Katrina: How George Bush(es) destroyed FEMA

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:


Katrina: How George Bush(es) destroyed FEMA
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on August 23, 2007 - 4:11pm.



On August 31, 2005, when the first corpses began floating down the Lower 7th Ward's byways and George W. Bush was still enjoying a Crawford vacation, blogger Kevin Drum, as is so often the case, was first across the post with a rundown on the state of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If you want the short version, it was merely this: you can chart FEMA health and effectiveness with a sine wave. When Democrats were in office it just kept getting better and better. When conservatives took over, it crashed. Wash, rinse, repeat; wash, rinse, repeat.

Here are the details.

Drum quoted a 1995 Washington Monthly piece that began:

Rarely had the failure of the federal government been so apparent and so acute. On August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew leveled a 50-mile wide swath across southern Florida, leaving nearly 200,000 residents homeless and 1.3 million without electricity. Food, clean water, shelter, and medical assistance were scarce. Yet, for the first three days, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is responsible for coordinating federal disaster relief, was nowhere to be found. And when FEMA did finally arrive, its incompetence further delayed relief efforts. Food and water distribution centers oculdn't meet the overwhelming need; lines literally stretched for miles. Mobile hospitals arrived late. In everything it did, FEMA appeared to live up to the description once given to it by South Carolina Se. Ernest Hollidngs: 'the sorriest bunch of bureaucratic jackasses I've ever known.


Yes: history is a nightmare from which we're trying to awake.

It's been such a depressing few years for progressives. So far gone are the institutions of enlightened governance that it's hard to imagine we can ever get them back, let alone in any kind of timely fashion. FEMA showed once before it can be done. Continued the Monthly article:

Fast forward one year to the summer of 1993: Weeks of unrelenting rainfall had driven the level of the Mississippi River and its tributaries far beyond the previous records. Every county in the state of Iowa was declared a federal disaster area, as were portions of eight other states in the river basin. But this time, FEMA's response earned nothing but praise. The agency met the needs of the flood victims quickly and with few of its trademark bureaucratic tangles. Said Congressman Norman Mineta, then chair of the committee that oversees the agency, "FEMA has delivered finally on its promise to stand with the American people when floods or hurricanes or earthquakes devastate their communities."


Then, of course, it happened again. May I repeat myself: history is a nightmare from which we're trying to awake.

But we can awake. We know how to do it. Just take the protocols of conservative "governence," and do the opposite. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/katrina_how_george_bush_destroyed_fema?tx=3

[BlooInBloo]

1. A futile k&r.

[BOSSHOG]

2. FEMA crashed under republican "leadership" as planned

I'd almost appreciate their efforts if they were up front instead of pretending that they'd really like to tax some citizens so the government could actually step in and help. Pretend compassion along with their pretend incompetence = the lower ninth ward in new Orleans two years after the hurricane. And I do chuckle everytime I hear a poorly trained right wing lunatic with access to a microphone say - "Its your money." Why yes it is.

[bigtree]

3. my take, today:

Robbing Us Blind from FEMA to Iraq
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1655790&mesg_id=1655790