Hooters Wants to Pay FEMA for Champagne Bought with Hurricane Relief Funds

[LiberalHeart]

WASHINGTON -- The Hooters restaurant chain has a $200 check ready for FEMA, which represents reimbursement for a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne bought with Hurricane Katrina relief money. FEMA will be happy to have the money back.

http://wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=5037080

[MADem]

1. For two hundred bucks, Hooters has bought a ton of free advertising

Their PR clowns know what they are doing.

[jobycom]

3. No kidding, that's brilliant! nt.

[Richardo]

2. Funny - for some reason I thought they might do that when I head the story

Weird psychic shit.

[Crabby Appleton]

4. maybe

I'll stop by a Hooters and thank them in person.

[Rex]

5. So did they celebrate while NOLA went underwater?

It's sick how Katrina is being used to scam money from the poor and needy. I can only hope somebody pays for it down the road.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

6. Why Is This Surprising?

They're just like a repub. They got caught, so now they're trying to look like they care, and it was just an oversight.

That's the Amerikan way though. Try to get away with crap, and hope you don't get caught. Worry about any consequences later.

[MADem]

8. Well, the ones who did wrong were the ones who USED the card

not the business that processed it. For all they knew, the user of the card could have been entitled to it, and hit the jackpot in a lottery, gotten an inheritance, received an insurance check, thus not needing the cash for primary expenses anymore.

There were no caveats attached to the thing, like food stamp cards, it was a Chase card with a preset spending limit and no controls on it. The bulk of them were instantly converted to untraceable cash.

This whole business was a FEMA fuckup. And while I think the Hooters establishment is, to put it kindly, a bit neanderthal, they aren't the ones who should be blamed when the government throws money around like drunken sailors.

[rinsd]

9. Got caught? Hooters wasn't the one ripping us off.

But why let facts get in the way of a good rant.

"It bothers me as an American that resources that were intended to help victims of this tremendous tragedy were spent this way," Hooters chairman Bob Brooks said in an announcement from Atlanta. "Even if it's in my restaurants, it's still not right. If FEMA will let me know where to send the check I'll get the $200 out right away."

"Following Katrina, Brooks sent one of his Hooters Air 737s loaded with supplies into the Gulf Coast disaster area. The restaurant chain also donated $225,000 to the Red Cross Katrina relief fund."

What a real scumbag :eyes:

[texasleo]

10. facts?

no way.

lol

[Ian David]

7. Hooters are big Repuke donors... 100% Red

$0 to Democrats
$38,000 to Republicans
$0 to Others
$38,000 in Total Contributions
http://www.buyblue.org/node/5809/view/summary

[rinsd]

12. Its a more complicated than that and buyblue could be wrong

I found this stuff initially thru newsmeat then I did a little more work.

All of Coby Brooks' contributions went to this guy's congressional campaign

http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/campaigns/mark_struthers_mcbride.asp?cycle=04

If you go thru his donors list you will see quite a few Hooters or Hooters Air contributions. From as far as I can tell almost half this guy's donations came from Hooters related people.

Here's Robert Brooks' contributions as near as I can tell.

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=GA&last=BROOKS&first=ROBERT

It seems he did donate to Max Clelland and a couple of other Democrats but he was a big supporter of Newt :-(

[SoCalDem]

11. Hooters is a BUSINESS.. This is GOOD business

200 is a small price to pay for the ppositive advertising they get.. I have NO problem with Hooters.. They saw a "need" and filled it.. Guys always like to be served by good looking young women in skimpy clothes.. If there are young women willing to work there and there are customers willing to pay to go there,......no harm no foul...

No one forces anyone to work there or eat there :)

[Lisa]

13. doesn't someone here at DU have a daughter who works there?

I remember hearing about it in a thread, a year or two ago.

And yes, it's a very good PR move on their part ... not just the donations they made, but coming out with this. As you say, they are likely getting a lot of positive (and free!) advertising.

[Vogon_Glory]

14. Hooters Playing To Both Sides

Hooters, being a sensible outfit, is probably playing to both sides. On the one hand, they're appealing to fiscal conservatives, thus armoring themselves against attacks by fundamentalist Christians who don't like them very much. On the other, Hooters' probably doesn't want to be tarred with the brush of Republican scandal should a mighty wind blow through the halls of Congress and make the GOP a minority party in January, 2007.

[LiberalHeart]

15. Yes, and their PR person deserves a raise.

It's a clever way to remove the taint of having their name show up in stories about Katrina rip-offs.