Posted on 10/30/2012 6:11:23 AM PDT by Zakeet
Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.
Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.
It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If New Yorkers had to wait around on FEMA they'd burn to the ground.
Before FEMA, how did Texas cope with the Galveston hurricane in 1900 that killed over 10,000 people? How did California survive the Great San Francisco Earthquake in 1906 that killed over 3,000 and destroyed 80% of that major city?
We are pitiful cry babies compared to Americans of that generation. They helped each other and didn’t wait for the federal government to take care of them when disaster struck. They were strong people who expected disasters in life, not weaklings who believe that nothing bad should ever happen to them.
FUNYT
Hellooooooo, geniuses at The New York Times: this Omnipotent Big Government you speak of ... have you noticed most of it is frickin’ CLOSED today?
Since we are talking hurricane politics, consider that the worst hit thus far are all blue states: NJ, NY, DE, MD, CT.
Electoral effect on Romney: Near zero.
Two swing states (VA, PA) have been affected, at least residually, in their blue areas (northern VA, greater Philly). This could affect turnout and certainly has affected early voting.
Electoral effect on Obama: potentially decisive in a bad way.
This is not just theoretical--not just a logical conclusion from what we know about the inefficiency of centralized bureaucracy. We have also had fairly recent examples--as witness the better local response to Katrina in Southern Mississippi, as compared to that in the politically corrupt New Orleans, where folk waited for the Federalis, to solve the problems.
The New York Times, of course, does not look at political questions from an objective perspective. It has not done so for a great many decades. The staff, once again, sees an opportunity to tout Leftist theories, and does so.
Yes, of course, cooperation between communities can help in these terrible situations. But making each community the primary responder to its own immediate problem, frees local initiatives from the inevitable hand-wringing, bias & what have you, of a centralized bureaucracy trying to determine priorities in a general confusion.
Think about it.
William Flax
Chicago destroyed by fire, and Chicago rebuilt - no FEMA.
San Francisco hit by earthquake followed by fire, and destroyed, and rebuilt - no FEMA.
New Orleans, hit bt hurricane Katrina while corrupt state and local officials scapegoated FEMA for their incompentance, and parts of New Orleans, after billion$ and billion$ still not recovered.
Federal government dependency IS federal government dependency and creates dependency and inhibits self-sufficency in any area where it exceeds its essential and necessary functions.
America was STRONGER when everyone, including every level of government understood that.
To what do we owe any great successes in mitaging issues due to this storm, leading up to it, or rescuing those in danger from it - state and local planning, state and local action and locally directed responses.
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