I really can’t add much to this:
Shall we roll the tape? Under Bush Sr., FEMA sucked. Under Clinton, FEMA was rehabilitated and turned into a superstar agency. Under Bush Jr., FEMA sucked again. Under Obama, FEMA’s doing great and responding quickly.
I know, I know, we’re not supposed to politicize natural disasters. Not when that politicization makes Republicans look bad, anyway. So I’ll just let you draw your own conclusions from these four data points. I report, you decide.
alwhite
When your whole party is built on “government is the problem” you really need to prove it by making it so.
Alex S.
So shrill… so shrill…
PurpleGirl
@Alex S.: But so very true.
It’s said that both parties hire friends for appointed-types jobs, but the Democrats (being wonks) tend to hire people who are competent and know something about the job they are supposed to do.
gene108
Well Duh…
When you’re planning to use FEMA to spirit real Americans away to re-education camps, you obviously have to make sure FEMA’s working efficiently. Those cattle cars full of real Americans aren’t going to fill themselves, you know.
Sko Hayes
Having dealt with FEMA under Clinton, when eastern North Carolina experienced historic flooding after Hurricane Floyd, I can say the response was immediate and long lasting.
Two days after the hurricane passed, the National Guard was almost finished rescuing people sitting on their rooftops, people had been transported out of the county (entirely flooded) to shelters with running water and electricity and generators had been set up at local hospitals. I helped with rescuing animals (primarily horses, and one cow), and distributing water, food and clothing to people who had lost everything, all of which was up and running within 4 days of the hurricane.
Watching the fumbling FEMA under Bush after Katrina was jaw dropping. I couldn’t believe it was the same agency.
Southern Beale
Speaking of politicizing natural disasters, can I just say: I never again want to hear that “WE didn’t whine and complain like those ni*CLANG* in New Orleans” again.
Jesus.
cat48
Actually, Fugate, FEMA head worked for Jeb Bush as Emergency Mgr, when he was Gov. He’s a Repub from FL & he’s been doing a great job since day one. They twitter a lot when they’re working emergencies & they’ve been quite busy since the beginning of the term.
Point being, rethugs don’t have to do a bad job; it’s a choice.
debbie
More evidence that anything the Republicans claim they’re better at is bogus. Wars, budgets, compassion…you name it.
soonergrunt
When people who hate government have to actually govern, why would anyone be surprised that they suck at it?
These failures of government are wholly intentional.
Southern Beale
The reason is Republicans don’t believe government serves any function or purpose save to be used to repay their friends and business partners. I mean when you elect people who believe government is the problem, not the solution, then no one can be surprised when they turn an agency like FEMA over to a Brownie. It’s their contempt of government personified.
BOSS BITCH
Don’t worry, Governor Good Hair of Texas is down there saying Obama is not giving Texas enough attention. Never mind that he’s been telling Obama to basically fuck off for the past two years.
Gregory
P. J. O’Rourke said that back in the ’80s, and yet the so-called “liberal media” and the voters have fallen for their pretense as a serious political party for the 30 years since (latest edition: Mitch “Deficits” Daniels as a Presidential hopeful on a deficit reduction platform, for pity’s sake!).
Dennis SGMM
@BOSS BITCH:
Fucking Perry is the same irredeemable asshole who threatens the secession of Texas every now and then. Odd that he’s pouting about the gov’s lack of attention to Texas considering his on-again off-again desire to get completely out from under the thumb of same.
alwhite
I am amazed that all these Radnian, anti-government ‘freemen’ are willing to accept government help to recover from the mild inconvenience recent visited upon them.
If they really believed the bullshit they spread they would have told Obama, FEMA and even the State to f off, get out of their way so they can man up and get on with recovery.
E Unum Unum – the new motto for real muricans
danimal
Pissed me off the other day that there was a story about the reasons why the tornadoes were so strong that didn’t even mention global warming.
Why can’t we politicize this stuff when it happens? We know stronger storms are an anticipated outcome of global warming, but our media is afraid to touch the subject. No wonder Americans are willing to believe the GOP fairy tales; when reality hits them with a flying 2×4, no ones willing to tell them the truth.
piratedan
well you guys are missing the point, our Galtian overlords have already solved this problem of current construction models not being able to survive tornadic forces. It’s called living in a mountain lair. When you live on the mountain, in a walled enclosure with hot and cold running lackeys and guard dogs, you don’t have to suffer the travesties of the local weather.
PeakVT
@danimal: Right wing fee-fees are more important that drought, destruction, and millions of acres of agricultural land flooded by rising seas. Get your priorities straight.
AkaDad
@BOSS BITCH:
Perhaps Texas can drown all those fires in a bathtub.
Blogreeder
@PurpleGirl:
LOL! Will you be here all week?
Villago Delenda Est
It’s all part of the same basic denial of reality that’s been the GOP primary theme since 1964. FEMA started going to total shit under Reagan, and continued under Bush the Elder. Clinton took it seriously. Bush the Younger (aka the deserting coward) refucked it up as a source of patronage, not a serious effort to aid Americans in distress. Now FEMA is yet another government agency Obama’s been fixing due to Rethuglican malfeasance.
