One asshat FEMA employee doesn't represent all of FEMA. Every barrel has some spoiled apples.

Bathia_Mapes: One asshat FEMA employee doesn't represent all of FEMA. Every barrel has some spoiled apples.

Sometimes the bad apple is the head of the barrel.

This probably has considerably less to do with the fact that this guy was with FEMA and a lot to do with the fact that he was 74.

/guy was probably on his lawn.

"Koley, you're doing a helluva job!"

It wasn't even a FEMA employee. It was a contracted employee from some third party company...

FEMA employee
Apply directly to forehead

Too bad this didn't happen in New Orleans.

They need to put him in charge. ASAP

Slammed another man with a golf club? Sounds kinda ghey. How 'bout he HIT another man with a golf club.

At least he didn't REAM another man with a club. That would be really ghey.

You're doing a heck of a job, browneye!"

I actually can't complain about FEMA right now, they're handing out checks, providing supplies and helping out when necessary and staying away when necessary. As much as I would like to, I just can't blame FEMA for this one.

//Lives in Cedar Rapids
/My house didn't need to float

Bathia_Mapes: One asshat FEMA employee doesn't represent all of FEMA. Every barrel has some spoiled apples.

Yeah, I suppose those FEMA officials after Hurricane Katrina that cut the local phone lines from the Sherrifs office were just a few "bad apples." They cut phone lines and jammed the regular comm frequencies used by the sherrifs and other emergency services in New Orleans under direct orders from Brownie. It got so bad that the local police had to post guards on the phone switching facilities to prevent the Feds from cutting communicatons in the aftermath of the disaster.

FEMA is NOT your freind, nor does it exist to mitigate disasters. It's purpose is to prevent insurrection and quiet disorder in the wake of a large social disturbance, at ANY cost. Its purpose is to control the communications systems in the event of a crippling disaster. Those ARE its chartered purposes.

So, a new meaning for people in hardest-hit disaster areas?

Deathfrogg: Its purpose is to control the communications systems in the event of a crippling disaster. Those ARE its chartered purposes.

Citation please.

FEMA's website has a "mission" description, but no charter that I can find. If one were to quite feasibly argue that they are the same things, these things you suggest are not in FEMA's chartered purposes.

Calamormine: Bathia_Mapes: One asshat FEMA employee doesn't represent all of FEMA. Every barrel has some spoiled apples.

Sometimes the bad apple is the head of the barrel.

I didn't know barrels had heads made from apples...

Bathia_Mapes [TotalFark] 2008-06-28 10:26:45 PM
One asshat FEMA employee doesn't represent all of FEMA. Every barrel has some spoiled apples.


this

Bathia_Mapes: One asshat FEMA employee doesn't represent all of FEMA. Every barrel has some spoiled apples.

It's the 90% that make the other 10% look bad.

OK. Agreed, 1 asshat FEMA sub-contracted employee. Granted a 74 y/o crank. Yah, yah, lawn.

But still...

Is this the kind of person you want to show up in your town after an unexpected natural disaster? It's not like these guys (presumably) were cooking up tons of meth and it exploded. They got got slammed by a killer series of storms and water.

What kind of reasonable gov agency decides to hire and field 74 y/o asshat cranks?

I'm sure HIS lawn is just fine, thank you. (He still has plenty of clubs in the bag)

/Katrina
//More Katrina

ypsifly: Slammed another man with a golf club? Sounds kinda ghey. How 'bout he HIT another man with a golf club.

At least he didn't REAM another man with a club. That would be really ghey.

hot. o.o

I am imagining the smug look on the FEMA dudes face when he put the nine iron to the wise guy for mistaking him for someone not really, really important. "Slow down?!?!.....you don't tell the government to slow down".

I can't help but be a little bitter about this. FEMA screwed a bunch of my family. Long term NOLA natives. Forgotten. Scorned. Hated.

We're not all debit-card abusing freeloaders. Most, if not all, of my people have tried to work damn hard to bring back to 'Old' NO.

