Replacing FEMA

[benevolent dictator]

Replacing FEMA

Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah, gave a victory speech Monday in which he offered to pay a year’s rent for a house plus a furniture budget to all displaced Lebanese refugees. The following day, just one day after the cease-fire, Lebanese refugees began returning home. As the NYT reported on Tuesday, "hundreds of Hezbollah members spread over dozens of villages across southern Lebanon began cleaning, organizing and surveying damage. Men on bulldozers were busy cutting lanes through giant piles of rubble. Roads blocked with the remnants of buildings are now, just a day after a cease-fire began, fully passable. … Hezbollah men also traveled door to door checking on residents and asking them what help they needed."

When Katrina hit, it took Bush days to direct a person to chair a task force to coordinate the relief efforts. It took days for the National Guard to appear on the scene. Despite FEMA having 500 buses on standby on the day of the storm, ready to be deployed, it took almost a week to get those buses to the Convention Center in New Orleans to begin evacuations there.

Nearly a year after the storm, hundreds of thousands of refugees still have not returned to their homes.

Rather than paying an emergency agency to explain to us why it’s not their job to respond to emergencies, or why if they did participate in relief work, it would maximize their "potential for failure," let’s hire an organization that’s so dedicated to relief and reconstruction that they provide those services despite it not being their job. Let’s dismantle FEMA and bring Hezbollah to the Gulf Coast.

More at the link. Check it out.

[ComerPerro]

1. actually, I am convinced that FEMA's failures were on purpose

so conservatives could point and illustrate how ineffective big government programs are.

And, trust me, they will replace FEMA, with a privatized system.

And they will bill the city.

"You want your people rescued with humanitarian aid? Its gonna cost you"

[serryjw]

6. Does that mean that I have to

learn HOW to build a levee?

[benevolent dictator]

7. .

[TahitiNut]

9. Well, I think SOMEBODY should.

:grr:

[Selatius]

2. It's pure hyperbole, but I get the guy's point without it

Hezbollah has access to both bulldozers and intelligence assets, unlike FEMA, who neither owns equipment nor has the capability to find out who does. FEMA operates on the principle that a team of monkeys randomly typing for an infinite amount of time will eventually bang out the complete works of Shakespeare. In their adaptation, an infinite number of randomly issued contracts will eventually result in locating a company which owns heavy equipment – a theory which led to garbage removal being contracted to AshBritt’s at $23 per cubic yard, who subcontracted it to C&B Enterprises, who subcontracted it to Amlee Transportation, who subcontracted it to Chris Hessler Inc, who subcontracted it to Les Nirdlinger for $3 per cubic yard. I don’t know what possessed me (no pun intended) to do the math on that, but for the record, it’s a 666% markup.

Ouch

[TahitiNut]

10. You've portrayed privateering perfectly.

The feds "eliminate" whole departments and many workers ... and then issue contracts to shell corporations (with very LIMITED liability, of course) who, in turn, issue subcontracts (taking their own cut off the top) for lower amounts to cronies and partisans who, in turn, issue subcontracts (taking their own cut off the top) for even lower amounts to cronies who, eventually subcontract to a cheap-labor employer paying far less than the wages once paid by the government when they were the direct employer.

This is how private business achieves the "greater efficiency" they claim. It's a fraud.

[MADem]

3. We don't need to replace FEMA, we just need the OLD FEMA back

The CLINTON FEMA. The one that WORKED. The one that didn't have all their dough taken away by DHS. The one that had autonomy and reported to the White House.

As for Hizb'Allah, if you are a Christian, Sunni or a Druze, get to the back of the line for your money, or be prepared to submit to their rule of your village by those thugs. And that idiot Nasrallah is starting to sound like Bush and Condi with the "Gee, who could have ever imagined that kidnapping and killing soldiers would, uh, like, uh...start a WAR, man???"

http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14310388p-15207544c.html

"We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude," Nasrallah told Lebanon's New TV network. "If I had known on July 11 … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military and political reasons. Neither I, Hezbollah, prisoners in Israeli jails nor the families of the prisoners would accept it."

Nasrallah also said he did not foresee renewed hostilities anytime soon, citing rebuilding efforts by Israelis displaced by Hezbollah rocket attacks during the monthlong conflict.

"Someone who acts like that doesn't seem to be going to war," he said. "We are not heading to a second round."

The nearly two-hour interview was a surprising expression of contrition from Nasrallah, who defiantly declared Hezbollah victorious when a cease-fire ended the fighting two weeks ago.

Analysts said the 46-year-old leader {u]may be trying to defuse ongoing anger inside Lebanon over the scale of the destruction wreaked by the fighting and an indication that Nasrallah is trying to mend political fences ahead of a visit to Beirut today by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"Hezbollah has received so much blame for having provoked this Israeli onslaught," said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a leading Lebanese expert on Hezbollah. "The less negative impact would be to say, 'Of course, we wouldn't have done it if we had known.' "

[JeffR]

4. FEMA can be fixed. It's the pResident who should be replaced.

[benevolent dictator]

5. Kick...

[benevolent dictator]

8. kick again