Boston's inner harbor:
From The New Yorker magazine:
A couple of weeks ago, Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.” According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” The number of what Munich Re refers to as “weather-related loss events,” and what the rest of us would probably call weather-related disasters, has quintupled over the last three decades. While many factors have contributed to this trend, including an increase in the number of people living in flood-prone areas, the report identified global warming as one of the major culprits: “Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.”
From The New York Times:
"Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.
Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy."
18 comments:
Please keep safe.
Maybe we should go back to old time politics.
You know, if your district didn't vote for the incumbent, your district did not get your streets plowed, or had fewer police on your streets and other pay back dirty tricks.
There are circumstances where the federalists can do a better job because of the lack of organization. New Orleans is a perfect example. You had a Mayor and Governor who just wanted the spotlight until that spotlight turned against them, then they just wanted to bail.
Other examples like the IOWA floods, Kansas Hurricanes, Midwest ice storms do much better than a federal organization can do. The local and State governments cooperate and people help each other to get the job done. They are not swamped with the bureaucratic weight of a FEMA and can actually do a better job for less cost.
"Under federal law, for states and localities eligible for FEMA Public Assistance, there is a cost-share, or shared responsibility among the federal government and state. FEMA always covers a minimum of 75 percent of expenses for states that are declared eligible for this kind of assistance. That percentage may be adjusted to a greater amount based on the severity and the total cost of a disaster."
During a catastrophic event such as the one that hit the east coast yesterday, the president can direct the various FEMA agencies to cut bureaucratic tape. In fact, Mr Obama did that for New Jersey and Gov. Chris Christie praised President Obama for his swift and uncomplicated response to New Jersey.
It's called shared responsibility.
No state would ever be able to provide the enormous amount of financial help and manpower during a massive disaster such as we see unfolding on the east coast.
You're in a dream world if you think otherwise.
Like Bush did to New Orleans?
Those black and poor people did not vote for Bush, so Bush paid them back during Katrina.
Romney wants to eliminate, or privatize FEMA?
That's an accident waiting to happen, just as the Bush administration was an accident that did happened.
Ask Christie if he thinks his State can handle the financial costs of this storm, alone.
Privatize? Like Halliburton building showers that killed our soldiers, or provided food and water that made our soldiers sick.
Do you think a private corporation will be more accountable to the people than our government?
Good luck with that
Republiscums don't believe in shared responsibility, they reject the concept.
Skud... under what part of the Constitution are you claiming that the Feds should take care of this type of stuff?
Mind you, I am not arguing the point, as I believe the Feds are 100% better able and necessary for FEMA. I am just asking because my experience tells me that conservatives point to the Constitution as the guide and somehow manage to make the programs they want fit into that framework, but somehow the programs of the libs never seem to fit.
So please, just let me know where FEMA and federal aid fits in this case.
Thanks...
Why wouldn't House Republicans like Ryan and Cantor want to cut FEMA funding? They're among the 138 House Republicans with a net worth (not counting home value and spouse's wealth) with net worth of more than $1 million?
When the industries and other special interests they're shills for start demanding disaster aid because more and more-severe weather events asre hurting their bottom lines, then and only then will congressional Republicans be all about increasing FEMA funding. Same goes for Mitt "Out of Touch" Romney.
And here we have the quintessential Republican response to Mr. Obama:
"Failed Bush FEMA director Michael Brown says Obama, FEMA acted too quickly in hurricane response."
No matter what this president does, but especially when he does something really, really well, the knee-jerk reaction from the deranged GOPers is to find fault and denigrate Mr. Obama. This statement coming from "You're doin' a heckava job, Brownie" is so utterly idiotic and insane, one wonders if the poor sap had been on some mind-altering drugs when he said it.
Or maybe he's just been reading too many conservative blogs.
I never said there should not be federal aid to states in cases of a disaster. I give the current president credit for saying he would cut the bureaucratic tape that the federalists created.
Don't eliminate aid, eliminate FEMA because they are a bloated bureaucracy who can't get out of their own way. Left to their own initiative, states and the American people can do a far better job of disaster cleanup than can the federal government, as witnessed by Katrina.
"In 2001, FEMA Director James Witt said a few last goodbyes and left the FEMA Headquarters building after nearly eight years on the job.
He and his team had taken FEMA from being an object of scorn and ridicule to being one of the most respected agencies in the US government. The Midwest Floods, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Northridge Earthquake, one hurricane after another, although not perfect (what ever is?), this eight-year period had shown that the federal government could do something right and it was FEMA's most effective era since its inception in 1979."
" [Bush's] new FEMA Director, Joseph Allbaugh. Unlike Witt, Allbaugh had no substantial disaster experience, but he had been Bush's presidential campaign manager, so he was clearly aligned with the thinking of the new administration.
One of the first signs of this thinking came in the abolition of Project Impact.
Project Impact was one of Witt's proudest accomplishments at FEMA. Established in 1997, Project Impact brought together local government leaders, volunteer groups, private businesses and individual citizens to assess their communities' vulnerabilities to disaster and develop innovative and cost-effective ways to prevent or reduce the risk of damage before the disaster occurred. According to FEMA."
More HERE.
Steve, while I believe President Bush did not handle Katrina well at all, I do not believe he deliberately tried to harm the people of New Orleans. I have never believed that George Bush hated African Americans. We do ourselves no good in repeating that.
fair enough Skud... you won't cut that aid... but where under the constitution are you putting FEMA?
Just asking...
Dave
Shaw, i saw that comment from Brownee... incredible isn't it... and people want to return to that type of logic?
i don't get it...
Even Gov Christie praised Obama in this case...
"This statement coming from 'You're doin' a heckava job, Brownie' is so utterly idiotic and insane, one wonders if the poor sap had been on some mind-altering drugs when he said it."
I sometimes think when people like Brown say things like this, they've been looking at Rush Limbaugh, who could well have more than $1 billion by now, and Glenn Beck, who's reportedly made a few million, and say to themselves, "If he (they) can do it, I can do it too."
" Don't eliminate aid, eliminate FEMA because they are a bloated bureaucracy who can't get out of their own way. Left to their own initiative, states and the American people can do a far better job of disaster cleanup than can the federal government, as witnessed by Katrina."
What insufferable ignorance. What spectacularly misinformed opinion presented as fact. How incredibly illogical.
FEMA is as efficient and effective as a good administration can make it or as incompetent and incapable as The Worst President in U.S. History did make it. As a former high-level FEMA official said during an interview on MSNBC yesterday, the person at the top sets the tone.
As for the practicality of the Romney approach skudrunner parroted, consider. FEMA is an insurance plan with more than 100 million customers. A pool of insureds that big means comparatively low rates and very big resources with which to "pay claims" in the form of disaster preparedness and responses.
Turn it over to the states, and each state has a much smaller pool of insureds and much smaller response capability. But even at that, each state will have to charge each customer much more to deliver anywhere near the same potential benefit.
I've got news for you, skudrunner. FEMA people are Americans who work for the American people. They're at work right now in the vast, populous region dealing with the impact of Sandy. By all accounts so far, they are doing an excellent job. So is the president.
I'm sure you don't know that because Fox, Limbaugh, Beck and their ilk didn't tell you that.
Dave,
I didn't know FEMA was in the constitution, good to know.
Post a Comment