Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Thursday, November 17, 2005

On Tuesday, FEMA announced that on Dec. 1 it would stop paying hotel bills for 50,000 families in hotels around the United States, except in Louisiana and Mississippi, where the cutoff date would be Jan. 7. This could strand more than 19,000 people who are still in hotel and motel rooms in the Houston area.

If your house has ever fallen into a lake you would know that it is not that easy to pick up the pieces and move on. This is a rare opportunity for President Bush to step in and demonstrate compassionate conservatism by extending hotel stays through February. Just think of it as "late check-out" - like when you oversleep after a late night clubbing, and you look at the clock and it's already noon.

The people at these motels have lost everything and they need a helping hand. Sure, some people will be lazy and not look for a way out and mooch off government assistance. But, if there was ever a time to give people the benefit of the doubt, it is in the aftermath of Katrina, a disaster created and exacerbated by government incompetence at the federal, state and local level.

3 Comments:

Those lazy bastards need to get off their fat asses and get a job. How ridiculous. I didn't even know the government was paying for their "hotel stays" until January 2006! They should be kicked out on their asses now.

The mexicans sneak across the border and find work within days all the time. If you extend the stay of these "hotel people", you will simply be extending their laziness. Those types never lift a finger unless they have to.
posted by Larry Checkers, at 11/17/2005 2:38 PM

I think it's a tough call: who knows how many of the people staying in hotels around the country are really trying "to pick up the pieces" and get back to more or less normal lives in New Orleans? On the other hand, I heard a report on NPR just this afternoon (11/18) that there's still no electricity in most of N.O. Until that essential power source is restored, what do these people have to go back to? You can't rebuild your home, much less your city, without lights, refrigeration, etc., etc. This is the fault of the utility company there (I'm under the impression, perhaps mistaken, that there's only one such beast in "The Big Easy").

And just to clarify one statement Wayne made in this otherwise excellent article about "FEMA's Latest Fiasco": the governments, from the Federal all the way down to the local, didn't "create" the Katrina disaster, but their inexcusable incompetence certainly exacerbated it!
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