No Bailout For The Wealthy

From the APP:

Bailout for wealthy decried if they choose to gamble

Kristina Fiore said she's got little sympathy for wealthy people who build multimillion-dollar homes on vulnerable waterfront property, then want help when Mother Nature makes a mess there.

"I'm honestly tired of hearing people complaining (about storm damage) who have put so much money into a home," Fiore said. "What they spend is their business, but they should know they're building in a vulnerable area. Then (after damage), local taxpayers get stuck cleaning it up. I don't think it's fair. When FEMA pays, that still comes out of our pockets."

After reading a letter to the editor in the Press supporting a proposal for a state catastrophe fund, financed by insurance premium dollars, Fiore argued that the last thing the state needs is another government program taking money from the middle class (via insurance premiums) to benefit the wealthy.

"It's increasing the size of government and, again, passing the cost to the taxpayers," said Fiore, who works in human resources at an area technical-services company. Her letter on the subject, published July 23 and reprinted at right, was judged by the Press editorial staff as the best letter of the month.
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"If you're going to build on the beach, it may get flooded, that's common sense," she said. The taxes, and the use of eminent domain to take waterfront homes from middle-income families to build luxury condominiums for the wealthy, all point to how New Jersey allows "the elite pushing the middle class out. From the government down to the people moving in, that's the bottom line."