PRIVATIZED DISASTER RELIEF? David Kirkham emails:

My sister in law is from New York and asked our family to send her items so she could send them to her family. Things are tough there. They requested gloves, batteries, flash lights, and garbage bags (among other things). We found 12 work gloves for just over $12 on Amazon! With Prime, shipping is free and we know these gloves will actually make it directly where they are needed (instead of donating $10 to someone’s administration).

All this made me think about Instapundit. What about this–can we send supplies directly to our fellow Instapundit readers to help out? Maybe you know a needy reader there who we could ship to? Perhaps they could even become a depot to ship items to that they could then distribute (not redistribute) to their friends and family.

Hmm. For this to work I’d need trusted people on the ground, and reliable UPS delivery. Not sure it’s doable, but it’s an interesting idea.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Meryl Yourish.