We Are From the Government, and We Are Here To Help
May 20, 2009 Political
What a lie. The government never helps- oh that is not to say they do not at times try, feebly- but mostly all they ever manage to do is salt the ground with so many rules and regs that nothing will ever work. Every disaster we have had in the last ten years at least has been aggravated negatively by the Federal Government.
Contrary to what you might wish to believe, they are last in, and first to leave. You could see that in Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Now you can see it in their handling of Ike.
Katrina was a wake up call for FEMA, but in fairness, much of the blame could be laid at the feet of the Mayor of New Orleans, and Governor of Louisiana, who really messed things up by not asking the Feds in soon enough. Not everyone knows that you have to invite the feds into your state to take control of a situation, courtesy of the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, but this is so, and so FEMA was delayed even more than normal.
Then Rita struck the same year, and while you might think that since FEMA was already in the area, they might be quicker in their response, oh no- that was not the case.
Now fast- forward to Hurricane Ike, in 2008- this was the Hurricane whose Eyewall went literally over my house at 6:00 in the morning with 100 mph winds, and all these nice little mini- tornados these storms produce. I had to cut my way out of the driveway when the storm had passed, which was no piece of cake if you have arthritis and two foot thick pine trees. I had a tallow tree that fell on our house, but we were spared major damage. We were extremely lucky, and I am the first to say this.
Fema took three days to get any ice, or food out to anyone near me. I had prepared, having been a life- long resident of Texas and veteran of Hurricanes my whole life, and I pretty much have no use for the Feds- they are always a day late and a dollar short, so I had ice chests, propane stove, and a horse trough full of water I had stored and tarped. Others were not so prepared, and particularly on the coast, where everything was literally scraped clean of any living thing, FEMA just looked at the devastation, and thought well, there’s no one here- why are we?
It has taken us in Texas a year, almost, to begin to put our lives back together, but still, we are much more fortunate than Louisiana, who still today is relying on the Federal government to give them back their lives, and that’s not going to happen. It is, #1- not the business of the government (you have to work at it yourself also), and #2-when the government does try to help, they most often get it wrong, because they have no clue how people live, or what people need.
Trailers to live in after Katrina did not arrive until three months or more after the event. You might think the Federal government could have done better by the time Ike came around, but in some cases, trailers didn’t arrive for four months, and now, before people can rebuild their own homes, Fema wants to take the trailers away. And yet we still have people living rent- free in apartments four years after Katrina. There is no logic to the government.
So it appears that Texans get penalized for being more prepared and able to withstand a storm that could be seen as coming for a week or more, but the people of New Orleans are still treated as helpless babies all because they didn’t do the sensible thing and flee when they had the chance. Oh, that’s right, the Mayor of a city that sits 12 feet BELOW sea level didn’t see a reason to evacuate- now THERE’S a sensible man. He let buses that could have evacuated most of the people sit underwater, and be ruined, while people had to cut themselves out of their attics. Wonderful. While his people were floating on the floodwaters, Mayor Nagin was living in Dallas, high and dry. That’s right- he came to Texas.
Now I said that to say this- if you are expecting the Federal government to bail you out, or to fix anything, make the economy better, or even do ANYTHING competent, you will be waiting a long time. Between the natural tendency of bureaucracy to do as little as possible, to the infighting between the various agencies as to who has the biggest, well, bureaucracy- you are better off doing for yourself, because I, and most everyone on the Gulf Coast, know that the Federal government is pretty well useless, and hasn’t gotten any better with this new iteration of “leaders”.
I mean, now we REALLY don’t have the money to help our people- just ask anyone in California.
Of course, they are their own disaster.
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Tags: disaster, fema, incompetence, self reliance