THE CRUISES TO NOWHERE

On September 1, as tens of thousands of desperate Louisianans packed the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, FEMA was out buying 10,000 berths on full-service cruise ships. They gave Carnival Cruise Lines $236 million for a six month lease on three ships. These ships remain half empty as they bob in the Mississippi River and Mobile Bay.

If the ships were at capacity, with 7,116 evacuees, for six months, the price per evacuee would total $1,275 a week.

A seven-day Caribbean cruise out of Galveston normally costs around $599 a person, and that would include entertainment and the cost of actually making the ship move.

So actually, the government would have saved money if they had just sent all the evacuees on a six-month luxurious cruise.

The California Curmudgeon

A lot of this rant was stolen from Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post.