Opinion: Dust-Up: Debating disaster relief
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In round four of this week’s debate on fire policy, Richards Carson and Rider show no signs of abating — though the two find their views aren’t diametrically opposed:
Rider begins, ‘First, let me say that you were correct when you said I didn’t assess enough blame on FEMA and the feds. I bow to your expertise in this matter. I let ’em off too easy.’ Nevertheless:
Should the feds be the disaster relief Sugar Daddy? No. Ideally, disaster relief would be voluntary -- through the Red Cross and other philanthropic institutions best geared to providing aid in times of need. In addition to not requiring force to obtain funding (taxes), such organizations are far more effective in getting the aid to the truly needy in a timely and efficient manner. If we were not forced to “give at the office” (through taxes) for the government aid programs -- and then assuming that the aid problem is taken care of -- most of us would contribute far more to such charitable organizations.
Carson concurs:
Again we agree on several of the key issues. FEMA is still a mess and still has a clean-up-after-the-disaster mentality rather than focusing on how to prevent a situation from turning into a disaster. Local military aircraft should have been allowed into the fight very early, when they would have been most effective. The public was deceived about this issue having been solved.
But with one really big caveat:
Where we are in substantive disagreement is over when the federal government should get involved, and the extent to which voluntary organizations can be relied upon.
Read the rest and fuel the discussion here.