The salient point of this committee, is that it was chaired by republican Susan Collins, and the ranking democrat is Joe Lieberman, another right-wing republican. Of course, they are going to recommend the Bush Agenda which is to dismantle FEMA so that the military will then respond to the next crisis on U.S. soil -- the same thing Bush tried to pull off during Katrina when Blanco refused Bush's request to send in the military.
Dubya wants to make this a communist-like country where he and the military has absolute control.
Posted by at April 26, 2006 10:14 PMThis is a perfectly typical cycle. Republicans cannot allow "big government" to actually serve the citizens. Every Republican president has underfunded, undermined and filled FEMA with sychophantic drones.
Anonymous is spot on. The Bushniks intended, from the very beginning to destroy FEMA as a government success story. It's much better to have pathologically stressed-out and indoctrinated combat troops, locked and loaded, to be handing out bottled water and "keeping order" in national disasters.
That's where the Rummy doctrine of blocking access to any but rabid right-wing news and websites, while larding up the faculties of the service academies with bible thumping prostelyzers and keeping soldiers deployed away from their families, friends and civilian values is so incredibly dangerous. We have the beginnings of an out of touch, lethally experienced, Imperial Army under construction.
Martial Law is just another "constitutional power" for a warlord, excuse me, "Wartime President" to exercise as he's eternally "protecting the citizens" of the late, great democratic experiment.
Posted by DeminNewJ at April 27, 2006 03:17 AMAnonymous nails it above. Lemme guess too that they prolly want to outsource more of the work to big bidness republicons...you know in the name of nepotism and cronyism.
Posted by emal at April 27, 2006 04:21 AMI live in the hurricane magnet state of florida and this stuff scares the hell out of me! Like someone said in an above comment, I don't want our Nat'l Guard who have served a couple of tours in Iraq down here with guns and frustration and god knows what else on their minds, telling us what to do after another mf hurricane blows through. It would be more dangerous than the storm.
Posted by pissed off patricia at April 27, 2006 04:28 AMLet's get to the skinny, guys; what else can one expect from Nazis?
Posted by Mal Feasance at April 27, 2006 05:10 AMJoe Lieberman actually grows balls on this issue and takes Bush to the woodshed.
woodshed? i heard him quoted as saying the president was "unfocused" real biting rhetoric there. just gave fiddy to Ned, hoping he'll defeat Flanders.
i prefer this:
let's see that matched in your separating yourself from your patron, big oil, cut yourself off from that anvil holding your party down and this country down, instead of coming to Washington and throwing your Republican colleagues under the wheels of the train, which they mightily deserve for being a rubber stamp for your obscene, corrupt policy of ripping off the american people.Posted by benjoya at April 27, 2006 06:03 AM
SO true Nice blog http://dam-nation.blogspot.com/
Posted by Dan at April 27, 2006 06:24 AMbtw, in case you don't click the link above, that's a US congressperson speaking
Posted by benjoya at April 27, 2006 07:54 AMThere are three major problems with FEMA:
1) Competent leadership was replaced with incompetent political cronies
2) By moving it under DHS, its primary mission was inconflict with DHS's primary mission. Terrorism is only one of the emergencies it has to deal with and historically the least important.
3) Chertoff, and the Bush Whitehouse didn't care what happened to New Orleans until it started to make them look bad.
As I understand the Senate Proposal, it is to replace FEMA with an Executive National Emergency Management Agency.
Cross posted to DailyKos
Posted by marc sobel at April 27, 2006 08:03 PMSo the Repubs may succeed in calling FEMA ineffective (because they staffed and funded it so poorly) ... then the Dept of Education ...
What an interesting strategy to remove all of the portions of government that don't serve big business directly.
Posted by at April 28, 2006 07:05 PM