FEMA and recovery
With all the investigations and hearings in our future regarding Hurricane Katrina and the governmental response thereto, I'm pretty sure that one question we shall never hear is the one asking whether disaster planning and relief is a federal responsibility. I wrote that sentence, by the way, before I saw David Brooks on Lehrer say that Katrina proved "that we need government." With his view in mind, the logical question is: what do we need it for?
As I have often done, I will start with the Constitution. Therein I find no provision of authority for responding to national disasters, with the possible exception of Article IV, section 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." So sending the National Guard, or even the standing military, to restore order where it has been destroyed or disabled, is a Constitutional obligation of the Federal government. But supply of vehicles for evacuation, food and water for the stranded, medical care, etc. -- I don't see it. Nor do I see any reference to guaranteeing the right to live at the expense of other Americans in a city that cannot be sustained otherwise -- but that's another post.
This, of course, is not the end of the discussion, because we can amend the Constitution. But it serves as a good starting point for the question of whether the Federal government should have this authority and responsibility. As we consider this question, it is important to remember that government cannot perform any action without taking money from individuals through force or threat thereof, and as such, government action is at its basis fundamentally immoral, and must be limited to the necessary.
So the question is: do we need FEMA? I say no.
First, a pop quiz: what are the qualifications for FEMA director?
That's a trick question: there are no qualifications. FEMA's director is a political appointee, whose appointment doesn't even need to be approved by Congress. So that position, like so many others in the federal government, is another way for a politician to take my money and give it to somebody else as a reward for being as stupid as he is. I guess elevating FEMA back to Cabinet-level, as it was in Clinton's day, would allow for Senate approval, but the vacancies in the Supreme Court have provided and shall yet provide a demonstration of the utter irrelevancy of that.
But again, why do we need FEMA?
The principal function of FEMA in recent years appears to be throwing money around and hoping it hits someone who needs it. The extent to which American citizens and even foreign governments have thrown money into New Orleans et al. should demonstrate that Americans are wealthy enough and generous enough to give oodles of cash voluntarily when they consider the cause just. I must emphasize this, because it is the basis of a just society: individuals are left to their own consciences on whether or not to surrender their resources for another's benefit.
Adults, meanwhile, are responsible for their own welfare. Each level of government is responsible, with the taxes received, for preventing individuals (on their own or as part of a gang or foreign army, for example) from harming person or property, and for maintaining the public order that allows for such protection, but not for protecting individuals from the consequences of their own actions or decisions, or the vagaries of fate. Individuals have to be able to identify the potential threats to their property (the reasonable ones, you know, like, say, a hurricane on the Gulf Coast) and prepare for themselves and their wards appropriate measures for surviving and/or escaping such threats and their consequences. I understand that not everybody can afford homeowners' insurance (although, again, that might be a sign that one should move), but even so, even if one might have no savings, one should be aware of that fact, and identify and cultivate resources in the community (like the guy who drives old people to church on Sundays, or the neighbor who has a big truck ro a phone) through making friends, etc. Poverty is a social ill, but at an individual level it results from circumstance, individual decisions, and individual actions. I've talked about this in my piece on Social Security, but individuals bear the responsibility for acting on their conscience, not compelling other individuals to act for them. And, as I pointed out above, individuals across the country take that responsibility in disaster after disaster. No individual has the right to use force to take property from others, even to sustain his or her life.
I came across a quote that I think is illustrative. In his first term in office, President Grover Cleveland was given a bill to give seed money to drought-stricken farmers in Texas. In vetoing the bill, Cleveland said, "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." While the national character bit is a load of crap, it is useful to contrast this attitude with the overprotective parenting being practiced by our current President -- when somebody wakes him up, that is.
And we're back to the much-maligned federal response to Katrina. An insurance company that failed to pay up per a policy would be subject to lawsuit, and since we are forced to pay for this rather dubious federal insurance policy called FEMA, I guess we should expect the same. Better, though, would be to stop having to pay this compulsory premium. It's a federal agency, subject to the funding whims of the legislature; its leadership is more likely than not to consist of not-especially-qualified political cronies of the President. Look at what Bush did to FEMA: marginalized it within a larger agency, redirected its focus away from natural disasters and to "terrorist attacks", and put a crony in charge. It's a repository of forcefully extracted money that is more likely than not to be distributed based on political or fraudulent considerations -- consider, for example, Brown's performance during Hurricane Frances. And it performs a function that the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to take on.