Can't. It's gone.

But the people are still there.

Demonize the worst of us, we deserve it, but there are still good people who love the Old New Orleans, the pomp, the glamour, the wonder. It was like a twisted Disneyland for a long time. And it's been turned to shiat.

Sad to say.

For those who were there, 'in the day' ...

I remember legal nitrus oxide in huge ass balloons in the Quarter, sitting on the corner drunk off your ass while the whole world goes 'wah wah wha wha' ...

Ah the quarter, the food...

And the booze. Always the booze.

Best music ever. I don't care where you're from, what you like, who you listen to. A night in NOLA will change your taste. That music SINGS. Not the classic names, Neville etc, but the dive bar blues.

America looks at a civic tragedy, a horrible loss, and it's true. The bigger loss to me is the culture, the music. A lot of it got commercial in the past few years. But there was always that dive bar with the guy you just couldn't believe was so damn good that made up for it.

Meh, so we kill a lot of folks and always have. Everything has a price.

Bad Apple Fallacy
The belief that if there is a large and diverse class of something, then it is to be expected (and perhaps even tolerated) that some of them may have a selected (bad) property.

For example, the belief that if there are a few corrupt or racist individuals in a certain public organization, or a few greedy executives in the boardroom, or a few unprofessional individuals in a professional organization, or a few lazy and miserable employees, that doesn't imply that there is anything wrong with the organization or its culture.

This belief is justified by the slogan: "There's always one Rotten Apple in every Barrel."

But this slogan is of course rubbish. One bad apple spoils the barrel. A corrupt or lazy individual (if unchecked) may infect his colleagues. Weak individuals are quickly corrupted, while some strong and morally upright ones may be forced out.

That isn't to say that corruption is immediate and universal, or that such organizations are necessarily beyond repair and redemption. But the presence (and survival) of even one single corrupt individual within an organization must raise some concerns about the organization which cannot and should not be superficially dismissed.

In a blame culture, the preferred solution is to discipline or expel a few individuals where the bad property is most evident, and to hope that the problem goes away. This only works on the assumption that those individuals who do not openly manifest the property do not currently have it, have not been infected by it, and will not develop it. It doesn't deal with the root cause.

Source.

FEMA has taken to hitting ON people in disaster areas

Hey baby, I see your house is under 20 feet of water. Why don't you come back to my trailer for a drink.

I think this guy is part of why government doesn't work. Most people don't realize that the overwhelming majority of our government is not, in fact, government employees... they aren't accountable to anyone... they're contractors. If they do a bad job, so what, two guys who have nothing to do with anything a thousand miles away will decide whether or not to continue the contract... five years later. Alltech isn't going to lose it's contract, they're going to keep doing whatever level of service they're providing, and if it means sending pompous jackasses who pretend they are actual emergency service personnel out into the field, then so be it. Unfortunately, this kind of crap goes the same for nearly every other part of government too... it's not that the programs or the ideas themselves are bad, it's that we've executed our governance in the least efficient, most expensive, and least controllable way imaginable.

"
It wasn't even a FEMA employee. It was a contracted employee from some third party company..."

I knew it. In Ohio they've outsourced some government functions to companies that commit mail fraud. The only thing worse than government is the private sector.

So precious little snowflake is now a "victim" because water happened to go through his house? Give me a break.

FEMA was an awesomely efficient government agency until Bush became president.

once, while i was in a crosswalk with the crosslight in my favor, some asshat decided to make a left turn and park no more than 12 inches away from me. he was in the middle of the intersection with his car pointed right at me. he then proceeded to honk his horn repeatedly in some vain effort to make me walk faster or something so i stopped. i gave him the 'you are an asshat' stare, and then i proceed to finish crossing the street. then, he drove no more than a foot away from me, yelled something out of his window, and continued down the street; parking one block up. i waited until he left his vehicle and went inside a building before walking up to his pride and joy and ripped both of his vehicles outside mirrors off. i then gave him a nice little pinstripe down the side of his car with my house key. i would of stuffed my sock inside of his gas tank and set it ablaze, but i was in a hurry. yes, there were witnesses. yes, the witnesses were laughing. yes, the statute of limitations is up so i am not worried.

the moral of this story is: before you decide to get all uppity with the general public, please remember that some of us don't take any crap. as an example, some of our fellow soldiers are rotating back into the states with death-skills and they are already nervous. don't walk around or drive around pissing people off because a golf club is probably the sorriest 'tough guy' insurance that you could ever have.

