Carnival

We went on a Royal Caribbean cruise last month. It was excellent. This morning the story is breaking about the contract that FEMA signed with Carnival immediately after KATRINA for the use of 3 cruise ships for 6 months, for $68.67 MILLION. In government spending terms, it's true this is just chump change, until you do the math. If the cruise ships were used to their full capacity for all 6 months, FEMAs cost is $1375 per passenger per week. I did a quick search and the MOST EXPENSIVE Carnival 7-day cruise I could find was $800, and any idiot with a phone or computer could find them for way less. This is for a trans-Atlantic, full service European cruise... Not a stationary, no entertainment cruise that FEMA got. This is not to mention the fact that the ships aren't even HALF FULL!!
I personally don't have time to do the math on how many MILLIONS we would have saved by simply sending any interested refugee on a 6-month luxury cruise around the world. Obviously the FEMA negotiators didn't either.