government program… say, single-payer healthcare. Truly who wants a health care system as competent as the IRS? Or FEMA? Or the Dept. of Agriculture? There are only a few well run organizations in the Government and they are in very specialized areas: DoD, Dept. of the Interior, Treasury. And each of those has its problems… DoD has an entrenched mid-level that is so thoroughly Cold War indoctrinated that it cannot draft coherent responses to changing situations. Interior has its scandals and fraud as does Treasury.
The Napoleonic quote comes to mind: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.”
Often the sheer level and amount of incompetence will give the appearance of conniving, craftiness and some sort of conspiracy… while the outcomes are, in point of fact, due to sheer incompetence. The FBI could not get its desktop computer systems upgraded nor a coherent database put together after spending billions of dollars and a decade at it… they failed… TWICE. Craftiness to waste money or sheer incompetence?
Talk to any person who went through the year of 4 hurricanes in Florida and they will tell you the response to Katrina was ‘lightning fast’ and ‘we are *still* waiting for that kind of response and help’.
Who in their right mind hands *anything*, beyond those few things it has to do, to the Government? Funding education via the Feds has worked so well over two decades that the reading comprehension rate reaches the high level it did in 1958 when poor Johnny couldn’t read. In point of fact that has stayed rock solid no matter *what* was done at the governmental level… the answer is not more money, more government or more legislation… it is accountability and people exercising their rights to be heard by each other and work out something better ON THEIR OWN.
And don’t get me started on a the “Document Forgery Full Employment Act” that so many are pushing for illegal aliens… DHS had 6 million fraudulent documents to contend with last year on visa and immigration applications. Anything that tries to expand that system will overload it with fraudulent documents until it fails completely.
That is why I push for spare, lean and ‘barely able to get its job done and so can’t mis-spend the money’ sort of government. Largesse for National Security and Sovereignty and the few things we set government out to do. All these extra limbs and appendages and tentacles make for an ugly beast that fights itself and is chaotic in nature.
A Republic can survive the troubled times ahead of us.
What we have now will not and allow a Free People to remain Free.