Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Hurricane Katrina's latest fatality should be FEMA, the nation's disaster response agency, a Senate inquiry concluded in calling for a government overhaul to avoid future failures like those the devastating storm exposed.

FEMA was doomed to fail from the beginning due to its unconstitutional nature.

Eighty-six recommendations by the bipartisan panel indicate the United States is still woefully unprepared for a storm of Katrina's scope with the start of the hurricane season little more than a month away.

The recommendations conclude that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is crippled beyond repair by years of poor leadership and inadequate funding. They call for a new agency — the National Preparedness and Response Authority — to plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters.

In other words, they're giving us the same thing with another name. I predict today it will fail as miserably as its predecessor, and will be filed under FUCKUP (Fearsomely Useless Centers, Knowledge, Unions, and Programs), where it appropriately belongs.

Although the proposed changes do not place blame on any official or government agency, Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., will offer "additional views" to the panel's findings in a statement accusing President Bush of failing "to provide critical leadership when it was most needed."

The leadership of the people of the affected areas was what was needed. Constitutionally, there isn't a damned thing the President could have done.

"The United States was, and is, ill-prepared to respond to a catastrophic event of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina," said the recommendations. "Catastrophic events are, by their nature, difficult to imagine and to adequately plan for, and the existing plans and training proved inadequate in Katrina."

The US federal government is not constitutionally authorized to be involved in such matters, so STFU, Mr. Senator.

The recommendations are to be released Thursday and will be included in the Senate panel's full report to be issued next week.

Maybe if you guys would stop busying yourselves with such matters, you might have some time to actually read the Constitution.

The recommendations, obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, are the product of a seven-month Senate investigation. The probe follows similar inquiries by the House and White House and comes in an election year in which Democrats have seized on Katrina to attack the Bush administration.

Think about the tax dollars that have been wasted on this "investigation". Think about the freedoms that could have been restored by repealing unconstitutional laws and shutting down unconstitutional departments and agencies. Then think about the tax cuts that could have easily been implemented with the dismantling of socialism. Think about the extra bombs and planes we could afford, or the raise we could give our soldiers. Instead, we get an expensive Senate investigation into why an illegitimate agency fails largely due to its illegitimacy. Now they want to disband that agency and create a bigger, more expensive, and even more illegitimate agency to replace it, which, largely due to its illegitimacy, is also doomed to failure. Are you starting to understand why Congress's approval ratings are even lower than the President's?

President Bush is to visit Louisiana and Mississippi — which bore the brunt of Katrina's wrath — on Thursday.

Unfortunately, he's going for the wrong reason. He should be going to offer moral support and inspire these people to help themselves. Instead, he's going to hold up the federal government as being better equipped to solve their problems for them, even after all that has just happened.

Katrina, which struck on Aug. 29, was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. The storm killed more than 1,300 people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, left hundreds of thousands of homeless and caused tens of billions of dollars in damage.

Tens of billions of dollars worth of damage the fed has no business attempting to repair. State and local authorities have the responsibility to take care of this, though it's obviously better each take care of his own.

The new authority would communicate directly with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress. But it would remain within the Homeland Security Department and would continue receiving resources from the department.

In other words, the authority would be charged with distracting DHS's attention away from its real mission - keeping the homeland secure, particularly from terrorists. Yeah, real nice.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who led the inquiry by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the new authority would be "better equipped with the tools to prepare for and respond to a disaster."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is full of shit.

She described FEMA as a "shambles" and said the change "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina."

You'll have worse failures.

But the proposal drew disdain from Homeland Security and its critics, both sides questioning the need for another bureaucratic shuffling that they said wouldn't accomplish much.

The only beaureaucratic shuffling that would accomplish anything in this case would be the outright dismantling of the government's intrusion into the rights of the States and the people to solve their own problems.

"It's time to stop playing around with the organizational charts and to start focusing on government, at all levels, that are preparing for this storm season," Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Focus on dismantling socialism, and you'll do a lot more good.

Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, who resigned under fire after Katrina, said the new agency would basically have the same mission FEMA had a year ago before its disaster planning responsibilities were taken away to focus solely on responding to calls for help.

In other words, I'm right. It's just going to be the same wolf - just wearing different shepherd's clothing.

"It sounds like they're just re-creating the wheel and making it look like they're calling for change," Brown said. "If indeed that's all they're doing, they owe more than that to the American public."

Amen. They need to get about the business of reining the government back in to within the boundaries set forth in the Constitution.

The House report, issued in February, similarly criticized Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Brown for moving too slowly to trigger federal relief. The White House report, which came a week later, took a softer tone and singled out Homeland Security for most of the breakdowns.

Why not just correctly blame the government in general and dismantle the programs that are infringing upon the Constitution and the rights of the States and the People? Why not simply admit that these things don't help at all, and leave it at that? I'm sick of watching our government try to find ways to use socialism to try and solve the very problems that same socialism has caused.

Many of the rest of the Senate recommendations were far less dramatic, ranging from creating a Homeland Security Academy to encouraging plans to evacuate and shelter pets during a disaster.

They also called for more funding for disaster planning and response at all levels of government, clarifying levee maintenance responsibilities, and suggested better contracting procedures to avoid waste or fraud in the rush to get aid to disaster victims.

All unconstitutional and therefore illegal actions on the part of the federal government.

It's time Americans took a stand.

RWR