I like calling North Carolina home?
If Kirstjen Nielsen is on his case, I’m almost tempted to side with Long. On the other hand, that’s something like trying to decide whether to side with Röhm’s SA or Himmler’s SS. It makes one wish one were an arms dealer so one could sell weapons to both sides.
He deserves a high pressure investigation front.
Is there any appointee in this administration who isn’t corrupt?
The Administrator’s personal car budget would’ve at least been a better piggy bank to raid for ICE’s concentration internment family detention camps than the FEMA relief and recovery funds that DHS actually raided.
How this clown is still at the head of FEMA after the travesty that was the Trump Admin response to Hurricane Maria is a mystery. Michael Brown did a helluva job and saved thousands of lives compared to Brock Long.
All signs point to “no.”
HAaahahahahhahahahah!
(Breathe)
AHAHAHahahahahahahah!
Whew, that was a nice laugh, thanks!
While I haven’t been following this closely, there has been one surprise among the Trump appointees. By all reports that I’ve heard (and again, I haven’t really been paying attention), Linda McMahon at SBA is actually trying to do good things for, ya’ know, small businesses. I would never have predicted this.
Incompetence and a thief.
Why is anyone surprised?
Note the headlines next week will be how poorly FEMA has responded to the outcomes of Florence. Granted that all disasters are local, but Florence will be a second defining event for emergency response incompetence. It won’t be as bad as Maria because it is much easier to move resources within the lower 48 and not over water, but this will be one hell of a mess.
The pictures will contradict what Trump and Long are telling us, but it will end up being the private power companies providing power recovery under mutual aid, Walmart and Anheuser Busch sending food and canned water, and water utilities from nearby areas and other states helping to restore water systems.
FEMA will act like they have their eye on what is going on, but others will be doing the hard work and hoping FEMA will get out of the way. Later, FEMA will bury everyone in paperwork and rules as they try to get reimbursement under the Stafford Act.
And, then where is Hurricane Issac going to go? Florida? The mid or western Gulf? That will be next week. And, there is already flooding in South Texas with at least a big tropical storm coming this weekend.
Been there, seen that, and there is no reason to believe it will be any different if not worse.
I hope I’m wrong, but I also hope I win the lottery.
I guess we might see a post-response evaluation of FEMA after Florence (see how much Republicans dissemble) .
As we know, historically these are sometimes revealing. And, right before midterm elections.
Interesting discussion last night on PBS Newshour between Craig Fugate and someone from the GAO. Fugate was pointing out that Maria was the third storm in a row of bad storms to hit. Resources were low, personnel were tired, some trained personnel were not available, and that he had been pushing for setting up a agency sort of like the National Guard. He described that these trained personnel would be paid a small yearly stipend to maintain training and planning. The guy from the GAO not impressed.
So what I learned that I didn’t know is that FEMA relies on personnel that are part time. These are the folks on the ground similar to the Red Cross. And never ever be the area that gets hit by the third major storm in 30 days.
I literally woke up this morning with the worrying about Duke Energy’s coal ash ponds and pits on my mind.
FEMA is structured wrong and buried under DHS.
See the chart for DHS
https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/18_0519_DHS_Organizational_Chart.pdf
and the chart for FEMA
We would be better off with, first stop denying that it is getting warmer. Warm air holds more moisture, and we get bigger rain events. Second, structure emergency response similar to the military. We know how to move resources across the world, setup base camps within hours, and keep supply chains moving - for extended periods.
Why NOT model it after the National Guard with a military command and control process - with the resources in place?
I am not military or ex-military, but we aren’t blind to the efficiency of how the military can move. We seem to make a habit of it all too often. But, if we can move resources to rest of the world, why not model emergency response after what works?
They are all rich, pampered takers with a sky-high sense of entitlement.
Have we, on here, even talked about the $29M (?) transferred from the Coast Guard to ICE?
No, but that will have a limiting factor on ability to respond. FEMA is already way over budget from storms and wildfires, etc.
It’s criminal but unless we win the mid-terms no one will ever investigate.
Correction: the official death toll was (the incredibly improbable) only 64, but it was changed to 2975 after the Harvard study.