Roger Moore
@alwhite:
FTFY.
gnomedad
@danimal:
NOAA director Louis Uccellini addressed that issue here last night. Bottom line: it’s a valid hypothesis and is being researched, but we can’t make the case for a connection. Yet. Patience.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
if we really wanted to play like the republicans, we would ask the question; does it really benefit the democrats to have fema respond to disasters in tuscaloosa, and other parts of the south?
i mean no effort fema undertakes is going to sway the long held notions of most or at least a supermajority of people in those areas that, the federal government is only going to bring the pain, whenever they get involved in anything.
at worst, by not responding, they can cry and complain, and we can tell them, that is what you wanted from government right?
but its not like a competent effort is going to change hearts and minds about the culture war, so why bother?
again, if we wanted to play ball with it.
Davis X. Machina
It ought to be as sexy to work for FEMA as to be in the Marines.
Or at least as sexy as working for the Jeffersonian Institute.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: Ahhhh, that comes from the biggest difference between us and them: we accept that they are our fellow citizens, deserving of our help and support.
They think we’re monkeys.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Not all monkeys, they think some of us are French or Dutch.
ppcli
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: [Désolé in advance for reposting from a couple of days ago, but it was at the end of a long thread (on a Brooks column) and I thought it fit here. The basic point is yours – the problem with the Bush administration wasn’t just the incompetence – even worse was the total politicization of every single decision:]
Brooks is even harder to take this week than he usually is, especially on the subject of what government can do. This week, several states were devastated, and Alabama was the worst hit. Obama went to Tuscaloosa right away, met with the mayor, promised federal assistance (and meant it) and did what he could to lift people’s spirits. Also, you know that his administration is sending the most competent people they can find to do that they can to help out. The fact that Alabama is a state that voted against Obama in landslide numbers doesn’t enter into the calculation for a moment.
Contrast that with the actions of the Bush administration that Brooks did so much to enable. We all remember the patronage appointment of “Heckofajob” Brooksie, and Bush’s memorable “nobody anticipated the breach of the levies” that was contradicted by video of his own cabinet meeting the day before the breach. But also don’t forget how disgracefully political the Bush people’s actions were from the outset. Bush couldn’t be dragged away from the birthday cake for McCain to go to Democratic New Orleans. When it became clear that this inertia was politically a liability, he swooped in to the nearest Republican outpost – Mississippi, where the toll was incalculably less severe, to hang with Haley Barbour and Trent Lott. When he finally got to New Orleans (even loyal Villagers were becoming critical – he had no choice but to make a token appearance), money was spent on starting up bulldozers for photo-ops and then the bulldozers were shut down and moved away once the cameras were off.
The sheer incompetence was bad, but the cynical politics were even more disgraceful. Either Brooks doesn’t see the contrast between these two responses to catastrophe – in which case he is just not looking – or he does see it and he chooses not to remark on it when making a special visit to the government branch that deals with related things. In the second case he is even more craven and cynical than I realized. Bad either way.
(Oddly, I haven’t heard any reports of the governor of Alabama making the wingnuts’ favorite Reagan joke to the effect that the most dreaded words in English are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” during Obama’s visit. I wonder why not. It’s a real crowd pleaser – gets lotsa yuks every time.)
Villago Delenda Est
@gnomedad:
Yeah, but once the evidence is sufficient to make the connection, the dumbfucks will still deny it. I mean, not even the infamous “long form” birth certificate is enough for the birfers.
Of course, there is no proof possible for global climate change or Barack Obama’s birthplace that will be enough for the willfully, petulantly ignorant.
gene108
@cat48:
Further proof the Bush family, including Pres. #43, are nothing but a bunch of lying RINO’s and thus justifying the fact Republicans need to tack even further to the Right, in order to get the RINO stink out of the party.
How dare a self respecting Republican work with the Traitor-in-Chief and make a waste of tax payer dollars, i.e. any part of the Imperial Federal Government, work efficiently.
(/end snark)
OzoneR
@Southern Beale:
Does anyone remember the fires in San Diego in 2007 when every media outlet keep commenting on how awesome the recovery was there versus Katrina, with every subtle message being “white people in San Diego aren’t savages like black people in New Orleans.”
jonas
@gnomedad: It’s too soon to play the climate change card on this one. Bad tornadoes in the Deep South are not uncommon. A lot of times they rip through relatively unpopulated rural areas and don’t make the news. This time, they ripped through urban areas with predictably horrible results. I think the drought and brush fires in Texas are a more troubling harbinger of a drier climate emerging in the southwest, however. It’s worse now than during the Dust Bowl years.
ericblair
@danimal:
Because that would admit that policy and politics has real-world consequences that should be considered. To the Village, the point of politics is not really to affect the way we run the county: the point of politics is to maneuver your team into power so they can loot the treasury. What policies you promise and what then happens to the rest of the country is pretty much immaterial.