/i am neither a tough guy nor do i walk around with a chip on my shoulder, but taking unwarranted crap from other people is not my farking policy.

SaturnHasWheels
I handled a similar situation differently.

What is the deal with FEMA and golf clubs? When I lived at NC after the hurricanes every FEMA person at every major intersection had one.

RedRiverRat:

We're not all debit-card abusing freeloaders.

Well, FWIW, you can't really ABUSE a debit-card... they run out of money at some point :D

Stealthdozer: SaturnHasWheels
I handled a similar situation differently.

"Ritchie was slightly built and seriously underpowered." (i lol'd!)

an expertly executed response to an unfortunate situation!

Hotdog453: RedRiverRat:

We're not all debit-card abusing freeloaders.

Well, FWIW, you can't really ABUSE a debit-card... they run out of money at some point :D

As someone who keeps their debit card locked in a closet except when it is let out for beatings, I'm getting a kick out of this reply.

Deathfrogg: Bathia_Mapes: One asshat FEMA employee doesn't represent all of FEMA. Every barrel has some spoiled apples.

Yeah, I suppose those FEMA officials after Hurricane Katrina that cut the local phone lines from the Sherrifs office were just a few "bad apples." They cut phone lines and jammed the regular comm frequencies used by the sherrifs and other emergency services in New Orleans under direct orders from Brownie. It got so bad that the local police had to post guards on the phone switching facilities to prevent the Feds from cutting communicatons in the aftermath of the disaster.

FEMA is NOT your freind, nor does it exist to mitigate disasters. It's purpose is to prevent insurrection and quiet disorder in the wake of a large social disturbance, at ANY cost. Its purpose is to control the communications systems in the event of a crippling disaster. Those ARE its chartered purposes.

This is very true. FEMA is NOT your friend. (new window) Remember this if they come into your area for any reason.

He wasn't FEMA, he was a FEMA contractor. A regular government employee would still have been drunk in bed at 11:30 am.

Approves.

NewHere: So precious little snowflake is now a "victim" because water happened to go through his house? Give me a break.

2/10

If you're going to troll against the flow here (going pro the FEMA guy) you're going to have to build it up a lot better.

Is there a government entity more useless and dangerous than FEMA?

I mean, besides the current Executive branch of the Federal Government.

YoungSwedishBlonde Quote 2008-06-29 05:02:25 AM
FEMA was an awesomely efficient government agency until Bush became president.


Yeah right and No One Died while Clinton Ruled. Saw that on a bumper sticker.

Wanted for questioning.

I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.

FEMA - Fix Everything My Ass

/had to say it

What do we need FEMA and Chertoff for,if all they do is farm out the work to private contractors(profit,profit)and treat Americans like Palestinians ??

Sounds like someone just got their copy of GTA4.

Espertron: Is there a government entity more useless and dangerous than FEMA?

I mean, besides the current Executive branch of the Federal Government.

I know what you meant, but you may want to revisit your high school classes. FEMA is part of DHS, which is part of the Executive Branch.

DeltaXi65: This probably has considerably less to do with the fact that this guy was with FEMA and a lot to do with the fact that he was 74.

Like 40% of Americans want our next president to be, apparently.

I think that qualifies for a "hecuva job" comment from Dumbya...

FTFA

When called to slow down by the victim, the FEMA employee said "I don't have to slow down, I'm with GODDAMN FEMA!"

//for some odd reason that stuck in my head
///Help