Let's talk about Trump's plan to 'eliminate FEMA as we know it'... - Belle of the Ranch

[TexasTowelie]

Well, howdy there Internet people. It's Belle again. So, today we're going to talk about the Trump administration's plan to eliminate FEMA as we know it.

Y'all aren't going to believe this. In a news cycle that can only exist under this administration. Yesterday, we talked about Trump trying to politicize FEMA as a key agency the Democrats are blocking funding for while highlighting a situation he ignored for a month. And today we're talking about the Trump administration's draft plan to “eliminate FEMA as we know it.” You can't make this stuff up.

Okay, so a while back, Trump put together a council to make recommendations on how to best gut the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The draft with the preliminary recommendations is an 89 page document. The final report comes out next month, so this is a heads up, and I guess it could change between now and then, but we'll go over where we are now.

Trump has already slashed the number of FEMA employees. And while he tries his political spin on talking about it being a key agency, his administration is preparing recommendations to cut the number of remaining employees in half. That's right, in half.

The draft says, "The majority of this reduction is expected to come from its disaster workforce, which includes temporary, on call, and permanent personnel deployed to disaster areas.

Remember when Trump campaigned on bizarre and wildly inaccurate claims of FEMA abandoning North Carolina? Yeah, you only thought it was hard to get in touch with someone then. The people who show up are the people that would be shown the door. It would take Americans much longer to get assistance.

Another recommendation is to not use damage cost to determine how much assistance communities get. Instead, the government would switch to what's known as a parametric system. This is where money is based on objective measurable criteria related to the disaster itself. A hurricane that is a category 1 would get a set amount and a hurricane that is a category 5 would get a presumably higher set amount. Cool.

Now imagine a cat 3 hurricane hitting a rural area versus one hitting Miami. Which is going to need more money? Picture a 50,000 acre wildfire that destroys six structures versus one that enters a subdivision. It seems like the idea is to streamline the process and make it easy. Who told these people managing disasters in a country with hundreds of millions of people would be easy? It isn't.

Another one is increasing the amount of damage required before the federal government gets involved. Don't ask me how that will work in conjunction with no longer using damage costs. Now, the one thing I will say is that a lot of experts we know say the threshold for government help should change and most think it should be a bit higher or be based on a formula of damage caused versus states ability to act on their own.

But here's the key thing about this report. The Trump administration is trying to use FEMA right now to score political points during the DHS shutdown. Trump's comments and certainly this draft show that they are playing their base again. They don't care about FEMA. They don't care about water quality. They don't care about the state and local response, which would be who responsibility transfers to under Trumpian plans. It's all an act.

Anyway, it's just a thought. Y'all have a good day.

[poli-junkie]

1. He's going to privatize disaster relief