INCOMPETENCE IS NOT A JOB WELL DONE

On July 5, the day after the Texas floods hit, FEMA received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them, about 99.7%. That same day, DHS Sec. Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired. The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or about 35.8%. On Monday, July 7, FEMA received 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, around 15.9%. A spokesperson for DHS said: “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.” Not true. Kristi Noem has run through the money Congress allocated her with her single-minded zealous focus on immigration. In May Noem was called out for expenditure of $200M on an ad campaign pushing Trump’s immigration agenda. And $21M to transport about 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay only to have many of them transferred back out. Noem responded that she was fulfilling a mandate. She said, “The American people overwhelmingly in the last election said, ‘We want a secure border, we want to make sure no longer are the scales of justice tipped in the favor of criminals….’” Not true. We were promised violent criminals would be deported. Not the people who contribute to and help make our society better. And our taxpayer money was also spent on video posted to Facebook Reels by DHS. A nihilistic film that invokes Isaiah 6:8, the Bible verse where God asks, “Whom shall I send?” and Isaiah answers, “Here am I! Send me.” WTF does this even mean? And why am I paying for it? Times of crisis expose true leadership. It also exposes incompetence. And right now, and for the past 6 months, this couldn’t be more true. Anyone can lead when times are good. But it takes a particular level of incompetence to turn good times into bad and call it a job well done. Today it’s raining again in central Texas. Please keep telling your constituents what a great job is being done by the Trump administration.