Ron Paul and FEMA

Ron Paul and FEMA
Posted by Bill Anderson on August 28, 2011 12:16 PM

It is interesting how government agencies quickly become institutionalized into our social fabric to the point where people actually believe we cannot do without them. As I read the CNN article on Ron Paul and FEMA [1] (he opposes this idiocracy), I also read the comments and some people actually tried to claim that Ron was insane for his views. That's right, insane.

Keep in mind that FEMA was begun as an entity in 1979 [2] (created by executive order from President Jimmy Carter) that was supposed to deal with civil defense and disasters, but it generally played a minor role in dealing with natural events such as earthquakes and hurricanes. That changed in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew devastated parts of Florida. The state was a tossup in the presidential election and Bill Clinton accused President Bush I of not acting quickly enough in the wake of the disaster. In other words, having FEMA officials running things after a hurricane or earthquake is a very new development in the history of this country, and people should remember that communities usually recovered much more quickly after a disaster than they do now -- given everyone has to wait for FEMA to tell them what to do.

As Jim Bovard noted in a hilarious chapter about FEMA in his book about the Clinton administration, Feeling Your Pain, [3] the agency turned into a near ATM for anyone living near a disaster area. Clinton utterly politicized the agency, filling it full of political appointees and then using FEMA to buy votes. The Bush administration continued that role, and I would say that its failure at Katrina was not due to what Paul Krugman laughingly claimed -- that the Bush administration did not "believe in government" -- but rather that FEMA was doing what all government agencies do: expand the power of the state at the expense of individuals.

About 15 years ago, Lew Rockwell wrote an article critical of FEMA and Morrie Goodman, one of the FEMA enforcers, called the Mises Institute threatening to cut off the LVMI's non-existent government subsidies. Jeffrey Tucker has two great articles on the Morrie incidents here [4] and here. [5]

[1] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/27/ron-paul-we-dont-need-fema/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Your-Pain-Government-Clinton-Gore/dp/031224052X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314554310&sr=8-1
[4] http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=213
[5] http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=197