Can you hate government and still protect Americans?
I am outraged and deeply shamed that so many of our fellow citizens were allowed to suffer and die in the extended aftermath of Katrina.
As I listen to the news, I hear story after story of heroic efforts among leaders of local government, school principals, and state government, many of whom were and still are utterly overwhelmed by the disaster. And the question that keeps coming up is where is the federal government? Where is FEMA?
When the head of a government runs on a platform of hating government, some of the outcomes are predictable, in kind if not in specifics.
If you hate government, you use government to reward your friends and cronies through tax breaks and padded contracts, and you use political appointments to reward supporters.
If you hate government, you can't distinguish between competence and incompetence, between providing real services to citizens and building a media facade.
FEMA used to get the job done. The federal government used to be there when major disasters struck. That is one of the reasons it is so shocking to see its complete incompetence in the wake of Katrina. Can any community feel safe now?
One other group, besides government, that the Bush administration shows disdain for -- scientists. Scientists have been telling us: hurricanes of this magnitude are an expected result of climate change. Warnings about eliminating barrier wetlands have been falling on deaf ears for years. Specific warnings about the threat to New Orleans are well reported.
The Bush administration strategy of creating their own reality, is being shown for what it is -- criminal neglect of the security of Americans. Even our allies around the world, who already had serious doubts about current U.S. leadership, are stunned by news out of the Gulf Coast.
The following is a chronology of how government-hating ideology corrupted the ability of the federal government to respond to a disaster by Kevin Drum from his blog in the Washington Monthly. (I added a few links) (Note, this piece has been mistakenly attributed to Professor Henry Breitrose, of Stanford University, by several people, including me.)
CHRONOLOGY: Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:
- January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.
- April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."
- 2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."
- December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy, Michael Brown, who, like Allbaugh, has no previous experience in disaster management.
- March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.
- 2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.
- Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."
- June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."
- June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.
Kevin Drum sums it up: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.
- August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.
Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.
posted by Sarah van Gelder @ 10:14 AM
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4 Comments:
I do agree with the news on tv that the people who listening and seeing it every day are nuts. Its not the true picture of these people. The people who where left behind where the ones that had no where to go or have the funds to go any where. Theses are the poor of the nation. We need to get some social workers in there to empower them to help them self. One little step at a time. But first is the welfare of the poor. People should be taking them in from other states around Miss and Lousianna. why do the rich of the rich put them up in hotals and server them meals until they are placed in a saft place. Call there relatives first to place them in there homes. Get a running chart of people with kin. I do agree it was shamful off how we where dumbies and it took to long to get them help. It should of happen before the storm. Maybe it did for most people. But again people did make their chooses to stay too. Its like some people choose to be poor. but there other that need more help and help all the time. It come down to empower empower and not blame on looting because the people did need supplies and its their concouse they have to anwer too. I am glad the force are finally in there. But there needs to be some social workers to empower people. I guess thats enough I am a case manager and a home health aid for fifteen years. I wish I could help to case manage these people at this time but I am going to school at the time until the middle of December. Thanks for all the up date. Kathleen
Here's the article that could sink Chertoff and Brown. They KNEW!
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001054595
Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Times-Picayune Sunday afternoon that officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA Director Mike Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, listened in on electronic briefings given by his staff in advance of Hurricane Katrina slamming Louisiana and Mississippi--and were advised of the storm’s potential deadly effects. ...........
He said all of those briefings were logged in the hurricane center’s records.
THERE'S MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS:
"MR. RUSSERT: Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn't the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn't they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?
MR. BROUSSARD: . . . Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis." - from yesterday's "Meet The Press."
IS FEMA'S CONDUCT CRIMINAL?
There's much more - Brown was in charge of a national Arabian Horse Judging Committee, badly apparently, before being given blatant political appointments to agencies for which he had no qualifications.
Our challenge as Progressives is to turn our grief and rage into something visionary! These men obviously have a vision of a bleak future for all but a privileged few. We hav a vision - a society that rewards open heartedness, and demands responsibility for communities. We believe that there are enough resources in this country to provide not only minimum needs but to nourish the spirit of hope by rewarding communities and organizations that demonstrate fairness, opportunity, and justice - just for starters.
