it s you re going to look at it differently. and, you know, in a weird defense of mitt romney, in a weird defense of mitt romney, he was answering a deficit question there. he wasn t thinking about fema at all. right. in fact, he tried to dodge it a little bit. i think that s a really crucial because to me when i think about fema and disasters i m absolutely confronted by these two americas, the katrina/fema reaction and the sandy/fema reaction and the reality is to argue there hasn t been a significant political response to the significance of fema by different governments and it s not split down party lines. it s simply not true. there was a really great article in mother jones that took you through the development of fema competence. right. and who had headed fema and the way that presidents had appointed those fema heads were directly related to how they perceived their significance. so, for example, george bush actually allocated michael brown who was the former i ju
commissioner of judges and stewards for the international arabian horse association, that s who headed fema. clinton was the first was the first president to allocate the fema head who actually had experience disaster. disaster management. it s not political. it s about poverty. it s about race. and when we think about disaster preparedness as well as recovery, the ways in which these two americas break down, you see that again and again and again. it s also i think the other point here is that it s something that will happen i think often is people on the left we get into this defensive crouch around the role of government and so we defend the states actions in the abstract, but if you talk to lefty activist who are part of common ground and katrina it was government bureaucracy who was their enemy. and folks on staten island are frustrated and angry and feeling they re not getting enough attention, the target of that anger is the government