The US General Accounting Office has conducted its first audit of the Federal Emergency Management Agency disbursements from Hurricane Katrina. Their findings have included some fascinating accounting, um, feats.
As you might remember, a few days after the wall to wall coverage of Katrina, FEMA was handing out debit cards, preloaded with cash, to the disaster victims. The ostensible idea was sound: Here’s some cash to cover immediate needs, since you’ve lost everything. It would seem that ‘immediate needs’ for people are different.
Champagne for one need. Dom Perignon bought at a Hooters in San Antonio, to be specific. For God’s sake, man, not at a Hooters. They have no idea what temperature to serve it at and I sincerely doubt that they have the correct flutes for the proper enjoyment. Then again, considering it was at Hooters, I also sincerely doubt it was a proper vintage year (1999) or was accompanied by a proper serving of Sevrugia Caviar. Peasants!
There was some appreciation of the cinematic arts with the FEMA money. Specifically, copies of that major film work, “Girls Gone Wild Part XIV” It is important to recognize the cinematic oeuvre of the director, Snoop Dogg, that despite the scope of the disaster that Snoop Doggs’ standing as an auteur and cineaste must still be controversial and forward looking. Or, they just wanted to see drunk college girls showing their tits.
The New Orleans Saints NFL club was also the recipient of season ticket holders preferring to use federal funds, instead of their own money, for five seats.
Naturally, the legal profession was represented well in the disclosures. Divorce lawyer Mark Lipkin said he didn’t remember anyone using a FEMA debit card to pay legal fees, but the General Accounting Office had the paper. Someone paid off $1,000 worth of their bill with FEMA bucks.
There were the usual finagles. Someone took off to Hawaii and billed FEMA for accommodation. Another person went to Punta Cana in Puerto Rico on the federal dime. Enterprising federal inmates managed to get their hands on the FEMA money too, usually listing a graveyard or a post office box as their destroyed dwelling, pleading for assistance.
It is not surprising that there were fiddles with the FEMA money. Even the best-run program of funding has a percentage of skim or shrinkage in it: That is just the way life is. My only complaint was the sheer mundane tedium of the fraud. Holiday trips, titty videos. booze and season tickets to a fourth rate football team?
I want to see the kind of fraud that would make the General Accounting Office stand up and applaud your audacity, your verve and your relentless, single-minded devotion to milking the FEMA tit as dry as Phoenix in August.
Remember, your audience is Congress and the Senate, where accepting free flights to exotic destinations and briefcases of cash from lobbyists and political action committees is considered part of their divine right of Kings. Anyone can steal a few thousand bucks, but it takes a real patriot to steal millions.
The innocent victims of Hurricane Katrina showed no spunk, no imagination and no skill. That is just un-American. Show some fire, some gumption and some sense of style! Be a real patriot and bill FEMA for millions of dollars. Haliburton does. Blackwater Security does. Bechtel does. They never wind up in front of the General Accounting Office, looking at 10 to 20 years for federal fraud. But I bet the poor mook who bought a six pack with his FEMA cash gets 10 years in the can for his $4 fiddle.
RoadDave 