McCain's False FEMA Promise
While touring New Orleans yesterday, John McCain declared the government's response to the Katrina disaster "terrible and disgraceful" and pledged that it would never happen again. But McCain also demonstrated precisely the mindset that caused FEMA to revert from what both Republicans and Democrats in the 1990s had called a model agency back into the turkey farm it had been before the Clinton administration. He said: "Too often, government has its own peculiar way of doing things, following practices that in the private sector would invite financial ruin or worse." McCain reiterated the talking point of Newt Gingrich and every other purveyor of right-wing sound bites that UPS, FedEx, and Wal-Mart can tell you where packages are in real time, but FEMA couldn't even locate its own assets or people.
But it's the belief system that the private sector inherently does things better than government that impelled Bush's first FEMA head, Joseph Allbaugh, to dismantle the agency, notwithstanding its greatly improved performance in the 1990s, by farming out many of its activities to purportedly more efficient contractors.
Allbaugh, acting on the right-wing's hostility toward civil servants, politicized its top leadership with like-minded ideologues to bypass much more qualified and experienced personnel who had demonstrated their effectiveness in the 1990s. He cut programs, like the Project Impact disaster mitigation initiative, even though it had been widely considered to be cost-effective. And he told the states that they would have to bear a greater share of the responsibility for responding to disasters. That's the right-wing approach to government management, applied to virtually every domestic agency throughout the Bush years: politicize, privatize, devolve, and cut.
John McCain's comments give every indication that he would follow the same approach, which isn't surprising since conservatives have little else to say about government other than that the private sector is inherently better. In the Senate, he consistently voted against more funds for FEMA, against making it an independent agency as it had been in the 1990s, and even against the creation of a commission to investigate how the government failed after Katrina. That indifference to learning from experience and adjusting accordingly is a central characteristic of movement conservatism. No matter how many times, say, tax cuts for the rich have failed to provide promised broad economic benefits while exploding federal deficits, it remains a central element of the right-wing --and McCain's--platform. The same rigidity applies to neoconservative arguments about foreign policy, regardless of its self-evident failures.
At the very least, anyone who generally cared about preventing a repeat of FEMA's Katrina failures would want to start by looking at how it improved in the 1990s. Simply restating the right-wing incantations about government's inferiority is sure to cause nothing more than the same failures that conservatism produced in this decade.
If Republicans think businesses do things so much better than government, why do they keep going into government, instead of running the businesses they already have?
Why aren't those businesses leading the way in things like cleaning up pollution and providing better pay and benefits for workers?
Why do they pay millions to executives who run their businesses into bankruptcy?
April 25, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republicans hate government and then get into government to screw up government so they can say government doesn't work. Republicans are the problem, not government.
April 25, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The endorsement of McCain by Grover Norquist -- the man who bragged about wanting to shrink government to the size where it could be "drowned in a bathtub" -- says all you need to know about what McCain would do to FEMA and to the rest of the non-military part of government.
I much prefer Barack Obama to Hillary, but credit should be placed where it is due -- Bill Clinton made FEMA a model agency. And he appointed capable people -- no "Brownies."
April 25, 2008 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Republican Rule: Creating the Bathtub Government since 2000. Starve it, privatize it, and belittle it. You said it, and very well.
April 25, 2008 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
There needs to be one of those translator devices featured in some sci-fi novels and movies to explain how earthlings and aliens are able to communicate verbally -- you strap it on the front of a conservative and lo, when he/she says, "The private sector can do this better," what comes out is, "This is an opportunity for someone to make a lot of money off the taxpayer!"
April 25, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a key issue for Obama to hit McCain "at his strength."
Republicans have been winning for decades on the notion that government wastes money and doesn't work. Obama's gotta hit McCain hard on the point that when government works, it should be encouraged and developed, and THAT'S A GOOD THING because it will SAVE PEOPLE MONEY.
And that McCain has COST all of us money (and let's throw in houses and lives) by voting to gut FEMA et al.
April 25, 2008 3:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Bush administration, after having failed so miserably at so many endeavors, needs to be personally and publicly held to account for those failures.
The compilation of such a dismal performance record would lead most sane persons to examine their methods and priorities. Not so Bush, his cronies and republican stoolies. In spite of their record they insist their methods and priorities are absolutely correct. I don't think you can state a more damning case to describe how seriously flawed republican policies are than to reflect upon republican reticence to accept what is obvious to so many citizens.
People instinctively know what failure looks like and know how it feels. We all fail at things. It is part of life. However, there are those who, through repeated failure, have learned to defend failure by insistently disguising it as success. In the case of the Bush administration this is a mental dysfunction of epic proportion. Not only are republicans unable to accept and deal with their failures but those failures have irreparably harmed Americans.
In this case it is incumbent upon congress to force this acceptance by the established constitutional means at hand.
Unfortunately those same persons who are unable to accept their failure are the very ones that prohibit accounting for them. The terms 'politics as usual' and 'criminal conduct' mean very different things. All indications are Bush and congressional republicans truly don't know the difference. Or if so, then they are criminally liable beyond measure. And remeber these same persons are the same core group of individuals who impeached BC so they do have some idea of what wrong doing looks like. Which then gives the unmistakable appearance of applying the law in a seriously biased way.
One could go on all day describing how ethically and morally corrupt Bush and republicans are but that won't change the fact that no matter how seriously republicans have harmed this country, democrats, who are ethically and morally obliged to address that harm, have failed to find a way do so. This makes for empirical and irrefutable evidence that our government is in failure mode. To describe it differently is an endorsement of the lie of success.
April 25, 2008 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's been awhile since we heard from Mr. Allbaugh. How's his war profiteering/influence peddling business coming along?
April 25, 2008 6:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
John McCain's policies with regard to money can be succinctly stated: Limitless trillions for Baghdad, but not one red cent for Americans. It's such a simple and consistent theme in his public voting career. It's hard to see how anyone could be fooled by the platitudes he comes out with. John has consistently voted against everything and anything for America at home including port security and essential first responder equipment. He doesn't believe in anything but war funding that has to be put on the credit card and paid for by the least wealthy Americans because the wealthiest Americans must have their tax cuts. Obama is working for tax cuts for people who make less than a quarter of a million per year and insisting that people who make more than a quarter of a million per year can afford to help out a little more. McCain talks about democrats raising taxes, he just forgets to tell you that it's only on the 6% of the population at the top who have had a free ride compared to the families at the bottom 94% of the population. John McCain agrees with Leona Helmsly: "Only poor people pay taxes."
April 25, 2008 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well of course UPS can track packages in real time. They are in the business of shipping packages. That's what they do.
FEMA is supposed to be in the business of helping Americans recover from disasters. When Bill Clinton ran FEMA, FEMA "delivered" well for all Americans. Now that George W. Bush runs it, FEMA only delivers to multi million dollar luxury beach front condominiums. Everyone else's package got lost under a New Orleans freeway overpass.
April 26, 2008 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink