Posted 12:28 PM by magnu231
Abolish FEMA?

A Senate committee has recommended scrapping FEMA and starting anew with a different disaster agency. Frankly, it's not a proposal I think much of. FEMA should be scrapped, no doubt. But I don't happen to think it should be replaced. Here's the telling quote, in my mind.

"The first obligation of government is to protect our people," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigation. "In Katrina, we failed at all levels of government to meet that fundamental obligation."

That's the mindset nowadays, and I find it a problematic one, especially with Republicans in the White House and Congress apparently adopting it as well. The attitude that government is the answer to our problems. Remember Reagan saying that big government wasn't the answer to our problems, but that big goverment was the problem? If you answered yes, you come out ahead of the most ostensibly conservative members of our political realm. I could write a polemical screed on the protectionist paternalistic government of our day, protecting us from ourselves, and promising to protect us from things it has no control over, while spreading fear of things to strengthen it's own power. But frankly, this is a problem we've had for many years, and we'll continue to have (unfortunately) for many more. And I've got a property final staring me in the face, and right now my property knowledge is negligable at best. So, I think I'll do that instead, and get back to my rant at some point in the future when my C exams are in the rearview mirror.

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