Is it "hating government" to state the fact that FEMA are fascist murderers? The thing is that's exactly what our government has trained them to be. I think these two articles from prisonplanet.com sum it up:
FEMA Deliberately Sabotaging Hurricane Relief Efforts
Multiple parishes revolt, use armed guards to defend against feds
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones | September 6 2005
Numerous credible sources have come forward with examples of how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is deliberately sabotaging Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in New Orleans. This represents a ruthless attempt on the part of FEMA to impose a federal takeover of the area for their own benefit amid a tragedy that has already claimed anything up to 10,000 lives.
The mainstream media has picked up on this story but is whitewashing it as just another 'failure' of the federal government in dealing with the crisis.
In reality the actions are part of a coordinated campaign to deepen the scope of the disaster in order to force through bumper funding increases for FEMA.
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard (pictured below) appeared on Meet the Press Sunday and broke down in tears as he described FEMA's criminal activities.
"We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast, but the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history."
We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines."
Why would FEMA, an organization supposedly tasked with helping in a time of crisis, deliberately cut police communication lines? This is a blatant example of sabotage and a sick push to make the disaster worse. In carrying out these actions, FEMA are no better than the animals who shot at rescue workers and helicopters.
The mission of FEMA has never in reality been to bring people food and water and help in times of crisis. Alex Jones has attended numerous FEMA drills where the whole point of the exercise is to round people up, break up families and institute a brutal police state crackdown.
FEMA need to create a chaotic atmosphere in New Orleans so they can legitimize what they are doing.
We now have multiple reports of police being ordered to guard key infrastructures in order to defend them from FEMA federal agents. Sheriffs in numerous different counties are guarding highways to keep FEMA out. FEMA is being treated as the enemy because they are sabotaging key facilities in an effort to intentionally worsen the already desperate scenes of horror in New Orleans.
FEMA is sabotaging lines of communication so their activities cannot be exposed to the wider relief authorities and the media.
Commenting on the sabotage by FEMA of communication lines, Washington insider Wayne Madsen states,
"Jamming radio and other communications such as television signals is part of a Pentagon tactic called "information blockade" or "technology blockade." The tactic is one of a number of such operations that are part of the doctrine of "information warfare" and is one of the psychological operations (PSYOPS) methods used by the US Special Operations Command."
Radio host Carol Baker who has been tracking the FEMA sabotage stated that Plaquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle had his deputies patrol the county line under orders not to let FEMA in.
As is discussed in the Meet the Press interview, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee also has armed guards patrolling the county line in order to prevent the FEMA sabotage.
FEMA has a number of executive orders that outline the total federal takeover of any US city.
FEMA is clearly using this human catastrophe as a means of executing its decade long plans and providing the pretext for future takeover scenarios of all major American cities.
Amongst a litany of government inaction and outright dereliction, this is the most alarming evidence to emerge yet that clearly indicates an agenda for the federal government to profit and expand its power from exploiting the aftermath of the hurricane.
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FEMA Executive Orders Paved The Way For Emerging Police State Hell
New Orleans is just the first to fall
Steve Watson | September 6 2005
In the wake of the unfolding police state crisis in New Orleans and the Federal Coup d'Etat of all Constitutional laws there it begs the question, how could this happen?
The answer lies with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the multiple executive orders that have gradually and symptomatically eroded away all aspects of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It is FEMA that is handling everything and systematically implementing the police state. "It is FEMA who is really calling the shots and setting priorities here," Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the US Amy Corps Engineers has said of the events in New Orleans.
So let us take a look at how FEMA has paved the way for the emerging police state hell.
FEMA is not an elected body, it does not involve itself in public disclosures, and it even has a quasi-secret budget in the billions of dollars. It has more power than the President of the United States or the Congress, it has the power to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant and hold them without trial, it can seize property, food supplies, transportation systems, and can suspend the Constitution. Not only is it the most powerful entity in the United States, but it was not even created under Constitutional law by the Congress.
A Series of Executive Orders dating from the 1960s onwards underlines the history of FEMA. The plan for total control of every aspect of our lives has been under construction for a long time. Below are just some of the Executive Orders relating to FEMA. As you read them, bear in mind that they mean nothing by themselves. They are not law, nor can they become law by and of themselves:
Executive Order Number 12148 created the Federal Emergency Management Agency to interface with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding. An "emergency czar" was appointed. FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies. The bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic.
Executive Order Number 12656 appointed the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency powers. This allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of U.S. citizens and would restrict the freedom of movement within the United States and grant the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and all ports of entry.
