No, Republicans are not pro-disaster

Jim Acosta has written this article maligning the GOP for daring to question the utility of FEMA in the wake of quasi-Hurricane Irene.

No one is in favor of hurricanes (well, except maybe Krugman and his like, who see disasters as economic stimulus).  The debate here is about the propriety of the federal government running disaster relief operations.

Conservatives have two objections.  Firstly, the USG has no mandate in this area.  Secondly, the feds do a pretty poor job of it.

The argument of the left is that centralization of efforts is more effective than at lower levels.  Regarding the second point of the conservatives, progressives either dismiss the lack of Constitutional authority under the idea that the ends justifies the means, or they simply never consider it.

CNN writers are more articulate than USGwaste.com typists, so it is puzzling that Acosta could not summarize those distinctions in his article.  Instead he cites the comments of several GOP presidential candidates and in doing so implies they are blindly risking the precious safety provided by FEMA and company.  The counterargument, never raised in the article, is that the present USG effort is inefficient and therefore itself reckless.

Other major media outlets have been enthusiastically scooping up USG issued statements about the dangers of Hurricane Irene.  People died from the storm and that is a travesty.  But I would be curious to know on any given day how many people die from weather related phenomena between Florida and Maine?  There must be 100 million people from Canada to Miami- how many are killed when trees fall on them or they drown in a flood or drive off a road due to slippery conditions?  There was monetary damage from this storm, but I wonder if those costs exceed the value of press given to it by the media.

Hurricane Katrina was a true disaster- quite likely the lowest point in our nation's modern history.  Thousands died as the emergency response floundered and Brownie twiddled his thumbs.  Is our present, USG-led response system any more effective?  And even if it is, does it have Constitutional authority?

The issue is worthy of a serious debate.  The conservatives, I would wager, have the edge in that dispute.  But simply painting them as anti-emergency relief, as opposed to anti-status quo, undermines any serious consideration of their ideas.  The standard progressive political ideal might be to concentrate power in the USG, but a progressive press should always zealously question the assertions originating from that power center.