Posted on 09/10/2005 7:23:09 AM PDT by Kackikat
NEWSMEDIA criticizes FEMA every hour and politicians want Michael Brown to be fired. The slow response by FEMA and the fact that The Red Cross and The Salvation Army were ready to go should bother all of us. The other problem that FEMA's response teams must get STATE Homeland permission is also troubling.
When the suffering victims of Mississippi and Louisiana needed a general, we sent them a lawyer.
FEMA should be dissolved.
> FEMA should be dissolved.
But first, appoint some useless liberal to run it,
like Hillary, or the governor of DULA
(Democratic Utopia of Louisiana).
Those other groups did what they are trained to do. FEMA is a coordination organization. The coordination needed for this storm is unlike any other.
I do have to wonder if we spent so much effort on planning for a tight coordinated response to a localized problem (terrorist attack) to the detriment of a generalized and widespread response to a storm like Katrina (which hit an extremely LARGE area, knocking out all "nearby" response centers -- some military bases which might have been used if New Orleans had a levey breech without warning were down for two days because of the storm).
FEMA was a Jimmy Carter created cluster-F$CK! It hasn't improved with age.
A lawyer who was canned from one of his previous jobs. The bottom line is the faith based disaster relief organizations do far better job then the government.
Why hasn't it been abolished, then?
Same reason the Dept of Mis-education hasn't been abolished.
Those are good points (widespread area of storm, etc.).
But I still think that if the mayor of NO and the governor of LA hadn't been so dysfunctional, many of the major problems would have been averted. The hurricane wasn't really the big problem in NO - it was the flood afterwards. If NO, which has always known that the main threat was flooding, had even had a local evacuation plan in place and operative, just to get people to high ground and spread them out in shelters (we use school gyms as shelters here in Florida), this all would have been different.
So in a sense, the disaster was widespread, but the failure was really only in one very localized area, and not actually from sudden hurricane-type damage (wind and waves) but from a related and slower event that had even been forecast in numerous projections.
If you want to go back to politicians who actually meant what they said in rolling back government, you'll have to return to the days of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
I am disappointed by the pork laden bills that have been signed into law by President Bush lately. I support the President, but he really does need to listen to the words of the Great Man, when he was inaugurated in 1981:
"In our present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems...government is the problem."
Regards, Ivan
I understand their focus, but The Red Cross and Salvation Army stood by unused due to the State Homeland Security office saying NO to their entering NOLA> Don't think I am blaming FEMA for everything, not at all. I blame Mayor of NOLA and Gov of LA for not doing what they were supposed to do.
My question is about these $250,000 payments from FEMA to anyone who loses house on beach in a disaster area....1000 of those homes leads to quarter of a billion dollars....and these people are wealthy, they aren't poor.
I think we need to SIMPLIFY things for Red Cross and SAlvation Army.
I agree with you. However I think the inability of FEMA to function properly means they are not the answer.
How do you feel about getting rid of FEMA and using a military man reporting directly to President, who can tell The REd Cross and Salvation Army when to go in?
Sounds like a good idea. FEMA appears to only add a layer of bureaucracy to relief efforts.
Regards, Ivan
I think FEMA is probably not the answer to a major disaster such as this that was badly handled on a local level. FEMA was never meant to be a first responder - they hand out loan and grant applications and arrange for contractors to repair damage after the event. On the other hand, it is true that we really don't have anybody delegated as coordinator of first responders, and maybe this needs to be examined.
Theoretically, the city and state in question should react first, but here we had a total breakdown in the city and state - and there was no way to take over from them without invoking the Insurrection Act (or declaring war on the state of LA, which probably wouldn't have been a great precedent!).
States' rights are very important, and the US Constitution is essentially based on a principal of subsidiarity. The lowest level acts first and solves the problem; if it can't, the problem goes on up the chain. In this case, the lowest level (city) didn't act at all, and the next link in the chain (LA) refused to act, and there is currently no constitutional way to bridge that gap and go on up the chain to the federal government.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.