Executive Order 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
Executive Order 10995 allows Seizure of all communications media in the United States.
Executive Order 10997 allows Seizure of all electric power fuels and minerals, public and private.
Executive Order 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
Executive Order 10999 allows Seizure of all means of transportation, including personal cars, trucks or vehicles of any kind and total control of highways, seaports and waterways.
Executive Order 11000 allows Seizure of all American people for work forces under federal supervision including the splitting of families if the government finds it necessary.
Executive Order 11001 allows seizure of all health, education and welfare facilities, public and private.
Executive Order 11002 empowered the postmaster general to register all men, women and children in the U.S.
Executive Order 11003 allows seizure of all airports and aircraft.
Executive Order 11004 allows seizure of all housing and finance authorities to establish Forced Relocation Designated areas to be abandoned as "unsafe."
Executive Order 11005 allows seizure of all railroads, inland waterways and storage facilities, public and private.
Executive Order 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
Executive Order 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.
Executive Order 12919 Signed June 3, 1994, by President Clinton. Encompasses all the above executive orders.
So you see The Federal Emergency Management Agency has broad powers in every aspect of the nation. Should it so wish it can completely wipe out the Constitution, yet this would be completely unlawful as it was not created under Constitutional law by the Congress.
FEMA is exactly the kind of parasitic bacterium that the founding fathers warned Americans to stay vigilant against. The images interspersing this article provide us with visual indications that a federal takeover has occurred in New Orleans and all of the above executive orders are operative.
We have also documented how FEMA has set up internment camps all over the US to hold citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants" in times of crisis.
FEMA, which has endlessly drilled for such situations, has been complicit in hindering outside efforts to help in the wake of the disaster. After the authorities in Baton Rouge had prepared a field hospital for victims of the storm, FEMA sent its first batch of supplies, all of which were designed for use against chemical attack, including drugs such as Cipro, which is designed for use against anthrax. The London Guardian reported, "We called them up and asked them: 'Why did you send that, and they said that's what it says in the book'," said a Baton Rouge official.
According to Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard, Federal bureaucrats have 'Murdered' the Flood Victims in New Orleans. Broussard stated on Meet The Press that " We have been abandoned by our own country." He broke down in tears as he described how FEMA has cut emergency communication lines and has been turning back fuel and water supplies being sent by outside agencies such as Wal Mart. This is because the Federal Government wants complete control over the situation. Broussard, speaking through his tears re-iterated "nobody's coming to get us, nobody's coming...for God's sake shut up and send somebody."
Local officials no longer have any authority and have been forcibly evacuated, even despite the fact that they wished to stay and oversee the recovery efforts.
Even American Red Cross officials have said that FEMA authorities would not allow them to deliver aid. "The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
Former FEMA officials have admitted that Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck. Ronald Castleman, the former regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration who led the response to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, said they were bewildered by the slow FEMA response.
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans has called for the firing of FEMA director Michael Brown and has heavily criticized the government for its awful response.
Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts has agreed that FEMA has deliberately withheld aid, and cut emergency communication lines, and automatically made the crisis look worse in order to empower the image of a police state emerging to "save the day". He even insinuated that the shoot to kill policy was part of the overall operation in order get an awful precedence set to aid the military industrial complex takeover of America.
"The power of the Federal Government is now greater than at any time, it'll never go back and the Posse Comitatus Act has been eroding ever since it was passed in 1878..." Roberts asserted.
FEMA is now simply a federalized front group for the corrupt money hoarding Department of Homeland Security, the Orwellian titled agency that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with limiting the freedoms of people all over the country.
The way this Federal Government has been behaving for the past decade cannot be said in words other than: monstruous!!!!
The way this nation is shifting--and here I mean : the way the PULSE of the country is going--is the OVERSEAS WAY! In other words, most intelligent and wise fellow Americans who can sense even half as much as I sense about the future of this country are physically already relocating to Europe. Why, it's a fact: this government in its refusal to protect its citizens is actually killing the American Nation day by day ....I have my plan anyway: my family and I are not going to stay even one year longer in this country! This is Hell, not the Blessed Land --it is the Blessed Land for the corrupted to get rich at the expense of all the humans in the USA. I smelled this coming, but what I didn't "smell" was that it was coming our way soooooooooooo fast!!!
Sincerely: a very concerned fellow-human, a very concerned fellow-American!
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