FEMA Funds Football Tix, Sex Changes

FEMA's bad press continues unabated, with the revelation that the agency paid out up to $1.4 billion in questionable claims after Hurricane Katrina. Here's a short list of where some of the money went, according to early AP , USA Today and Bloomberg reports:

• $2,358 to someone who claimed a damaged house in a New Orleans cemetery.
• $2,358 in rental assistance to a person who also got $8,000 to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel.
• $4,358 to someone who listed his residence as a UPS store.
• Another $4,358 to a guy locked up in a Mississippi prison.
• $139,000 to one person who used 13 different Social Security numbers and 13 addresses to obtain funds.
• Thousands of dollars worth of debit cards that were used to pay for a divorce, season football tickets, a tropical vacation, adult videos, massage-parlor sessions and a sex change operation.

Of course, at the risk of sounding flip, if FEMA's going to make a billion-dollar mistake, this is the kind of one you want it to make, right? They rushed to put the money out there in the mistaken assumption that they weren't going to be grossly ripped off in the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the country. They were obviously wrong about that, and could use much better controls, but at least in this instance they were trying to do the right thing.