Ron Paul says that no national response to Hurricane Irene should be necessary.
He wasn’t commenting on the strength of the storm, which has thankfully decreased to a Category 1… or the abilities of local government to help their citizenry. No, he just doesn’t think FEMA is necessary at all.
His mistake was in referencing old Hurricanes… like the Cat 4 that hit Galveston in 1900. That storm left between 6,000 and 12,000 dead and countless others injured. But Paul, in his very tightly limited government scenario, would have had no help for the survivors?
[box]GILFORD, N.H. — After a lunch speech today, Ron Paul slammed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and said that no national response to Hurricane Irene is necessary.
“We should be like 1900; we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960,” Paul said. “I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district.
“There’s no magic about FEMA. They’re a great contribution to deficit financing and quite frankly they don’t have a penny in the bank. We should be coordinated but coordinated voluntarily with the states,” Paul told NBC News. “A state can decide. We don’t need somebody in Washington.”
NBC[/box]
I don’t know how FEMA is administered. Good stewards of our money? Again, I don’t know. Like any other government entity, it’s probably rife with corruption.
But regardless of what Paul says, there is magic in FEMA.
Have you ever been in a hurricane or other natural disaster? Has a tornado ever come through your town and swept away everything you ever owned and you sat in the rubble, crying over your pictures, of all things? Have you ever lost your roof? Have you ever gotten lost in your own neighborhood, looking for a sign or tree that looked familiar and not found them? Gone for weeks without electricity and water? Wondered where you’d live? Run to higher ground and watched your house float by?
FEMA’s business is money, but they’ve increasingly been tasked with numerous other things, like disaster preparedness, response, recovery and education. If there’s time to stage them, workers are standing by to leap in to action right after a disaster, just as extra electric company and cable workers from all over the country.
And the day after the disaster, maybe the next… that’s when the magic happens, Ron. Semis full of water are trucked in and the workers come by to ask you questions. ‘Do you have a place to stay?’ ‘Are you in desperate need right now?’ Then they cut checks so you can go to a motel, get something to eat.
You were pretty flippant when you said ‘We deal with hurricanes all the time’. No, you don’t. You deal with the threat of hurricanes and some storms in the Cat 1 and 2 range – though Ike, at a 2, managed to wipe whole neighborhoods off the map… What would have happened if you had your way, Ron, and a Cat 5 hit Lake Jackson… while you were at home? And there was no help…? Oh, wait… you’ve lived in D.C. since 1976!
Get your head out of your ass, you foolish, foolish man.
I know a lot of government workers who aren’t necessary. Like Ron Paul. That’s where we can save money.
In a related subject, I am praying for an earthquake to level my house in Sonoma so I can get the insurance money and my squatters will HAVE to leave before it goes into foreclosure.
Anyone wanting to join me in this endeavour would be more than welcome.
Of course, I’m not praying for the ruination or death of anyone…
I know that the so-called ‘entitlement programs’ need to be torn apart and put back together in some logical semblance, but we still need them. Too many who can support themselves are living off taxpayer money, but we still want to help those who need it.
But guess who re-tools the programs? Yeah, politicians. Ugh.
I understand why you’re praying for a little earthquake, destructive only at your address… so I’ll join you. Only there, though.
I hope Ron Paul and his flaky, crackpot ideas disappear quickly from the Republican field and make room for more sensible candidates and ideas. The man has a few ideas that make sense, but a great deal of them (especially those that pertain to foreign policy) don’t at all. He lost me for good when he said he wouldn’t have ordered the bin Laden raid. Hell, even Obama was able to do that.
Yeah, exactly! Like you, I hope the Paul element is soon gone…
Ms. Pam…
Ike was a cat 2 storm with 110 mph winds… Cat 3 starts at 111 mph…
Ike wiped out whole neighborhoods because of a 20+ foot storm surge… Characteristic of a cat 4 storm… I saw an entire marina, boats, pilings and docks, deposited on a large parking lot normally 15 feet above sea level…
FEMA does some good things but they waste a piss pot full of money too…
davek…
They do waste a lot of money… it should be overhauled, maybe work more with the states, but it has a place.
Does ron think locals will pour out of the woodwork to help other locals? Can’t, not when the entire region is destroyed.
