Hurricane victims asked to repay grants

Another mind-numbing hurricane-related fuck-up by the Bush regime!

Hurricane Katrina victims looking to rebuild their homes who battled red tape for months for a federal grant are now being asked to pay back tens of thousands of dollars each that they got from the grants. That's because the private contractor that the government appointed to run the program claims some people got too much. The contractor, ICF International, is hiring a collection firm to take back money from hurricane survivors.

What ICF - which is under investigation for payments it got to administer the program - is really doing is having the hurricane victims pay for ICF's own stupid mistakes. The hurricane survivors weren't overpaid. ICF is just trying to make them pay for its own incompetence. ICF is also said to be retaliating against applicants who appealed the amount of their grants if they received less money than what they felt they needed. At the same time, however, one-third of the qualified applicants still haven't seen a penny in grant money - so it seems to me that applicants are being underpaid, not overpaid.

Meanwhile, ICF is earning over $900,000,000 to run the grant program.

Sounds to me like...a fleecing of America!

(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080329/ap_on_re_us/katrina_collections)