« Northcom and Katrina | Main | George Bush's Bubble »

This story from the Salt Lake Tribune is almost too hard to believe:

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.

Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.

On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Federal officials are unapologetic.

And this graf at the end of the piece is really the most enraging:

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

You've got to read the entire piece to get a grasp of how badly FEMA has performed.

Typical. This is the logical result of consolidating huge government beurocracies. With FEMA and the other relief agencies under DHS (Department of Homeland Security) guess where the bulk of the funding goes? If you guessed, securing the homeland, you are in the majority of Americans... and wrong. If you guessed, enriching corporations who charge massive sums to "combat terrorism" you are correct.

Ironically, these are the same administration folks who used to call for smaller government. They actually called themselves deficit hawks. They are more like surplus vultures.

Dan

Name (required)
Email
Website
Remember personal info? Yes   No
Comments

home | music | democracy | earth | money | projects | about | contact

Site design by Matthew Fries | © 2003-23 Consilience Productions. All Rights Reserved.
Consilience Productions, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
All contributions are fully tax deductible.