Gutting FEMA has left it ill-prepared to help in crisis
`Gutenberg!' brings smile to ATF audiences and T-U reviewer
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Mother Nature is kicking our asses these days.
Maybe she always has, maybe it's just a trend, but ignoring her is the wrong policy.
The fires in California, tornadoes in the Midwest, storms in North Carolina and the recent flooding in Texas are reminders the weather is relentlessly dangerous.
While the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has had its ups and downs, it has been an essential asset in recent years.
So even if the Trump administration's goals are well-intentioned to save taxpayer dollars, the execution so far has been bungled.
Consider these examples.
Two days after the devastating floods in Texas, FEMA did not answer two-thirds of the calls to its disaster assistance line because FEMA let the contracts of the call centers they used to answer emergency calls expire, eliminating hundreds of jobs of leaving those in desperate need without the help they needed. Those contracts were finally renews five days after they expired.
Oh, my!
Who's in charge of this debacle?
CNN reported even search and rescue teams could not respond because Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem - who is in charge of FEMA - required her personal sign-off an any expenditure over $100,000.
That meant FEMA couldn’t put crews in place ahead of the storm, or respond after it until Noem approved. That didn't happen until three days later.
Considering the name of her department is "Homeland Security." putting cost savings over safety seems at odds with its mission.
President Trump has previously promised to close down FEMA after hurricane season this year.
Last week, MaryAnn Tierney, who has worked in emergency management for over 25 years and was once deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote an insightful essay in the New York Times warning that the country was ill-prepared for the next disaster.
She cited that FEMA has laid off 20 percent of its permanent staff since January, including its most experienced field staff. The contracts of the temporary employees on the job now are also about to expire.
While the Trump administration promised to address the bloated federal bureaucracy with efficiencies, its cuts to FEMA are at odds with his mission.
"These are people trained to work with disaster survivors," Tierney wrote. "FEMA cannot replace them or bring in new talent because of hiring restrictions. Local hires, who were once a flexible, community-based options, now require many slow approvals. FEMA Corps., which was meant to be a pipeline of young Americans trained to support response and recovery efforts, has been defunded. Contracts for evacuation logistics, shelter operations and flood insurance agents have been allowed to expire."
Oh, my, Part II!
Tierney pointed out that over 7,000 emergency personnel were locked out of courses that teach them to respond to disasters of all kinds earlier this year.
"This training isn’t theoretical. It saves lives," Tierney wrote."Compounding the crisis is a growing culture of fear and paralysis. FEMA staff members, as well as other federal workers, now hesitate to make basic decisions, worried that they’ll be punished for acting without clearance. Those on the staff are told to stay in their lanes, even as the work demands flexibility and urgency."
Trump wants the states to take over the response saying they are better equipped, but Tierney says they are not ready.
"This isn’t a thoughtful rebalancing of responsibilities," Tierney wrote. "Critical government tasks are being dumped on state and local partners who are without the staffing, funding or infrastructure to succeed. Yes, we do need to modernize, but recovery isn’t a handoff, it’s a partnership. What we’re witnessing isn’t a system evolving. It’s a system unraveling. The result is a slower, weaker, more fragmented federal response to the very disasters that are becoming more frequent and more complex. It’s not because the people inside these agencies are incapable — but because they are being held back by a system that’s been depleted and tied in knots."
We like to think we"re lucky here in the Northeast. We don't have to worry about tornadoes and hurricanes, but we should remember that Vermont suffered devastating flooding a year ago and needed the help of FEMA.
While the recovery operation is still in progress in Texas, the Department of Homeland Security canceled a $3 million grant award to New York to ensure the National Weather Service can communicate with local officials.
Like during blizzards and ice storms. We certainly know about those.
For months, they've been talking about the dismantling of FEMA in Louisiana which has a personal relationship with FEMA. No state has used its services more. The state has received $47 billion for 28 different disasters since 2003. That averages out to nearly $3,000 for each Louisiana resident.
It's good thing the state of Louisiana has Speaker of the House Mike Johnson in its corner to protect its interests.
Yes, the sarcasm was intended.
"Gutenberg!" review
Always great to see Steve Barnes of the Times Union come north for a review at the Adirondack Theater Festival.
It was apparently worth the drive as Barnes had some great things to say about ATF's latest musical comedy Gutenberg! that runs through next weekend.
Here is a link to the review:
Supreme stupidity
After the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to move forward on its plan to end birthright citizenships without ruling on the merits, Substack columnist Heather Cox Richardson filed some interesting historical context about President Ronald Reagan nominating Robert Bork to the Supreme Court in 1987.
During Bork's confirmation process, Sen. Ted Kennedy said this at the time:
“Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”
Those words are chilling today, because Robert Bork's America seems to be coming to pass.
Gun statistics
One of the things the Center for Disease Control (CDC) does is keep statistics on a variety of subjects.
Since I split my time between Louisiana and upstate New York last year, I wondered how the two states compared:
Homicide rate - Louisiana was 19.8 per 100,000 residents while New York was 4.5.
Firearm injury rate - Louisiana is 28.2 per 100,000 while New York is 5.3.
Drug overdose rate - Louisiana was 54.5 per 100,000 residents while New York was 31.4.
Teen birth rate - Louisiana was 23.7 per 1,000 females 15-18 while New York was 8.6.
Infant mortality rate - Louisiana 7.37 per 1,000 births while New York has 4.26.
Life expectancy - Louisiana is 72.7 years, New York 79.0.
Marriage rate - Louisiana is 3.7 per 1,000 marriages while New York is 6.3.
Congressional leadership - Rep. Mike Johnson and Rep. Steve Scalise are from Louisiana while Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer are from New York
That's the difference between a red state and a blue state.
Correction - Medicaid cuts
EDITOR’S NOTE: Despite all the years of carefully distinguishing Medicaid from Medicare, I did it again on Friday and referred to “Medicaid” cuts as “Medicare.”
HERE IS WHAT IS SHOULD HAVE SAID:
Speaking of North Country Public Radio, if you want to get the most detailed look at what effect the Medicaid cuts will have on the North Country, then you should read Amy Feiereisel's deep dive on the subject.
"The cuts to Medicaid will have an outsized impact on the North Country, where 28% of the population relies on the federal program for health insurance," Feiereisel writes. "Local healthcare groups and officials have warned that Medicaid cuts will have devastating impacts here in the region."
As community engagement reporter for NCPR, Feiereisel continues to do important in-depth reporting in the North Country. Every time I see her byline, I make sure to read her story.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
"That's the difference between a red state and a blue state."
Years ago, when considering the best location in the U.S. in which to live, I never considered the partisan politics of any state government. It just didn't matter if a state had a Republican or Democratic governor, a Republican or Democratic legislature. They just weren't all that different. There were more important considerations.
But that was then.
Today, our country is fragmenting into forward-looking states and backward looking states. And I would have to think twice (even three or four times) before considering a Republican-led state. These days, there really are significant differences among the states. Differences that have a real impact on my quality of life.
It's tragic that our country is regressing.
I was NYSDEC Commissioner during tropical storms and hurricanes Irene, Lee and Superstorm Sandy. They all occurred within 18 months of one another and devastated wide swaths of New York. Although New York has a great network of local and state emergency response centers, without substantial assistance from FEMA, New York's recovery would have been severely hampered without assistance from many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including FEMA. The increasing severity and frequently of severe storms, floods, wildfires and other disaster are simply far more than states can handle alone. Trump seems hell bent on dismantling all the parts of the federal government that provide help and assistance to states, individuals in need and programs originating from prior Administrations. It's short-sighted, reckless and government by retribution. There will a reckoning, and it won't be pretty.