FEMA pushing dollars to Pat Robertson?

Posted by Matthew Wheeland at 3:09 PM on September 1, 2005.

Suppose you want to donate money to help all the millions of people who are suffering horribly because of the hurricane in Mississippi and Louisiana. Suppose you decided to start your search of likely organizations by going to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's website.

Suppose, once there, you followed the helpful banner from the front page to the donations page. Once there, you'd see that the 3rd group listed under "Cash donations," after the Red Cross and Operation Second Harvest, is Operation Blessing, the organization founded by none other than Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson.

Sploid credits privacy watchdog Bill Scannell for the tip, who says, "It's an outrage. Operation f**cking Blessing? And it's right underneath the Red Cross link!"

[Note: Since Sploid posted, FEMA has changed the donations link (the link above is accurate as of 3pm PST) and moved Operation Blessing to the third position on the list.]

Another outraged AlterNet reader sent an email to FEMA that read, in part:

I was aghast when I clicked on the link to donate and saw that FEMA is suggesting that people give their money to Pat Robertson's "Operation Blessing." Just last week, he was suggesting that we should assassinate democratically elected world leaders -- there is no way he should be endorsed at this time of crisis in our own nation. We need compassionate leadership, not vengeful, hysterical politics.

Robertson’s shell organizations have already collected more than $25 million from the federal government under various “faith based” federal-handout programs. And with millions of distraught citizens looking to FEMA for help in finding reputable organizations to help Katrina survivors, Robertson stands to profit magnificently from the horror that has fallen on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Matthew Wheeland is an Associate Editor at AlterNet.