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October 5, 2024

FEMA cranks up its spin and gaslight operations

By Monica Showalter

For a government agency that's floundering its hurricane response and running out of money after spending nearly a billion on illegals, it sure does spend a lot on public relations operations telling us all how capable and competent it is in the wake of Hurricane Helene and its devastation.

According to The Hill:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is warning the public to be wary of misinformation surrounding Hurricane Helene and the federal government’s response, launching a “rumor response” page.

On the newly formed page, the agency asks the public to find and share information from trusted sources and discourage others from sharing information from unverified ones. It also seeks to dispel rumors as the search for storm victims continues across multiple states, and authorities contend with blocked roads and power outages.

If you go to that "rumor response" web page, you'll see that it's mostly criticism it's addressing about its own performance, claiming that what it says now is the absolute truth without exactly proving it, and packaging it all up as "fact-checking."

Maybe something like that is necessary in the volatile atmosphere of a natural disaster where everything needs to be known and done yesterday, but this isn't that kind of site. It may claim to be about facts but it's not about transparency, let alone admitting their failures and correcting them. It's about covering their keister.

See this FEMA guy who says his name is "Marty"?

He's on "rumor response" duty instead of delivering aid, making one wonder how much in the way of resources they're putting into CYA operations instead of delivering aid. Given the web page, the produced videos on them, and the continuous Twitter feed with videos and 'rumor responses,' it's unlikely that it's a cheap operation.

It's also interesting that they picked a middle-aged white guy for this Baghdad Bob kind of job, given FEMA's stated mission priority of DEI.

The web page has stuff like this:

Fact:

This is false. No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.

 

Fact:

Rumors about FEMA turning away donations, stopping trucks or vehicles with donations, confiscating and seizing supplies often spread after a disaster. These are all false. 

FEMA does not take donations and/or food from survivors or voluntary organizations. Donations of food, water, or other goods are handled by voluntary agencies who specialize in storing, sorting, cleaning, and distributing donated items. 

FEMA does not conduct vehicle stops or handle road closures with armed guards -- those are done by local law enforcement.

 

Fact:

This is false.

This is a type of assistance that you may be approved for soon after you apply, called Serious Needs Assistance. It is an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies. There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds. As your application continues to be reviewed, you may still receive additional forms of assistance for other needs such as support for temporary housing, personal property and home repair costs. If you have questions about your disaster assistance application and what you qualify for, contact us at 1-800-621-3362 to speak with a FEMA representative in your language.

So with "Marty" (no last name) assuring that FEMA is only interested in handing out hurricane relief, guys like this chopper pilot, who said he got threatened with arrest for delivering aid, has to be lying, right? And all the other people who said similar things? I wrote about them here.

While this chopper incident did seem to be the act of a petty fire official throwing his weight around, there have been many stories of FEMA blocking aid to the needy in order to be the big dog on the bureaucratic block. Pilots say they don't have FEMA "permissions" is but one example. Aid groups not working with "approved vendors" is another. There's more than one way to block aid, after all. But FEMA, see, wouldn't dream of blocking aid from the private sector headed for the needy.

As far as the "border related issues," which of course, is not about the border, but about the aiding and abetting of unvetted foreign nationals who are illegally crossing the border into the U.S. and getting massive FEMA aid from its "shelter and services" program as a result, FEMA would have you think the billion dollars or so they've shelled out on illegals has nothing to do with their blown budget for the hurricane season, which as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas noted, was unlikely to be enough for the hurricane season.

Sure they may have enough for this one, but as Mayorkas said, the next one would be a problem. Given the size of this one, though, over six states and eight hundred miles of pure devastation, I have my doubts about even that. This isn't a run-of-the-mill hurricane that is normally budgeted for, it may very well blow out their budget if they focus on delivering aid, which many say they aren't doing. If you don't do your job, you can save oodles of money, after all.

On their rumor response, they don't explain where this money is coming or going.

But the billion that went from FEMA to illegals is indisputable, and it's long spent.

It is affecting the delivery of aid in more ways than just money, as this lady notes -- she said she FEMA saying they didn't have enough personnel to work the hurricane relief job because their personnel were all tied up at the border:

Their alloted cash from Congress could have gone into the disaster aid pot if FEMA had resisted the foisting of illegals-care on it from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the same way the military resisted guarding the border during the Trump administration. Instead, they embraced the mission creep.

Now it's time to pay the piper. They don't have the cash and don't have the personnel and need to get out of the illegals-enabling business dual mission, focusing solely on disasters that hit Americans. But they'd rather spend money on gaslighting the public that this isn't happening.

Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida were onto this discrepancy about how FEMA cash was being spent early last May, questioning why Congress should constantly be topping up the FEMA budget as they requested again and again, well beyond their original annual appropriation, based on their big illegals care and feeding operation, which was indeed leaving the agency bereft of money for disasters.

Money is fungible and that which goes into the pot for illegals means that which doesn't go into the pot for disaster relief. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who is no slouch on budget matters, noted that the cash Congress allotted simply went to FEMA and they were the ones who decided which pots the cash would go into.

And as for the measly $750? Well, that's roughly what Lahaina's residents got, and the place remains a wasteland, though FEMA officials certainly got themselves a nice five-star Hawaiian holiday out of it on Maui. After the Lahaina response, why would North Carolina be any different? They don't explain on their rumor response page.

Worse still, Joe Biden is on record as saying they've got all they're going to get, so maybe FEMA can fact-check that. On their Twitter site, they complain about Republicans as the source of rumors, but perhaps they can address what Joe Biden said, too, except that we know they won't.

Bottom line is, they're doing their job the same way Joe Biden does his, by focusing on 'optics' and public relations instead of results, gaslighting the public into thinking there's nothing wrong with their hurricane response and as Joe Biden says, "everybody's happy."

Why are they putting resources into this instead of their actual mission? It seems their actual priority is not results, but finding ways to take the heat off themselves for their bad decisionmaking and pave the way to increase their funding and power.

Image: Twitter screen shot

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