George W. Bush promised America, after the failure of the federal government to help Americans cope with the effects of Hurricane Katrina, that he would reform the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Then, when gigantic wildfires struck California this year, it seemed that President Bush had kept his promise. It seemed that FEMA was doing a great job.
As we have all learned, however, things are often not what they seem in the Bush Administration. After huge numbers of Americans watched a FEMA press conference that seemed to show just what a great job FEMA was doing in California, it was revealed that the press conference was fake.
It seemed at the press conference that Vice Admiral Harvey E. Johnson, the Deputy Director of FEMA, was intelligently dealing with questions asked of him by professional journalists. Actually, those supposed journalists were really just FEMA employees who were told to pretend to be journalists, and ask questions that Deputy Director Johnson was already prepared to answer.
This incident is an expression of Republicans’ idea of government reform: When a problem is identified, find a new way to cover it up. America will face more disasters in the future. We deserve a government that will prepare to cope with those disasters, not prepare to commit fraud in order to conceal its lack of preparedness.
(Source: CNN, October 26, 2007)
