Perry Likes FEMA When Texas is on Fire

I think everybody would like to pay the least taxes possible, and everybody would like to see the government stay out of our business. Government is big, inefficient, unresponsive, difficult to deal with, hard to change, government would like to know more about citizens and limit their freedom -- this isn't a partisan issue, I think everybody feels this way. Government tends to get out of control and the people need to keep it in line, Democrats and Republicans agree on that, the Founding Fathers understood it, there's no debate.

That doesn't mean that a government isn't worth having, or that it can't provide necessary services. And in fact there are some things that only a government can do, things that require impartiality, projects that are so big and so unprofitable that no private company would undertake them. Interstate highways -- if private business built and maintained the highways we'd be paying tolls every time we went someplace. Emergency response, when there's a disaster somebody needs to take control, if it was a business they'd be trying to make a profit from it and the quality of services would suffer -- you can't charge people to rescue them from the rubble of a natural disaster.

Tea Party conservatives have maligned government and promised to keep it as small as possible. Lately they are talking about cutting back on FEMA, for instance. Not to say the FEMA is the most efficient organization in the world, but when you need help on a big scale they're the only ones who can provide it.

Rick Perry, as governor of Texas, tried to streamline his state government by, among other things, cutting the firefighters budget to less than a fourth of what it was. Now his state's on fire and he needs the federal government to come in and save home, property, lives.

He just wants them to do it, he doesn't want to talk about it. Raw Story has it:

Under Gov. Rick Perry (R) this year, Texas slashed state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires like the ones that have recently destroyed more than 700 homes.

Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain were slated to have their funding cut from $30 million to $7 million, according to KVUE.

The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid.

For that reason, aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could be more important than ever to the state where wildfires have recently been raging.

At a press conference Monday, Perry promised to seek federal disaster relief and said that FEMA would be in the state by Wednesday. Texas cut fire department funding by 75 percent this year

It wasn't so long ago that Perry was hinting that Texas might secede from the country. What was he going to do, call Mexico if his state started burning up?

Oh, and don't forget what his response was when the drought that has fed these fires became serious -- he issued an official proclamation calling for Days of Prayer for Rain. Cut the firefighting budget and tell people to start praying, yeah man, that'll work. That's the kind of thinking I'd like to see in a President, wouldn't you?

While the Texas governor has been highly critical of FEMA in the past, he told CBS’ Erica Hill Tuesday that now was not the time to worry about reforming the agency.

“The issue is taking care of these people right now,” Perry insisted. “We can work our way through any conversations about how to make agencies more efficient, how to make Department of Defense equipment, for instance, more available. There are a lot of issues we can talk about, but the fact of the matter is now is not the time to be trying to work out the details of how to make these agencies more efficient. Let’s get people out of harm’s way.”

He needs FEMA now, but at the same time he wants to get rid of it. He wants it when he needs it, but not when somebody else needs help.

And here's the thing. The contradiction, the hypocrisy here is so blatantly obvious, the short-sightedness, the self-servingness, the opportunism and the manipulativeness of it is right there on the tip of his nose for everyone to see, and you watch, his ratings won't slip an inch. The people who would vote for him -- and he is currently the GOP front-runner -- suffer from irony deprivation, they won't see any inconsistency in Perry's irresponsible and dangerous position.