The alternative puts the responsibility where it belongs: in the hands of the individual. The individual must identify threats to him and his property, purchase insurance or create "insurance" through relationships with neighbors and families; exert the necessary pressure on his municipal and county governments to make sure there are enough firefighters, emergency personnel, and police to respond to a local disaster, and that roads are adequate to evacuation; to pressure his state to make sure that intrastate arteries are adequate to evacuate your municipality; and to give money and materiel that he can spare to those private entities that are positioned to aid those in need. That's what an American adult should do, and must do: to rely on the federal government is to become a child, and be deprived of property to fund incompetence and corruption on top of what may actually go to aid the needy or rebuild the territory.
I should also note that cities do not have the right to exist, and although individuals have the right to live wherever they want to, they don't have the right to do so on the subsidy extracted from their fellow citizens. Similarly, culture does not have the right to exist, but is maintained by choice by those willing to do so. New Orleans is not essential to our national economy: docks, warehouses, oil rigs and refineries are at the mouth of the Mississippi because there's an economic reason for them to be there; the need for workers to support them, of places for those workers to live, for groceries and haircuts and medical service and all those other things will drive resettlement of the area, but New Orleans has never been a good site for a city. The individuals filling the economic needs of the area will choose where to locate their homes and facilities, and while one might expect them to choose more wisely than the French royal government, nobody else should be forced to pay for the implementation or the consequences of their choices. And New Orleans' culture can survive in the homes of refugees, the musical libraries and museums, the bistros and whatever the hell else that open around the country to serve those interested in that culture. It is not the government's role to take my money so some moron can see his culture preserved by an entity larger than himself.
This post is way to long to go into the Army Corps of Engineers, or other federal actions, so I'll leave those for later. To sum up: kill FEMA, and let New Orleans and New Orleansians survive on their own and with the aid of those who choose to help them.
As I have often done, I will start with the Constitution. Therein I find no provision of authority for responding to national disasters, with the possible exception of Article IV, section 4: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." So sending the National Guard, or even the standing military, to restore order where it has been destroyed or disabled, is a Constitutional obligation of the Federal government. But supply of vehicles for evacuation, food and water for the stranded, medical care, etc. -- I don't see it. Nor do I see any reference to guaranteeing the right to live at the expense of other Americans in a city that cannot be sustained otherwise -- but that's another post.
This, of course, is not the end of the discussion, because we can amend the Constitution. But it serves as a good starting point for the question of whether the Federal government should have this authority and responsibility. As we consider this question, it is important to remember that government cannot perform any action without taking money from individuals through force or threat thereof, and as such, government action is at its basis fundamentally immoral, and must be limited to the necessary.
So the question is: do we need FEMA? I say no.
First, a pop quiz: what are the qualifications for FEMA director?
That's a trick question: there are no qualifications. FEMA's director is a political appointee, whose appointment doesn't even need to be approved by Congress. So that position, like so many others in the federal government, is another way for a politician to take my money and give it to somebody else as a reward for being as stupid as he is. I guess elevating FEMA back to Cabinet-level, as it was in Clinton's day, would allow for Senate approval, but the vacancies in the Supreme Court have provided and shall yet provide a demonstration of the utter irrelevancy of that.
But again, why do we need FEMA?
The principal function of FEMA in recent years appears to be throwing money around and hoping it hits someone who needs it. The extent to which American citizens and even foreign governments have thrown money into New Orleans et al. should demonstrate that Americans are wealthy enough and generous enough to give oodles of cash voluntarily when they consider the cause just. I must emphasize this, because it is the basis of a just society: individuals are left to their own consciences on whether or not to surrender their resources for another's benefit.
