Maybe they could start by firmly establishing that FEMA, or NPRA (much harder to say) is not 100% responsible for solving 100% of the problems caused by 100% of the natural disasters 100% of the country.

That's been pretty well understood so far, everywhere but in New Orleans, but as there is still a conviction FEMA was supposed to do everything down there, maybe it should be put in writing.

FEMA worked great under Clinton. Then like a baby playing with a wine glass Bush and the Repugs got their smarmy hands on it and destroyed its functionality to the detriment of our Gulf State residents.

Shutting down FEMA would be a good start. Then go systematically through every single, bloated bureaucracy within the government and slash, slash, slash until we're left with a bare-bones government. The bloated government, in my opinion, is the source of much, if not most, of the problems we're facing today. When a government gets too big, it puts out the signal to the population that they can "depend upon" this or that bureaucracy to do "fill in the blank here." And when citizens are lulled into complacency by that idea, they become de facto dependent upon the government for every little thing that they think they are "entitled to." They abdicate their personal responsibility and look to the government to solve whatever issue is being discussed. Then the government steps in, takes control and in the process, usually grows even bigger. In the process, individual freedom and choice is usually given up as the government takes control and people hand over decisions to the government that they should be making themselves. It's a never-ending cycle of nibbling away at individual freedom.

If we had less government, there would be less people on the government payroll as career bureaucrats. People like Mary McCarthy for example. See how much she has managed to "help" the people...

This administration has gone down in history as the administration that oversaw the biggest growth in government in size and expense in our history. It's a bad, bad thing. Many Americans THOUGHT that they had elected a Conservative Republican majority, but it appears now that we've gotten exactly the opposite in terms of growth and spending. And the answer to every challenge faced by this country seems to be to add a department or to enlarge an already-existing department.

Personally, I'm bitterly sick over the size and scope of the Federal government. It continues to grow with no end in sight.

Do away with FEMA? That's what they want you to think they're about to do. Mark my words: when the dust settles, we're going to wind up with an even bigger, even more expensive replacement by whatever name they wish to call it.

It's time for a new political party to rise to the challenges facing this country. We need to vote both Republicrats and Demublicans out of office, because they both are in cahoots with one another at the expense - figuratively and literally - of the people they CLAIM to represent.

It's time the people of this country took this country back from the career politicians and the career government workers.

Vote for any third party candidate that's on the ballot this November. It's the only way out of this terrible mess we find ourselves in today.

*Shakes his head*

Every time this comes up I have to ask. Have any of you had to deal with FEMA? Especially BEFORE a disaster? Do you have the slightest clue what your state and local emergency response plans are or what your local agencies preparedness levels are?

Worked great under Clinton? Sorry to burst your bubble my friend but the problems that caused the poor response to Katrina were there before Bush. Hell I bet most were there before Clinton.

Check Earthquake response times, or any hurricane response times by FEMA and you'll see that they're nothing to brag about.

FEMA, or whatever Federal thing they put up there in it's place, is the LAST stop for emergency preperations. It all starts at the local level. Sure, they'll provide "guidlines" for training and such but it's up to the local districts to pull it off. My biggest problem with this reorganization is that it's probably just going to be a bigger mess and I'll have to get all new certs in the exact same things I've already got. Just because they're supposed to say NPRA now instead of FEMA. Oi...

Argh, how friggin hard is it to find the average response time to a disaster? I've used Yahoo, Google, Ask, and Dogpile and to no avail. I've searched the FEMA site itself with every variation on the theme of getting the response statistics.

I can find money spent, time to respond to claims, how many disasters happen every year by year and state (interesting how many that one is here: http://www.fema.gov/news/disaster_totals_annual.fema ) but no average response times. What gives?

If anyone can find the data please let me know!

By and large based on what I know are response timse for Earthquake stuff here in California and what we're trained to wait for 5 days sounds like the average before any federal help arrives.

FEMA isn't going anywhere.. We are a few months away from Hurricane Season, and I think FEMA and others are super equipped and cautious this go around.. They will do go this season, and all the tack of abolishment will be out the window...

Again we have the attitude that if it's not perfect, it's totally wrong. FEMA's done a decent job. Maybe not a great job, but for what they were asked to do, they did OK. I've seen too many cases of them being where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to be doing, in floods and fires and earthquakes and hurricanes.

