Gov. Mitt Romney yesterday acknowledged that alcohol abuse has been a problem among Hurricane Katrina evacuees since their arrival on Cape Cod last month, but said there was little the state could do to stop the refugees from spending their federal money on booze.
"It was quite obvious in the first day or two that we might have an issue with alcohol,'' Romney said, responding to a Herald report that some of the 235 evacuees used their $2,000 federal relief handouts to binge on liquor in public....
The debit card system adopted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross assumes that most people will act – and spend – responsibly, especially in the wake of a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina. Herald reporters Maggie Mulvihill and David Wedge have discovered otherwise.
Some of the Katrina evacuees housed at Camp Edwards on the Cape have used those stipends to buy liquor and to fund visits to a local strip club. And because booze was banned on the base itself, sometimes the good times were rolling at a Falmouth strip mall, where public drinking turned into a police matter...
This is really a sad situation...
...it reminds me of what my grandma used to say: One bad apple can spoil the entire barrel...
...see for yourself as this editorial continues:
So taxpayers are well within their rights to feel ``taken'' by the tiny minority of evacuees who abused not only the system but our hospitality. Victims of future disasters may have to pay for that abuse with new restrictions on government generosity.
We have never been huge fans of an eat-your-peas brand of nanny government. However, sadder but wiser taxpayers may now insist on it...
Yes...future refugees will be paying the price for this one for a long, long time to come...
DR