These $2000 debit cards....VERY strange - now mentioned all over media

[jackstraw45]

Few questions:

1. Are recipients required to sign papers in order to get the cards? What kind of indemnity is included? Any loyalty oaths involved (okay, kidding about that one)?

2. What kind of precedent is this setting for future disasters? Does the Buish administration think that a $2000 "payoff" to victims will sway public opinion? Sort of a $300 "tax cut" redux?

3. What proof of hurricane exposure is offered in exchange for one of these cards?

Sorry but I just get the feeling that the Feds are finding a way to screw victims all over again.

[Tennessee Gal]

1. Screw the victims, screw the taxpayers, screw the American voters

All in a day's work to right wing fascists.

[Must_B_Free]

2. Next story will be about how they spent the money

on booze, drugs, and cigarettes...

oh yeah, and hookers...

[jackstraw45]

3. "Registration process" - wonder what rights victims have to sign away...

http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18686

"The registration process is one of the first steps in receiving aid through FEMA's programs, and assistance is being expedited to assist those in need."

Translation - give us your name & contact info along with the info about your military age children. You WILL be contacted by a recruiter.

Currently, the amount of money being distributed through the expedited assistance program is $2,000 per household. This expedited assistance is made available by FEMA to those residents severely impacted by disasters from Mississippi and Louisiana who do not have the usual means of identifying damage to their property or unable to provide the immediate documentation necessary.

Translation - many of those who register will not be approved but the government will hold on to your registration information for further use.

[Horse with no Name]

4. Do-fucking-what?

How are people going to identify damage to their property and provide documentation from points beyond New Orleans?
Is this going to turn out to just help the more affluent evacuees and again screw the poor?

[electron_blue]

5. well among other things, I'm sure their registration packet will include

registration for the DOD Sep 11 peace parade next week, and registration for the draft for eligible men.

I see how wrong I was. I predicted the payout would be only $5,000 per victim. I totally highballed it.

[ultraist]

8. Info for recruiters! How convenient.

Translation - give us your name & contact info along with the info about your military age children. You WILL be contacted by a recruiter.

[jackstraw45]

10. FYI

That was MY translation and not from any FEMA document...just to be clear.

That said, I have no DOUBT that all information will be shared with recruiters.

[targetpractice]

13. Waive their rights to sue anybody, probably.

... like the strings attached to the money given to 9/11 families.

[flordehinojos]

6. that $2000 debit card ..... is bush's 30 pieces of silver to the poor.

$2000 these days, take you no where, buy you nothing, especially when you have to think about starting over--finding a job, a place to stay, first and last plus security deposits, that alone will be more than $2000; restaurant food if you have no place to cook will take your $2000 away so quick!

bush is trying to buy america's silence.....

wake up america -- a $2000 debit card should not bury bush's incompetence; it should not silence you before his nazified administration; it will not feed the hungry; it will not return them to their soil; it will not and will not wipe out bush's crime...

a $2000 debit card is bush's 30 silver coins to the poor.

[JanMichael]

7. $2,000 will do shit for a family that's lost everything.

It's a scam like the pittance tax "refunds" a couple of years ago.

[Pobeka]

9. Anyone want to bet > 1% of victims get a card?

Talk is cheap. They put this out there so we can swoon over how compassionate the GOP administration is.

But there will be no follow-up. By the time only a couple of thousand or less actually got through the necessary red-tape and required documentation, it will be a story no longer on the radar screen. And nobody will know that this is just another "media op", to coin a new phrase.

[KoKo]

14. Yes...we've seen this before with Bush. A Big upfront Announcement and

the money doesn't follow. "No Child Left Behind" and other programs pushed through by Repug Congress. It sounds BIG gets all the M$M to go with the story...and then the money never appears.

This one will get all the RW'ers up in arms thinking folks are getting a "free lunch" and then those folks won't get a penny. Meanwhile ordinary Americans think that Bush was so good to these people that they should give him a big bounce in the polls.

If only we had Media follow through he wouldn't get away with this crap over and over and over. :-(

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

11. This is easy! I call this the Rhode Island Syndrome

In Rhode Island, a state famous for cronyism and illegal shenanigans, it was pretty well known that as a politician you could buy votes from the fairly clueless populace with something as simple as a cup of coffee. It didn't matter that Joe "the Shrimphead" Pxxxx* was skimming money from the local coffers, or that Mrs. Shrimphead was being paid big bucks as the head of the ladies auxillary , and that Joey Shrimphead Jr. was also making big bucks as the local parking meter inspector. If you bought someone a cup of coffee in the local doughnut shop (located every 200 yards in Rhode Island) then you had a loyal voter forever. For some of these folks, $2000 will make them forget about the horrors of the Superdome and make them consider FEMA their friends for life.


*Note - the name Joe "the Shrimphead" Pxxxx is something I completely made up, but it could inadvertently resemble the name of someone living or dead and I mean no disrespect. Really.

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. So, are the richest 1% GREED PIGS going to fore go their obscene

tax cuts to pick up this tab? Hey Rush Oxycontinboy, care to pony up? I have a feeling that BUSHco is finding away to screw us all over! Estate tax anyone? No bid Halliburton contract to clean up and rebuild NO? How come the people who lived there are not being employed to rebuild their city? If the Feds hadn't scattered the survivors to the wind, they wouldn't need this paltry $2000. We are all going to get screwed.