FEMA to be Abolished, Replaced with Exact Replica

I heard on Air America that the “Senate” Committee that investigated the response to Hurricane Katrina thinks “FEMA” is so f****ed up that it should be abolished. It’s certainly true as far as I can tell that “FEMA” is a big honking waste of money that serves primarily to steer disaster related contracts to cronies of its directors. Abolition would be a good thing, but I am pretty sure that the “federal government” will simply replace “FEMA” with an even bigger “agency”. “Not FEMA” will probably have all the same staff and then some and an even bigger budget. And dollars to doughnuts, “Not FEMA” will be just as crappy as “FEMA”.

I suspect that the “Committee” reached its conclusion in order to exonerate the “administration” of charges of incompetence and indifference. After all, if “FEMA” were so fundamentally flawed in structure that it could not work no matter what, no amount of good management and expert administering would have prevented the inevitable screw up of the aftermath of Katrina. Brownie’s “heckuva job” would be to no avail as long he was hamstrung by an organizational structure that produced failure.

Bush and his co-conspirators realize that the “federal government” does nothing of any significance except to siphon money from taxpayers to personnel and well-placed contractors. There is no sense in trying to make any “agency” effective at anything other than enriching one’s friends and enhancing one’s grip on power. The voters won’t notice, and they will reward even the most spectacular failures with more money and power. The opposition will never point out the reality of the situation, because it hopes in turn to control the money and power machine.

Even those “agencies” that are involved in “national security” are organized not for effectiveness in their ostensible missions but for efficient redistribution of money and for political ends. Accordingly, intelligence “agencies” are managed by political hacks and “intelligence” is created to enhance the political position of the “administration”. That professional intelligence analysts are leaving in droves is of no concern, because the “administration” doesn’t really care about reality; it creates its own reality. The military is a political tool rather than a force for defense. The “administration” knows the threat to America is miniscule and that the military and “DHS” can’t really defend against determined “terrorists”; therefore, the military is freed up to be used for other purely political purposes to make Bush a “war president” and justify secrecy and intolerance of dissent.

The “conservatives” know that big “government” is a wasteful and useless, but they no longer talk about reducing “government”. Of course, whenever they have been in power, they have increased “government”, but they at least used to pretend to favor small “government”. Now, it is manifest that all “conservatives” care about is power and money and that their rhetoric about small “government” was fraud in the inducement.

"Progressives" pretend that "government" can be made to function effectively and efficiently. This is an impossible task in the present political climate, but it at least renders "progressives" vulnerable to criticism. The best Americans can hope for is for "progressives" to be in power subject to a vocal "conservative" opposition. "Conservatives" are at their best when they are in the opposition and whining about waste and taxes.