Part of the problem with FEMA was that, in New Orleans, they were given a completely undoable job. No one could have expected a local government so totally inept. FEMA had supplies on the ground, ready to go, before Katrina hit. But when she hit, they were not told where those supplies were needed. When they, and the Red Cross, tried to take supplies to the Dome, they were told not to---that it would make the Dome a "magnet" and encourage people to go there rather than leave completely. (At the same time, people were being told, by the same local government, that they did not have to leave at all---that "mandaatory" did not mean "mandatory".) While the TV stations were hollering about no supplies at the Dome, tons of supplies were sitting across town, by that time stuck in the flood. FEMA has to depend on local authorities to tell them where their shelters are, where people need the most help, how to get to those places, etc. And as Gozer said, they should be supplementing local efforts, not replacing them. They had none of that in N.O.

I see two alternatives. One is FEMA, or a very similar organization---flawed, for sure, but easier to keep track of than the alternative, which is to allocate emergency funds to state groups. We saw how well that worked when we gave billions to Louisiana to build levees. Keeping track of one large organization is easier than keeping track of 50 small ones.

While neither party is keeping its promises, at this point a vote for a third party is a vote thrown away.

The problem I see for the Republicans is that, to stay in office long enough to accomplish even some of the true conservative goals they stand for, they have to provide enough of the programs the Dems keep promising to win enough of the squishy vote.

The problem for the Dems is they are so short-sighted that they keep upping the ante of wild promises, to buy votes, without seeing---or caring about---the consequences.

The problem with the voters is that too many of them are so fixated on being AGAINST the other side, they can't set aside their partisan differences long enough to simply sit down and decide what they want, rather than who they want it from.

If we could all start from a position of what matters the most to us, and then proceed to a vote on which candidate is most likely to give it to us, we would be a lot better off. And we'd get better leaders.

That's why some of us keep pushing for statements on what people WANT. We get who they hate, which is not helpful. When we can set aside the R's and D's and just talk about issues, first identifying them and then proposing solutions, we can know what to demand from out leaders.

dbogdan, the first step to fiscal responsibility is the initation of a line-item veto. As long as pork can be buried in all-or-nothing bills, it is going to be impossible to blame too much on one single president.

The politicians are too clever, too good at interweaving BS with essential legislation---and then pointing a finger at someone for being "against the poor" for example for vetoing a bill that also happens to contain billions of dollars in BS to prop up a given senator's voting base. Our system now is a political minefield.

With a line-item veto, a president could be held accountable for every piece of pork he leaves in any bill. And that would be a start.

Almiranta,

I am 110% with you on the line-item veto. But I'm past the point of entertaining the concept that there is anything to be accomplished by supporting either of these two FAILED political parties any longer. Our nation has seen the rise and fall of political parties in the past. We are well overdue for another cycle. It would appear to me that the Demublicans are the prime candidate for passing into the annals of history first. On the other hand, the Republicrats seem so intent on pouring gasoline on themselves and lighting a match that they might just be right behind them.

I cannot support either of these failed political parties any longer. In fact, up until 2004 I never voted for either D's or R's. The only reason I voted for W. in 2004 was the Global War On Terror issue. It was more than abundantly clear that John Kerry (did you know he served in Vietnam, by the way?) was the absolutely worst possible candidate for our country during these troubled times... It SEEMED as if W. was a conservative. It seemed like a lot of alleged Republicrats were conservative. But, alas, they played the public like a fiddle...

I'll either be staying home this November (a first for me), or voting for every single third party that can get itself on the ballot. I don't care if it's a "throwaway vote." For all I've gotten from the Republicrats, I can only arrive at the conclusion that it was a throwaway vote as well... so why not deliberately throw away my vote KNOWING that I was doing so, instead of thinking or hoping against hope, that my vote would actually MEAN something with either the D's or R's?

Sorry to sound so bitter, but with the President's most recent strategy of inviting a select few congressmen and purposefully dis-inviting others to discuss his eager desire for Amnesty for illegal behavior - no matter what they want to call it, I've had it with this Administration. They seem intent on selling this country out for cheap labor and easy votes. It's despicable...

I, for one, am all for it, if it means I get new director.

Here's the bio of my director. Her degree is in recreation management - maybe it's fun for FEMA but not for the survivors. http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/armes.shtm
FEMA: Karen E. Armes: Acting Regional Director, Region IX

Then again, with my luck, the next director will have an advanced degree in sandbox.

-Joe