LA Times: Don’t blame Katrina victims for misusing FEMA money

ROFL! Consider the source:

A hurricane of fraud?
FEMA did mismanage Katrina relief, but it’s wrong to blame victims for spending irresponsibly.

MOVE OVER, RECKLESS CONSUMERS. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has outdone your irresponsible spending by racking up a debit card bill so outrageous it could have been created using Mad Libs. Sex-change operations, vacations to the Dominican Republic and wild nights at strip clubs were all bought on the government’s dime by both con artists and legitimate victims of Hurricane Katrina. But try to keep that knee from jerking β€” although FEMA’s oversight was lacking, wasted money is an inevitable byproduct of providing rapid emergency assistance.

[…]

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.

This is hysterical. So victims of a hurricane should be given a free pass on misusing the money they were supposed to be using on essentials just because FEMA didn’t catch what they were doing? Yes, FEMA deserves some criticism for falling down on the job but does SOME blame not fall on the people who rec’d the money for spending it the way they did in the first place? This editorial is classic liberal jibberish: “Stop picking on the poor! It’s not THEIR fault that they spend money on things they shouldn’t!”

Update I: McQ writes:

This is just nonsense on a stick. Those that used the money for things like vacations, strip clubs and sex change operations weren’t “victims”. They are crooks. And the LA Times should know better than to try to cast crooks as “victims”.

True – by making them out to be “victims” the LAT has conveniently absolved them of any responsibility. A page right out of the Democratic playbook.

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