In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the mass media and liberal/left wing punditry had a field day in blaming the so-called ineptitude of the FEMA response on George W. Bush.
I heard a very liberal/progressive friend re-tell the following joke:
Q: "What was George Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?"
A: "He didn't care how the poor, Black people tried to get out of New Orleans after Katrina."
I admit, I laughed when he told me that one.
Funny thing is many people consider FEMA's post Katrina response to be an utter failure...and that hasn't changed. Years later in the response to Hurricane Irene, Ron Paul recently commented:
In the wake of hurricane Irene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is expected to come hat in hands asking for more money from Congress. Like the rest of the government, it is broke. It has been suggested that any additional funds allocated to FEMA should come from cuts elsewhere. This seems harsh and lacking in compassion to big government advocates who do not understand economics, but I would go a step further. FEMA should never have been established.
Hear, hear Dr. Paul!
Anybody know what Obama's position on Roe vs. Wade is?
Dr. Paul then goes on to site examples from Katrina on the supposed "bureaucratic incompetence" of FEMA:
Victims of disasters should get any and all help possible, and there is virtually no limit to the generosity and compassion of good American people after devastation hits. One only need to remember the outpouring after Katrina to know this is true. FEMA, however, did more to get in the way of relief than to actually provide and facilitate it. The examples are numerous. When the call was put out for volunteer firefighters, they volunteered by the thousands. It was FEMA, for reasons of control and bureaucratic ineptitude, who made sure they were not, in fact allowed to actually help. When a group of firefighters arrived from Houston, instead of being put immediately on the job, they were told to sit around and wait. After waiting for two days doing nothing, they were simply sent home. One thousand volunteer firefighters were sent to Atlanta to undergo sexual harassment training while fires actively raged in the city. The ones that remained through this stupidity were sent to escort the president around or to distribute fliers instead of putting out fires. Computer engineer Jack Harrison was told his skills were needed to rebuild technological infrastructure. After being given the runaround for about two weeks, he was misallocated as head of security on the cruise ship FEMA had leased, when he should have been using his skills to help. All manner of help was turned away or mismanaged by FEMA while people suffered and waited. Even the Red Cross had its hands tied by FEMA.
Now why would I put "bureaucratic incompetence" in quotations here? Everyone knows that FEMA botched the response to Katrina, right? It would seem like I'm disagreeing with Dr. Paul, right?
That's because I am.
The response to Hurricane Katrina was an absolute and complete success.
What does the acronym F.E.M.A. stand for again?
Federal Emergency MANAGEMENT Agency.
FEMA's mission has NEVER been about bringing aid, relief or help to the masses of people affected by a catastrophic event.
The mission is about MANAGING the situation. FEMA officials could give a flying fuck about civilians who are injured, endangered, starving or dying of thirst after a disaster. No, their primary concern is to set up a zone of control and disarm the sheeple before they even consider the option of allowing charity and first aid responders access to the area to help those in dire need of assistance.
And Katrina was no isolated incident to be blamed on simple bureaucratic ineptitude. We see a pattern of behavior emerge after a tornado devastated a small town in Kansas in 2007:
On Friday, May 4, an F5 tornado wiped the town of Greensburg, Kan., almost entirely off the map. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with the National Guard and local police from all over Kansas, then systematically kept out relief workers while they went house to house disarming the residents.
Gee, George Bush must not have cared about those white folks who survived a tornado either!
FEMA’s top priority going in was clear. It was not to help people, but to establish control and cow the population. These, of course, are the same things they did during Hurricane Katrina, with much more disastrous results.
Just remember that if you're unfortunate enough to live in an area hit by a natural disaster, but fortunate enough to survive...don't expect help from FEMA when they show up on the scene. They're more concerned with MANAGING the emergency - which really means taking your guns away and rounding you up with all the other remaining survivors to make sure the situation is UNDER CONTROL!
Remember: a large scale disaster means one thing to the citizenry of the USSA: Let's go Camping!
