September 1st, I'll be on the air with Rick Johnson talking Disaster Management. 

Since Hurricane Irene came and went, a lot of retrospective has assembled. Some of it is critical of evacuations and the rest is approving. Irene petered out when she hit the New York City Limits but left a calling card of floods. A lot of the analysis of readers furnishing comments to articles all over the web have it that FEMA is worthless.  

I concur for three reasons. FEMA is not what we call a First-in agency. They are like your insurance company or the Red Cross: They get there and have a job to do, but that job is delayed by hours to days to weeks. Locals serve this interest much better. Citizens noticed this.  

FEMA is expensive, and past exercises in its oeuvre or body of work have it poking its nose in for every little thing, some of which is never significant events. On the scale of helpful, it doesn't rank very high.    

Finally, FEMA continues to insist on the one thing which opposes citizens, and that is further centralization.    

Citizens aren't stupid, and it's a terrible mind-set for servants to presume that we are. Many citizens posting comments were present within communities hit by waters and winds and remark how local assets performed with far better response times and effectiveness. My question has always been why we have to get our safeguards by sending our money by way of Washington. Why not keep revenues in each state so the dollars go further in state assets?

States know their communities better than drones in Washington. States are preferred by the electorate over drones who prefer themselves over the states. The insistence of Washington is becoming resentful, not to mention costly and ineffectual. 

As one report from the Wall Street Journal has it,  "FEMA scrambled to deploy its resources ahead of the storm, dispatching hundreds of people from South Carolina to Maine. FEMA said six national urban search and rescue teams, which typically include structural experts, medical teams and search dogs, were on alert."

If they were 'on alert', they weren't on-scene. The boasts of assets do not make for real preparedness, but only boast. It's time to wind down FEMA and wind up state and local preparedness. If any state disasters ever come to need more, they can ask for it.  

That was the original plan when FEMA was formed. Assets were to be requested by the Governor. Centralization eventually gets to a point where it is musclebound. It has plenty of muscle, but it can't move. 

Centralization is the foe of our Independence, and states are now fighting to get out from under utter dependency on the feds.  

Why can't the states run their backyards the way they want? Independence doesn't cost, it pays.  And when the feds - as servants - begin to insist, then the fears and apprehensions of the electorate are coming true.   

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