Necessary Roughness

The Smoking Gun reports that some federal assistance money disbursed to support Katrina and Rita victims was instead spent on strip clubs, a pistol, a tattoo, and casinos. Payments were facilitated by those $2000 debit cards doled out by Congress.

Take money from a less than moral “charity”, expect equally moral behavior.

I could see, though, how someone would need a gun in Louisiana right after Katrina. $1300 for a pistol seems excessive; Smith & Wesson sells them for half as much. Either the demand was insanely high, or this guy just wasn’t a careful shopper.

I do like the guys who broke the law to pay for consequences incurred by breaking the law: the bail bond payment and the traffic violations.

USA Today reports that hurricane funds were used to pay for rooms in luxury hotels in New York, Chicago, and Panama City, FL, to the tune of $438, $399, and $375 a night, respectively. I wish I had that kind of travel budget.

FEMA eventually set a rate cap, according to Skinner’s statement. But his staff found that FEMA in December still paid up to $364 a night for rooms in San Diego, and up to $339 a night for New Orleans rooms. Those hotels were not identified.

FEMA rented 773 rooms for more than $150 a night at a total cost of $147,935, Skinner’s written statement showed. An audit on the costs is expected in weeks, said Marty Metelko, a Skinner spokeswoman.

“The hotels made their services available, and we paid their rates,” said FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews, who said the average price of rooms was $60 per night.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and other Democrats on the Senate panel asked whether the facilities could be investigated for potential price-gouging.

“The hotels were taking advantage of an emergency situation involving innocent victims,” said Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., after the hearing. “If there’s a law being broken, then it ought to be prosecuted.”

I know we should expect Democrats to be completely ignorant about market forces and to think that they have all the knowledge in the world to determine what is a fair price, but we can continue to remind everybody else.

If there is a hotel operating in New Orleans after Katrina that means people worked overtime to rebuild it and clean it up. Increased demand for labor means that those hotels likely paid top dollar so that the labor doesn’t work on other, more lucrative jobs. Additionally, new materials likely had to be brought in, again at premium prices to keep them from being shipped elsewhere. A price is only too high if there is equivalent service at a lower rate, and when people spend money they earn, they will stay elsewhere and pay the lower rate.