Fixing The Barn Door After The Horses Get Out
And so it is with the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to “overhaul” its disaster-relief programs. After the massive fraud and waste generated by FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and it didn’t help that it hit one of the most corrupt parts of the U.S. politically speaking), the DHS has decided to revamp their plans and protocols for dealing with disasters.
First, let’s remember that it has always been the responsibility of the state and local governments anytime they had a natural disaster to be the first-responders and to handle any given situation as best they could. This has been the case always, until a sympathetic press saw a chance to take a shot at a President it didn’t like and vindicate an otherwise unredeemable fraud of a mayor in a Democrat bastion completely run as a Democrat machine. Now, because of that and Bush’s compassionate conservatism, we have a legacy of over a billion dollars of wasted taxpayer money that DHS has to try and appear as if they are taking a lesson from to reform future disaster-preparedness.
What’s the answer? Of course, more federal intervention sooner. That means what? The feds are the last group you typically want to call in on a local issue. Put simply, who do you think might know better how to respond to your house being flooded or sliding away on a field of mud or burning in a wildfire: the official who lives 20 miles away or 50 miles away or the one that lives 1 or 2,000 miles away?
Common sense has to kick in over partisan politics somewhere, people. Surely you won’t stand there and demand federal intervention just because you think it’ll hurt the Republicans at the polls. Rationalism can’t be the exclusive province of conservatives and libertarians, but then again…
Then there’s the small matter of disaster aid. The feds were giving out $2,000 to all disaster victims of Katrina, and predictably it was spent (as most free money is) on ridiculous items in many cases. Anything from lap dances to booze to color TV’s seems to have been ok. Anything but food and shelter, that is. The DHS response is to limit the aid to $500. Presumably, if they get less, then they can waste less. Sort of like, if I patch this part of the hole with tar, but leave about a quarter of the hole open, it will only leak a fraction as much.
Setting aside that I think the whole idea of “government welfare assistance”, especially in terms of money is ridiculous and that I consider Madison’s 1794 quote of “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” putting the kibosh on the whole “General Welfare” clause nonsense, you would hope at least common sense might take hold in the bureaucratic halls of DHS.
Why is the federal government’s solution to any problem to throw money at it? There’s a Depression on? Throw money at it! There’s poverty in America? You don’t say? Throw money at it! We have to stop illegal drugs! Throw money at it! A natural disaster that no one could prevent and that no one caused just because they were Republican wiped out a bunch of homes and now we have a bunch of poor people homeless who need help. Throw money at them! Yes, the solution works every time. I don’t know why we don’t use it more often. I have a headache today. Perhaps the feds could throw me some money to make it better.
The idea that the federal government exists as a panacea to cure all of our social and economic ills is the path to the socialist state of Failureville, population every failed economy in the last 100 years. By “reforming” our disaster preparedness, but still offering that greater control at a higher level is best, we do not alter the basic structure or dependence on the federal behemoth over local and state control and increase the irrelevance of those same levels. We would be better served by relying on our own local resources with more money in our pockets (and the pockets of our local governments) by reducing the bureaucracy of the federal government. That we survived and handled disasters just as bad for almost 200 years before Katrina without serious federal intervention should clue the rest of us in.
If you want to grow, you don’t enlarge the nest, you leave it and fly away and whether you fly or fall and perish, shouldn’t it be up to you?
And so it is with the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to “overhaul” its disaster-relief programs. After the massive fraud and waste generated by FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (and it didn’t help that it hit one of the most corrupt parts of the U.S. politically speaking), the DHS has decided to revamp their plans and protocols for dealing with disasters.
First, let’s remember that it has always been the responsibility of the state and local governments anytime they had a natural disaster to be the first-responders and to handle any given situation as best they could. This has been the case always, until a sympathetic press saw a chance to take a shot at a President it didn’t like and vindicate an otherwise unredeemable fraud of a mayor in a Democrat bastion completely run as a Democrat machine. Now, because of that and Bush’s compassionate conservatism, we have a legacy of over a billion dollars of wasted taxpayer money that DHS has to try and appear as if they are taking a lesson from to reform future disaster-preparedness.
What’s the answer? Of course, more federal intervention sooner. That means what? The feds are the last group you typically want to call in on a local issue. Put simply, who do you think might know better how to respond to your house being flooded or sliding away on a field of mud or burning in a wildfire: the official who lives 20 miles away or 50 miles away or the one that lives 1 or 2,000 miles away?
Common sense has to kick in over partisan politics somewhere, people. Surely you won’t stand there and demand federal intervention just because you think it’ll hurt the Republicans at the polls. Rationalism can’t be the exclusive province of conservatives and libertarians, but then again…
Then there’s the small matter of disaster aid. The feds were giving out $2,000 to all disaster victims of Katrina, and predictably it was spent (as most free money is) on ridiculous items in many cases. Anything from lap dances to booze to color TV’s seems to have been ok. Anything but food and shelter, that is. The DHS response is to limit the aid to $500. Presumably, if they get less, then they can waste less. Sort of like, if I patch this part of the hole with tar, but leave about a quarter of the hole open, it will only leak a fraction as much.
Setting aside that I think the whole idea of “government welfare assistance”, especially in terms of money is ridiculous and that I consider Madison’s 1794 quote of “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” putting the kibosh on the whole “General Welfare” clause nonsense, you would hope at least common sense might take hold in the bureaucratic halls of DHS.
Why is the federal government’s solution to any problem to throw money at it? There’s a Depression on? Throw money at it! There’s poverty in America? You don’t say? Throw money at it! We have to stop illegal drugs! Throw money at it! A natural disaster that no one could prevent and that no one caused just because they were Republican wiped out a bunch of homes and now we have a bunch of poor people homeless who need help. Throw money at them! Yes, the solution works every time. I don’t know why we don’t use it more often. I have a headache today. Perhaps the feds could throw me some money to make it better.
The idea that the federal government exists as a panacea to cure all of our social and economic ills is the path to the socialist state of Failureville, population every failed economy in the last 100 years. By “reforming” our disaster preparedness, but still offering that greater control at a higher level is best, we do not alter the basic structure or dependence on the federal behemoth over local and state control and increase the irrelevance of those same levels. We would be better served by relying on our own local resources with more money in our pockets (and the pockets of our local governments) by reducing the bureaucracy of the federal government. That we survived and handled disasters just as bad for almost 200 years before Katrina without serious federal intervention should clue the rest of us in.
If you want to grow, you don’t enlarge the nest, you leave it and fly away and whether you fly or fall and perish, shouldn’t it be up to you?
posted by Rob Beck | 8:32 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home