Failing For Jesus

by digby

So now they want to dismantle FEMA. Isn’t that just perfect? It worked great not five years ago but since the republicans got their hands on it, it’s completely gone to shit.

Avedon Carol reminds us that this is, in fact, the plan:

We can still get the story if we dig deep enough in the papers, but you won’t see the front page telling us that the purpose of this administration is to eliminate any competence in government to serve the public. No, let’s just make sure the EPA doesn’t do it’s job so Republicans can say, “See? Government can’t do anything! You pay taxes for this and you don’t get it!” After which they can safely eliminate the programs without lowering your taxes. Eventually, the programs will be gone and you won’t be hearing all that anti-tax rhetoric anymore – it will be patriotic to pay taxes, again.

In the meantime, they’ll demand that we fork over huge amounts of money in the name of national security (or “fighting terror”, she laughed bitterly), while making sure that any measure that would actually protect our security is round-filed. I mean, it’s not like we should worry about nuclear materials being illegally imported into our country, undetected, by people whose purposes are not friendly to our citizens.

So first you wreck the program, then you claim its failures are the result of the fact that “government programs don’t work” – relying on amnesia about the fact that it worked just fine before they started “fixing” it – and then they decide we need to abolish it rather than putting it back the way it was when it used to work.

Oh, and just to make it seem like it’s coming from sensible people, we have some specially-labelled “moderates” – one from each party – to make a proposal to abolish, oh, say, FEMA. Like Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Leiberman (R-DLC). And the start of hurricane season just a month away, too!

Read the whole rant. It’s great.

I fear that she has hit the nail on the head. We are going to be dealing with the fallout of these horrible eight years for a long time to come. As each failure reaches critical mass, they will say that it proves their point — government doesn’t work. They have spent more than a quarter century pounding that mantra and it’s going to sound very “true” when people hear it.

It’s quite a scam. Run on government being incompetent and stealing your hard earned money. Take power. Make government incompetent while lining your pockets with as much taxpayer money as possible. Lose office. Make Democrats clean up your mess. Rinse repeat.

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