Saturday, February 14, 2009

Pyrrhic Victory

Well, it isn't according to the dictionary definition; however, it felt that way.

This morning I went to Mickey D's to get a simple Sausage McMuffin and small oj for breakfast. I get to the window and place my order. The cashier rings up a Sausage Egg McMuffin. I say, "No! I don't want egg. I just want the Sausage McMuffin, NO egg." She rings that up ... and it's the same price!

I say, "Wait a minute! The Sausage McMuffin costs less than the Sausage Egg McMuffin. You get less!" The cashier insists that they're the same price. I hold up the line for a bit, assuming she's talking to a manager. She gets back on the speaker and repeats the total from before.

ARGGGGGH!

I cancel my order and drive off. I refuse to pay extra for obvious stupidity (on the part of management) or laziness (on the part of the cashier).

So, I drove 40-cents worth of gas to the next Mickey D's, got my Sausage McMuffin with no guff about that stupid egg being worth nothing, and saved 40 cents in the process.

Well, it was the principle of the thing.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Fiasco

Well, the whole of His Horribleness (Hurricane Ike, for those of you who haven't read my Her Horribleness blogs after Rita) is a fiasco. That's the nature of hurricanes. But this is about a particular fiasco in the midst of the general hurricane fiasco.

Ever since His Horriblness roared through in September last year, there has been a community in the area which is truly caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Storm surge, the waters that get shoved ashore with no other place to go than beyond protective barrier of coastal sand dunes, was the beastie which ate up the vast majority of lives in His Horribleness' wake. Miles inland, the water piled up 4 or more feet into homes, ruining everything they touched and ultimately producing mold in all that they didn't touch.

Of course, this has happened before many times in many places, and all one can do is mentally flog the idiots who choose to build in an area where the flood plain was so low.

However, that can't be said about the families in LaBelle. In good faith, they built or bought homes that the government surveyor said was completely out of the reach of flood waters (except, perhaps, in extremely extraordinary circumstances). The National Flood Insurance program even willingly sold them flood insurance because of those surveys.

Then comes His Horribleness.

Now all the governmental entities say, "Oops! We goofed! The surveys were wrong and your homes are actually 3 feet BELOW the flood plain. Sorry, but we can't help you."

And because of that goof, these people are trapped, homeless. They can't live in their homes because the flood waters made them uninhabitable. They can't repair their homes because they are now located in an area where building is prohibited, since they are below the flood plain. They can't sell their homes, either, for the same reasons. And, they can't afford to continue to pay for homes they can't live in while purchasing or renting elsewhere.

All of that is fiasco; however, this is where the real fiasco starts.

There is a federal buyout program available where the homeowners can get 75% of the home's appraised value. The kicker is that the homeowner has to come up with the other 25% elsewhere (other grants, savings accounts, additional loans, whatever).

Shoot! My home isn't even near a flood plain, but if I had to come up with an additional 25% of the appraised value, I certainly wouldn't have the wherewithal to meet the $25,000 required. So, even if they knew they were in a precarious position before the storm, I'd still feel sorryfor families caught in that crunch.

Here's what absolutely infuriates me, though: These people didn't know! It was a screwup completely out of their control and beyond their ability to catch and fix before the first foundation was laid. The county decided it wasn't going to help. Any of the federal monies coming down the pike are specifically prevented from being used as the 25% match. These poor people have been just plain screwed!

I can't even begin to imagine the stress, anger, and frustration of being in their position, and I lived in limbo for about 2 years after Her Horribleness. Yet I knew precisely where I would live and that I could still afford to live there. There was no specter of homelessness, rootlessness that these poor families are experiencing.

The intellectual side of me recognizes the difficulty the local government entities have in providing assistance to meet the 25% match, legal and empty coffer-wise. But it strikes me that there's a moral obligation to commit to providing some recompense for the screwup that came through their offices, to doing something to help bring healing to these poor homeless souls. In the meantime ...

Fiasco! Total fiasco!