I definitely have to agree here. People from all over banded together to make those donations from their own hard-earned money.

A LV purse????? I've been working since I was 16, and I don't even own a LV purse.

I can't say I liked the story about the big group of evacuees who went to Red Lobster, ordered a ton of food, then announced to the restaurant that they were not going to tip b/c they were poor evacuees. Maybe I'm a heartless *****, but give me a break. It's one thing to quietly tell the waiter that they are thankful for the services, but they cannot afford a large tip, and it's quite another to announce it to the entire restaurant that they are not going to tip just because they are from NO. Like someone else mentioned, waiters LIVE on their tips, so even if it was just going to be a very small tip, I think the waiter would have been grateful for it. (Side question: Don't most restaurants have a built-in tip if the party is big enough?)

While I know (or at least hope) that these kinds of stories are the vast minority, I can't help but feel that some of these people are taking advantage of the whole evacuee thing (Being given places to stay, food to eat, money to buy necessities, even JOBS), and to be pretty honest it makes me mad.

If someone has a FEMA issued debit card and wants to spend it on Pottery Barn or LV or Bart's Bottomless Donut shop, I guess there's really nothing we can do except to marvel at their lack of practicality.

If, however, they can go back and get *another* debit card after they essentially wasted the first one, then that's just wrong.

Regarding the group at the Red Lobster...These folks probably didn't turn trashy overnight - they were probably loutish, poor tippers BEFORE the tragedy. As for the waiter having the decency to not expect a tip (someone upthread mentioned this; can't remember who), I think that's ridiculous. The waiter is there to do his job and to get paid for it. Not perform works of charity. Maybe he already gave to the Red Cross; you never know.

Besides, the table of evacuees could have thought ahead and forgone an appetizer or a dessert or maybe the add-on crab cluster so they would have enough left for the tip.

[off-topic]doesn't the restaurat automatically put the tip on the bill for a large group? They do it down here for groups bigger then 6 people.[/off-topic]

Some places do, but some don't. Some places, it is only for parties of 8 or 10 or more I believe.

What should the 9/11 families have done with their money? They got enormous amounts from private citizens ad the government.
I am sure they used some of their money frivolously . . . from our points of view.

THANK YOU!!! There was a lady on Dr. Phil (I think) that was crying because she went through the $ 5 million :eek: (not $2,000) within a year or so just buying crap.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/defens.../randon911.htm

I didn't realize that the average civilian survivor's family of 9/11 got 3.1 million dollars and that the police and fire fighters got 4.2 million on average.

It seems unfair to me in the abstract that EMS personel got more money than the civilians. Although I understand that their unions and organizations were very effective in gobbling up charity money.

I think what happened was that EMS personel got shares of the money that were earmarked for "Victims" but that the civlian victims didn't get money that was deliberately solicited by the unions and associations of EMS people.

In fairness, either both accounts should have been merged or else the EMS personel should have only benfited from their own fund.

Although maybe I am wrong? Did EMS receive full shares of the charity geared towards general "victims" as well as the government pay out?

Given the discrepancies in pay outs . . well katrina victims can buy as many purses as they like and as many lap dances.

Places could refuse to accept the cards (i.e. only for use in grocery stores, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, drug stores, and clothing stores). Seems to me their profiting just as much as the people that are abusing it.

Not to mention there were tons of them that tried to get over. I had to take a supervisor call once from a NY fireman. He was highly upset because he wanted our company to delete his entire $2,000 cell phone bill. Yes, during & after 9/11 we gave them $0 bills because they had to use their phones to communicate to clear up the mess - and rightly so. But this guy had a bill over $2000 and had been calling running up his bill in the thousands since then and getting sympathetic reps & sups to delete them. The date when he called me & cussed me out - over a yr later.

If large companies that are run by MBAs and so forth have major problems with "misapropreating funds", then I don't see why we're suprised when the averaged Joe does it. If they didn't want funds spent on things like that, then pehaps they should have gotten them all Wal-Mart gift cards. I'm not defending their actions, because I think it's pretty stupid how they are using that money and I know whomever donated probably didn't have that in mind as their reason for donating.

I read somewhere where the firefighters' widows received somewhere along the lines of $500,000 just for having a spouse die within the line of duty in addition to the firefighters' salaries for the rest of their lives. That doesn't even consider the 9/11 compensation fund. These women were getting boob jobs and buying Escalades.

I'd like to think that these people are merely practicing retail therapy (or stripper therapy), and that others never had the best priorities when it came to money, are the extreme minority.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, but the reality is that this is probably not true. And it's not just them...I think about 80% of Americans (myself included, sometimes) do not have the correct proirities when it comes to money. But I think the sometimes is the key here. This is not a good time for them to be spending frivolusly.

That's your opinion. Personally, I find it perfectly reasonable that somebody might go to a strip club or buy a Louis Vuitton handbag (is this even documented anywhere or is it one of those "OMG you guys I heard somewhere that..." things) after suffering the kind of loss people have suffered as the result of this hurricane. Seriously, who freaking cares? You can't police it and if you don't like donating money and not being able to approve how every cent of that money is spent, don't donate money. I'd rather have money I've donated go to Louis than to Wal-Mart, but that's a-whole-nother discussion and I don't donate to the Red Cross or Salvation Army anyway.

The thing is we don't know - who knows what percentage are spending their money like that. Also, does that mean they're spending all that money like that, or are they buying those items after buying necessities?

If anyone has that big of a problem with this, they can donate to the Humane Society or another cause. You can control your donations that way and make your own statement if you don't like the way the money is being used.

And you know this because of what? All of your experience in post-disaster living?

Like others have said, it's not really your place to determine what people can spend their money on. If there weren't restrictions placed on the debit cards like other assistance programs (I'm sure you're familiar with WIC), then they can do what they want.