Merry Christmas! Now GET LOST!

Got Fema? Yeah, it's an old joke nowadays. You see it everywhere in New Orleans, especially hanging in the doorways of tourist shops on Decatur and Bourbon, emblazoned on t-shirts, bumperstickers and ballcaps.

But it's not a joke. Many people who should have FEMA, don't. That should alarm the American populace that something is deeply, horribly wrong with the Federal Government's ability to help us during a natural disaster. Or a not-so-natural disaster.

I'll let your mind do the wandering on that one.

What happens to people who don't have FEMA?

--An eviction notice. FEMA set a deadline just short of the holidays to stop paying hotel bills for displaced Katrina victims. They claimed they wanted victims to find more "permanent housing". (For all you people caught in the stupid and intentionally distracting snit of whether to say Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas, forget about it...FEMA's holiday message has you all beat.) Federal judges, however, are fighting to force FEMA to extend this heartless deadline past the holidays.

--A home they can't use. Thousands of FEMA trailers sit in Alabama, empty. So while FEMA is busy trying to kick out victims from hotels before Christmas, they are not providing the very housing they claim they want these victims to use.

--FEMA rips them off. They don't get their promised $2000 to cover basic living expenses if their checks were "lost in the mail". How do you deliver mail to a tent under a New Orleans bridge, or an RV on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain?

--They have to pay for those who DO get FEMA. It's bad enough FEMA can't get their act together. They certainly don't need the help of certain yacht owning, golf playing opportunist rats who profit from FEMA's inefficiency. Here's a quote from this lovely article: "A FEMA program to reimburse applicants for generators and storm cleanup items has benefited middle- and upper-income Floridians the most and so far cost taxpayers more than $332 million for the past two hurricane seasons, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found in a continuing investigation of disaster aid." So while lawyers and doctors buy generators and chain saws they can afford on their own and might not even need, some kid in Ft. Lauderdale is putting catheters in by candelight.

These people are the scum of the earth. One guy in this article, who lives in a million dollar home, is actually wondering if it's immoral to cash his measly FEMA check. (His wife says, CASH IT! I want some Jimmy Choo shoes!!!)

We need an alternative to the present FEMA system. Big government bureaucracy does not work. Washington is not getting the job done in the way Americans deserve. Disaster response needs to be centered at state level, perhaps over territories of the country prone to certain disasters, instead of blind offices in Washington.

Individuals and community activists also need to learn to make preparations for fight or flight scenarios in this new age of natural disaster and terrorist concerns by saving money, storing supplies and establishing routes of escape and possible locations to stay in the event of such emergencies. Waiting for Daddy Govt. to bail us out is not an effective survival strategy.

41,000+ people displaced by Katrina are living in hotels, motels, trailers and tents spread across the United States. That number is a wakeup call. Awful things are happening to our once glorious country, and this is one of them. When you see regular people living in tents and under tarps because they've lost their home, you wonder...is this America?