Adults, meanwhile, are responsible for their own welfare. Each level of government is responsible, with the taxes received, for preventing individuals (on their own or as part of a gang or foreign army, for example) from harming person or property, and for maintaining the public order that allows for such protection, but not for protecting individuals from the consequences of their own actions or decisions, or the vagaries of fate. Individuals have to be able to identify the potential threats to their property (the reasonable ones, you know, like, say, a hurricane on the Gulf Coast) and prepare for themselves and their wards appropriate measures for surviving and/or escaping such threats and their consequences. I understand that not everybody can afford homeowners' insurance (although, again, that might be a sign that one should move), but even so, even if one might have no savings, one should be aware of that fact, and identify and cultivate resources in the community (like the guy who drives old people to church on Sundays, or the neighbor who has a big truck ro a phone) through making friends, etc. Poverty is a social ill, but at an individual level it results from circumstance, individual decisions, and individual actions. I've talked about this in my piece on Social Security, but individuals bear the responsibility for acting on their conscience, not compelling other individuals to act for them. And, as I pointed out above, individuals across the country take that responsibility in disaster after disaster. No individual has the right to use force to take property from others, even to sustain his or her life.
I came across a quote that I think is illustrative. In his first term in office, President Grover Cleveland was given a bill to give seed money to drought-stricken farmers in Texas. In vetoing the bill, Cleveland said, "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." While the national character bit is a load of crap, it is useful to contrast this attitude with the overprotective parenting being practiced by our current President -- when somebody wakes him up, that is.
And we're back to the much-maligned federal response to Katrina. An insurance company that failed to pay up per a policy would be subject to lawsuit, and since we are forced to pay for this rather dubious federal insurance policy called FEMA, I guess we should expect the same. Better, though, would be to stop having to pay this compulsory premium. It's a federal agency, subject to the funding whims of the legislature; its leadership is more likely than not to consist of not-especially-qualified political cronies of the President. Look at what Bush did to FEMA: marginalized it within a larger agency, redirected its focus away from natural disasters and to "terrorist attacks", and put a crony in charge. It's a repository of forcefully extracted money that is more likely than not to be distributed based on political or fraudulent considerations -- consider, for example, Brown's performance during Hurricane Frances. And it performs a function that the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to take on.
The alternative puts the responsibility where it belongs: in the hands of the individual. The individual must identify threats to him and his property, purchase insurance or create "insurance" through relationships with neighbors and families; exert the necessary pressure on his municipal and county governments to make sure there are enough firefighters, emergency personnel, and police to respond to a local disaster, and that roads are adequate to evacuation; to pressure his state to make sure that intrastate arteries are adequate to evacuate your municipality; and to give money and materiel that he can spare to those private entities that are positioned to aid those in need. That's what an American adult should do, and must do: to rely on the federal government is to become a child, and be deprived of property to fund incompetence and corruption on top of what may actually go to aid the needy or rebuild the territory.
I should also note that cities do not have the right to exist, and although individuals have the right to live wherever they want to, they don't have the right to do so on the subsidy extracted from their fellow citizens. Similarly, culture does not have the right to exist, but is maintained by choice by those willing to do so. New Orleans is not essential to our national economy: docks, warehouses, oil rigs and refineries are at the mouth of the Mississippi because there's an economic reason for them to be there; the need for workers to support them, of places for those workers to live, for groceries and haircuts and medical service and all those other things will drive resettlement of the area, but New Orleans has never been a good site for a city. The individuals filling the economic needs of the area will choose where to locate their homes and facilities, and while one might expect them to choose more wisely than the French royal government, nobody else should be forced to pay for the implementation or the consequences of their choices. And New Orleans' culture can survive in the homes of refugees, the musical libraries and museums, the bistros and whatever the hell else that open around the country to serve those interested in that culture. It is not the government's role to take my money so some moron can see his culture preserved by an entity larger than himself.
This post is way to long to go into the Army Corps of Engineers, or other federal actions, so I'll leave those for later. To sum up: kill FEMA, and let New Orleans and New Orleansians survive on their own and with the aid of those who choose to help them.
posted by heavynettle at 01:56
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home