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August 30, 2009
Obama Slips Up - Picks a Winner
For the fist time since he's been in office, Obama actually did something right. He appointed Craig Fugate as the new head of Federal Emergency Management Association. Fugate obviously doesn't have a lot of empathy for most of Obama's supporters:
"We need to change behavior in this country," he told about 400 emergency-management instructors at a conference in June, lambasting the "government-centric" approach to disasters. He learned a perverse lesson in Florida: the more the federal government does in routine emergencies, the greater the odds of catastrophic failure in a big disaster. "It's like a Chinese finger trap," he told me last spring, as a hailstorm fittingly raged outside his office. If the feds do more, the public, along with state and local officials, do less. They come to expect ice and water in 24 hours and full reimbursement for sodden carpets. But as part of a federal system, FEMA is designed to defer to state and local officials. If another Katrina hits, and the locals are overwhelmed, a full-strength federal response will inevitably take time. People who need help the most--the elderly, the disabled, and the poor--may not get it fast enough.
To avoid "system collapse," as he puts it, Fugate insists that the government must draft the public. "We tend to look at the public as a liability. [But] who is going to be the fastest responder when your house falls on your head? Your neighbor." A few years ago, Fugate dropped the word victim from his vocabulary. "You're not going to hear me refer to people as victims unless we've lost 'em. I call them survivors." He criticizes the media for "celebrating" people who choose not to evacuate and then have to be rescued on live TV--while ignoring all the people who were prepared. "This is a tragedy, this whole Shakespearean circle we're in. You never hear the media say, 'Hey, you're putting this rescue worker in danger.'"
Posted by Rob Kiser on August 30, 2009 at 10:29 AM
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