Our finest Americans give cause for a reckoning of their upstanding business practices:

Two reports released by the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department’s office of inspector general detail a series of accounting flaws, fraud or mismanagement in their initial review of how $85 billion in federal aid is being spent.

The two audits found that up to 900,000 of the 2.5 million applicants who received aid under FEMA’s emergency cash assistance program — which included the $2,000 debit cards given to evacuees — were based on duplicate or invalid Social Security numbers, or false addresses and names.

Separately, the Justice Department said Monday that federal prosecutors have filed fraud, theft and other charges against 212 people accused of scams related to Gulf Coast hurricanes. Forty people have pleaded guilty so far, the latest report by the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force said. Many defendants were accused of trying to obtain emergency aid, typically a $2,000 debit card, issued to hurricane victims by FEMA and the American Red Cross.

Thousands of additional dollars appear to have been squandered on hotel rooms for evacuees that were paid at retail rather than the contractor’s lower estimated cost. They included $438 rooms in New York City and beachfront condominiums in Panama City, Fla., at $375 a night, according to the audits…. (foxnews.com)

Americans are a sordid lot.

Now imagine what would happen once Hillary Clinton implements her health care plan. Already creaking under the strain of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, the U.S. treasury would collapse under the load of sickness and handouts that the saving grace of universal health care would bring.

“First I thought George Bush was the problem. Next I thought my local elected leaders were the problem. Then I realized the problem is us.” —Outraged Richard