Judge won't make FEMA continue paying directly for hotel rooms

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A judge turned aside a last-minute attempt Monday to force the federal government to continue paying directly for hotel rooms of 12,000 families made homeless by last year's hurricanes.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has promised evacuees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita they will still receive federal assistance they can use toward hotel stays or fixing their ruined homes, though FEMA will no longer pay for the hotels directly after Monday.

Attorneys for the evacuees tried unsuccessfully to get U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval to issue a temporary restraining order aimed at forcing FEMA to continue the direct hotel payments. The lawyers argued the forthcoming money from FEMA will not be enough for reasonable living accommodations or for continued hotel stays.

The decision would result in 8,000 to 10,000 families being put out of hotels across the United States on Monday, said Tracie Washington, an attorney representing evacuees. Many of those families began packing their bags and checking out of hotels as early as late Monday morning

A few years back I had a custom home built in Argyle, TX. The builder had been in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a number of years, working first for a big builder, and then in business for himself. One evening he told me the story about how one day in the late 1970's or early 1980's the INS swooped into the development his company had been building in Coppell, TX, and hauled off over 100 of the illegals who had been the mainstay of his work force.

The next morning he drove down into predominately-black south Dallas looking for able-bodied workers, and saw three or four strapping young men sitting on the porch of a tumbledown house. He approached them and offered them $10 per hour, 40-hours a week, payday on Fridays. The men just laughed at him, saying, "Why should we bust our butts working when our women get welfare and keep us in food and beer?" He drove around and stopped at several other houses with the same result.

Finally he called the mayor of Coppell and asked him how he could keep the INS from snatching up his workers. The mayor asked him to come over to his house, and showed him some remodeling and room addition work that he would like to have done. He said that they completed the work on the mayor's house (at no cost to the mayor, of course) in a week or two, and his company had no further difficulties with the INS.

FEMA aid is another form of welfare and like other kinds it looks like it will be forever.

The biggest foreign and domestic problems that the USA has are one and the same, WELFARE. We have people coming to this country because of the free medical care and other social programs. We have poor people here and we are importing more. Our educational system almost guarantees they will not be able to support themselves so guess who steps up with more social programs? Our country has lost its compass because of welfare.

I get very frustrated with that situation. My husband works in and out of black communities selling snack food. he is practically ambushed at every stop by able bodied black men begging for money and food.

Then we drive through certain areas and we see all these Mexicans out working.

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