Sidney Blumenthal, in a piece called "What didn't go right?" in Salon, reviews the history of FEMA. He points out that FEMA had been widely criticized for its response to Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but that Clinton appointed James Lee Witt as director and turned the agency around, "setting high professional standards and efficiently dealing with disasters." All that changed, of course, when Bush took over.

Bush appointed his former campaign manager, Joseph Allbaugh, as FEMA director. Allbaugh then "immediately began to dismantle the professional staff, privatize many functions and degrade its operations." Blumenthal quotes Allbaugh as testifying before the Senate: "Many are concerned that Federal disaster assistance many have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective State and local risk management. Expectations of when the Federal Government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level. We must restore the predominant role of State and local response to most disasters." The key word here is "entitlement": the idea that anyone might think that the government owes them, even that the government might lift a finger to help them, is the dividing line between the right and the sane in America today.

The sane position is that government belongs to the people, who charge it with the responsibility to support the common, collective interests of the people. There can be debates about what should or should not be supported, but when it comes to disaster relief, there are few who doubt that the government has to step in, and in all but the most marginal disasters that means the federal government. The plain fact is that state and local governments don't have anywhere near the resource level to handle anything like Katrina. Thanks to Allbaugh, his hand-picked successor Michael Brown, and the oversight of the Bush administration, the federal government didn't have the resources to respond either. Guess that'll teach Louisiana to do a better job of preparing next time? At least when a disaster strikes a state like California or New York there are competent people who care working for the state and local governments. In Louisiana and Mississippi, this sort of moral hazard argument is so ingrained that Governor Blanco's pre-storm preparations didn't extend much beyond urging residents to pray.

Due to the sudden, episodic nature of disasters, the rotting (or the looting) of FEMA didn't become unavoidably obvious until it was tested by a major disaster. Not that it couldn't have been measured. It certainly could, but no one in the Bush administration, and few in Congress, cared. And those who did care didn't have the clout or the visibility to make their case -- and in many cases didn't have the time, because they were too busy fighting other dumb and vicious acts of the administration. But it should have been clear what the plan was from Allbaugh's quote: make FEMA useless so people won't get used to the idea that the federal government might help them in times of crisis.

As Blumenthal points out, Allbaugh left FEMA in 2003 to cash in on his lobbying connections and, especially, to get in on the Iraq War graft. Leaving his crony Brown in place ensured that his work would be continued, and that he'd be well connected to help his clients siphon off any money that Congress foolishly allocates to FEMA. If Allbaugh was the only one doing this, he'd merely be a masterful crook. But he's not -- this is the way everything works in the Bush administration. The view there is that government spending is the new patronage system, especially where they can privatize: spend money, often wastefully (since they want agencies like FEMA to fail), get kickbacks (political contributions, jobs) in return. This system has built a powerful political machine, but at costs we're only beginning to be able to imagine -- because we've never seen such self-inflicted ruination before. Some still think this is incompetence, but there's too much malicious forethought for that to be the only problem.