FEMA: the madness continues

I've already laid out my view of FEMA's worthiness (or lack thereof) in this post. But with the bureau's ongoing woes I can't resist piling on a little more. This Fox News article tells us the good news that the FEMAcrats have scrapped their ludicrous system of handing out debit cards. Should we be surprised that this thing disappeared about as quickly as it was created? The only thing that should surprise us is that the government actually did anything so fast.

This hellish idea of instant money with no checks or protections was doomed from the start. Free dough? No provisions to restrict purchases? Are you kidding me?! Heck, let's just throw some money at oppressive third world dictators while we're at it--they'll spend it all on behalf of their people, promise. But, unfortunately, the Einsteins at FEMA were apparently in too much of a hurry to save their sinking public image to bother thinking through the potential outcomes. (Given bureaucrats' profound intellect and ability to come to the right conclusion on, well, nothing, I'll admit that my "they were in a hurry" argument could be rather weak. The chances of the feds conjuring up a manageable solution would have been slim to none anyway.) Imagine yourself as a poor person...you just lost a lot of stuff...almost everything...someone hands you a buttload of cash...so you go and spend it all on the most vital things for you and your family, right? Uhh...yeah. Such astounding fiscal management skills are what got you to where you were before, right? Of course, I get it. Give people who are much more likely than Average Joe to blow money on useless wants a fistful of free money to do just that.* Great thinking, guys! That's so amazing...you must also be the architects of FEMA's impeccable disaster response plan. Yeah...it's starting to make sense now, I think I see how this fits together.

But wait, they're not discontinuing the handouts. They're just going back to the old way of handing out money (direct deposit with reams of paperwork). Hopefully that means more accountability so taxpayer money will...wait, that's not it either. The same handouts are still in effect, they're just handed out differently. So the end result hasn't changed. People are still getting free federal money that will no doubt be used as play money in far too many cases. And people are still getting paid by some federal government monstrosity because they were living in a high-risk area at the wrong time. (See the post linked above for my take on this.) Sorry but I just don't see the logic behind this, or how any taxpayer who supports reasonable federal spending can support this. It's that Robin Hood economics coming back to bite us again; the "you can't help others on your own so we'll take your money and help them for you" mentality once again rears its ugly head (combined with the usual "Don't like it? Tough, we're the gummint" mentality, of course).

So, while the article looked promising at first, it's just another disappointment in the ongoing fiasco that is the Katrina (government) relief effort. Serves me right for actually getting my hopes up about federal management of the situation. Will I ever learn?

*Perhaps this deserves more treatment, so allow me to make an could-be unfair generalization that's not true of all poor people and paints plenty of honest folks in a bad light but yet holds true for plenty of others. In a lot of cases people are poor because their fiscal discipline and financial management skills lead them to that point. In other words, they are severely lacking in the aforementioned areas. Either they have a track record of such behavior, meaning they're largely or at least slightly responsible for being where they are, or they've never had that kind of wealth to work with, meaning they likely don't have the practice and experience of managing money wisely (not their fault necessarily, but facts are facts). So some did it to themselves and, if given the chance, will do so again. Others will have money dropped on them and will likely mix too many wants with needs, and thus a significant amount of resources will have been wasted. These people need help but not in the form of large sums of cash with no strings attached. That's not help, that's an enabler.

Another way of thinking of it...How often are we not held responsible for how we spend money? We have to deal with credit checks. We have to submit receipts to our employer to prove we actually spent what we say we did (unless, of course, you work for the government). We have to prove in painstaking detail to the IRS how we spend some parts of our income. (Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the government cares so much about how I spend my money and yet is so willing to throw part of my income around with no way of upholding accountability?) And on and on. There's nothing wrong with making people be good stewards of money they are given. It happens all the time. So why not now?