I think the program works better on a national basis because money is collected from all states, even though some almost never have disasters. Fair? Not strictly, but if it were on a state level and one state had, say, three bad hurricanes in one year… bankrupt.
Ron Paul is a nutjob. I still can’t fathom why anyone supports him. He’s the Dennis Kucnich of the GOP.
Tin hat time!
That’s the point, Folly. He IS the Kucinich of the GOP. Like Dennis he is in a safe district and has gained enough seniority in Congress where as long as his staff takes care of constituent services his job is safe. This gives him the idea that he is important.
Social Security, though and BAM! He’s an ex-Congresscritter lobbying for the Acme Lottery Company.
And the Kucich supporters ARE the Ron Paul supporters. If both of them came to the same town six weeks apart you’d see the same cars in the parking lot.
I thought of you last night, Peter. We were watching that new[est] Robin Hood movie and Eleanor said, speaking to her youngest son, Kimg John about taxes: “Milking a dried udder gets you nothing but kicked off the milking stool!”
Sounded like something you’d say.
Eh, most of the things I’d say have more ugly words in ‘em.
:devil:
I guess Mr. Paul forgot about the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveston and killed over 8,000 people.
No, he didn’t forget. He specifically stated that we should go back to being like 1900, that we didn’t need government assistance.
He’s a fucking looney tunes.
He doesn’t know much about The Great Storm does he?…
In the aftermath aid poured into Galveston from Houston (hit hard itself by the storm), the entire State of Texas, the Federal Government and companies and private individuals from as far away as New York…
They just didn’t have a FEMA to coordinate (waste) the aid…
davek…
We need FEMA. We all prepare for one week. That’s about the max you can prepare for before you really do start running out of food and water. Everyone is on boil water alerts, it’s hotter than three hells because hurricanes hit in the SUMMER and not the winter, and supplies start to run low. Ice is gone, canned goods are at a minimum, and there flat isn’t anything in your freezer you can use anymore. If it didn’t get eaten it is gone bad. That’s when you start standing in lines for ice, water, and MREs. My folks had stuff for over two weeks, but still my Dad stood in line for ice after that first week. They were out of power for over two weeks and Dad had MREs ready in the event we it was going to press into three or four weeks without power. It’s just too damn long… FEMA does a good thing. There is a waste of money, but they do a good thing.
Hey, I found a little hurricane tracker sticky for my blog over at wunderground. It doesn’t quite fit in my sidebar, but it’s close and kind of fun. You have a choice of NASA blue marble black or Wunderground blue.
Exactly; they do a good thing! We can prepare, at least for hurricanes, but there are some things you can never be prepared for…
I love that little WU sticker, thanks! :thumbs:
Oh it came nice on your blog! You can see it all!
That little gray dot out there? That’s not a good thing. I’ve been tracking it with the wunderground blog. Keeping my hurricane supplies at hand…
That’s funny, because invest 92 is the one worrying me as well. Hope that’s not a bad sign. :(
My problem with FEMA is much the same as my problems with the Feebs. We get a big deal crime out here in the sticks and the FBI sends a 25 year old kid who was in the university until he was 23. He’s on his very first posting, that’s why he’s in an unimportant office. He walks into the office and BAM! He thinks he’s in charge of en and women with twenty+ years working the streets and roads, and, yes, woods and lakes of the same county.
It’s not that we don’t need FEMA. we do. In my line of work we also badly needed the Feebs. Our county did not have the wealth for a fancy crime lab. And we needed the FBI’s fingerprint (and now DNA) database. Trouble is, the FBI agents would often come in, cluesless and start throwing their (bantam) weight around. So it is with FEMA.
Of course you sometimes get the opposite problem, like when the governor of Louisiana and Ray “Schoolbus” Nagin sat around with one finger up their noses and a thumb up each ass while FEMA and other trucks were ready to roll.
Oh, Hell, I have no answers beyond the shooting of idiots at any level of government. I’m not sure I believe in capital punishment for government idiocy. Maybe the first sign, shoot ‘em in the shin. Second offense, in the belly and third, right in the back of the bean. That way they have two chances to improve or to find a new line of work. Third time, they’re out of our misery, forever.
A ‘three strikes’ program? Yeah, I like it.