So when you point out that the political decisions in this country have had effects more wide-ranging then a few elites’ bank accounts, it’s just plain rude. Don’t you understand that we needed to piss on science or we wouldn’t have won elections, and this Debbie Downer business about people getting killed is just an unnecessary turd in the punch bowl?
WyldPirate
In 2004, there were a number of hurricane that went through Florida in the weeks leading up to the election.
The storms were nothing on the scale of Katrina, but there was a good deal of damage. FEMA was all over it. They behaved Dubya was down there nearly immediately.
Two differences–lots more white people affected and election year….
And besides, you can’t expect the Villagers to dirupt their August vacation because a bunch of niggers in New Orleans are drowning.
WereBear
@Southern Beale: I completely agree.
There was a scurrilous email making the rounds after flooding in some Very White Western State making Katrina comparisons; I had not realized a friend was racist until then.
And she’s not a friend any more.
cckids
@Villago Delenda Est:
That is an admirably succinct, accurate description of most Republicans. Kudos.
Jay C
@cat48:
Which illustrates the problem, ISTM: it’s not whether the personnel at the top are Dem or GOP, it’s the issue of the Administration which selects them either prioritizing competence (like Obama), or viewing FEMA as just another patronage sinecure for hacks (like Bush 43).
You would think that something like disaster-response management would be looked on as about as non-partisan an issue as they come (fires, floods and tornadoes don’t care about your political views when they come knocking). You would wouldn’t you…
Failure, Inc.
Too late in this thread’s life to make a difference, but I must, on this subject – at least as far as Bush Sr. goes – vociferously disagree. This story doesn’t get told often and it should.
I was literally at the epicenter of the Loma Prieta quake in 1989, the heart of Bush Sr. years. For those who don’t know, Loma Prieta is in Santa Cruz County in California, possibly the most liberal county in this nation, and we were no friends of Bush.
Every road that fed into the county was utterly destroyed. Every single one. Additionally, we had no power, no water no phones, no help and no way out. In spite of this, we had the National Guard in town within 10 hours (we needed them there was some looting and “civil unrest”) and the emergency personnel, cops, firefighters, anyone with any emergency training at all – including Boy Scouts – were trying desperately to dig people out from under rubble with anything and everything they had. Which wasn’t much.
The Bay Area was in better shape. They were fifty to seventy miles from the epicenter and there were a couple of million people living there, with all the associated infrastructure. Santa Cruz County, WHERE THE QUAKE ACTUALLY HAPPENED, had maybe 200,000 residents total in a county that is far larger than the Bay Area and whose largest city, Santa Cruz, had about 50,000 people. We were digging through rubble with our hands (and yes, I was one of those people, most everyone helped).
My point is this; FEMA was there within 24 hours with all the equipment needed and they dealt with EVERYTHING. I have never before or since seen such interagency cooperation and dealt with federal employees who were so on top of things. This is one of the reasons that I become so “shrill” about what happened during Katrina – the FEMA I dealt with under Bush Sr. would NEVER have done such a poor job as they did in 2005. It is literally inconceivable to me that they could have been the same agency.
Credit where credit is due. FEMA under Bush Jr. in 2005 was an utter failure and disgrace. FEMA in 1989 under Bush Sr. was everything you would have wanted, and expected, for your tax dollars. They were a spectacular success back then and should be recognized as such.
So Kevin Drum can cram it. I think Bush I was just as much of a monster as his foul offspring, but he had a commitment to good government (self preservation) that his kid didn’t understand and certainly didn’t share, and in 2005 it showed.
Caz
Do you have a link or something that supports this assertion? I’d say it’s probably true just based on what I can tell from varioue news coverage under those presidents, but I would be interested in seeing some concrete evidence to confirm it.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@gnomedad:
Sometimes freak events happen that have nothing to do with a larger trend. You can’t say with greater than 95% certainty that these particular storms are the result of GW. They may very well be, but you can’t use events of just one season to make that case (for the exact same reason you can’t say global warming stopped in 1998). It’s only until we can start pointing to definite trends in frequency or severity and correlating that against larger GW trends that you can make that case.
There’s a paper here (PDF) showing that tornado trends have been pretty flat over the last 30 years. More tornadoes are reported now than 30 years ago, but that’s not the same as an increase in the incidence of tornadoes.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
You made it too short.
The new motto really is:
Fuck you, I got mine, Now I want all of yours.
opie_jeanne
@OzoneR: I lived in OC at the time, but didn’t hear that.
I did read a lot of outrage from Republicans (like the retired fire chief of Anaheim) because of the stupid fire policies of San Diego city and county. Lots of criticism by Republicans of the policy set by other Republicans.
I did get that obnoxious letter regarding the nasty snowstorm in Montana, the one that claims that they received no Federal money, which was not true. The comparison with NO was ridiculous since you can shovel snow.