Tag Archives: FEMA

President Obama Signs Arkansas Disaster Declaration

By The White House

The President today declared a major disaster exists in the State of Arkansas and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts in the area affected by a severe winter storm during the period of December 25-26, 2012.

Federal funding is available to state and eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the severe winter storm in the counties of Garland, Grant, Hot Spring, Lonoke, Perry, Pulaski, and Saline.

Federal funding is also available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures statewide.

W. Craig Fugate, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Homeland Security, named Sandy Coachman as the Federal Coordinating Officer for federal recovery operations in the affected area.

FEMA said additional designations may be made at a later date if requested by the state and warranted by the results of further damage assessments.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION MEDIA SHOULD CONTACT: FEMA NEWS DESK AT (202) 646-3272 OR FEMA-NEWS-DESK@DHS.GOV

Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House Press Office

For Sandy's homeless, lives of anxiety in hotels

Months after Superstorm Sandy, at least 3,500 families are still living in hotels in New York and New Jersey.

The hotel stays are funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They expire every two weeks. That is leaving families in a state of anxiety over where they will sleep at night.

The next deadline is Saturday. Many families are still waiting to hear whether they will be allowed to stay.

Claims are evaluated on an individual basis.

FEMA officials say people are no longer eligible for hotel assistance if they have received rental assistance, have a viable housing option or an insurance settlement or can return to a repaired home.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Sandy victims left out in the cold during arctic blast

By Perry Chiaramonte

The brutal cold snap affecting much of the country is taking a devastating toll on victims of superstorm Sandy, many of whom are camped out in tent cities or living in homes without power, heat or running water.

Hundreds of people in New York’s Staten Island and along the Jersey Shore are still without basic necessities nearly three months after the devastating storm struck.

“Many families in Union Beach are using space heaters to warm upstairs,” said Jeanette Van Houten, a resident from the small New Jersey town that was among the hardest-hit communities. “There’s people with no heat, no electric, but they are staying in the house because it’s better than having to deal with FEMA and having to leave hotels every two weeks.

“There are families who have chosen to stay in their homes just to have some sort of normalcy,” she added.

The cold wave has brought single-digit temperatures to the Northeast, some 10 to 15 degrees below normal for the time of year.

Residents of the New Dorp Beach section of Staten Island have taken shelter in tents set up by aid workers with only small propane heaters, sleeping bags and blankets to stave off the bone-chilling cold, according to reports.

In the Queens neighborhood of Breezy Point, one of the most storm-ravaged areas of the region, residents lined up at the local recovery center this week to pick up donated ceramic space heaters. Many of the suffering residents in the five boroughs of New York City say their homes still are barely habitable, despite the city’s so-called Rapid Repairs program that was supposed to make their homes livable quickly.

According to the city, construction teams for the Rapid Repairs program have restored heat, hot water and power to more than 12,000 city residents, with work still to be completed in another 1,900 buildings.

Van Houten, whose house in Union Beach was destroyed by Sandy, has since stayed with relatives further down the coast in South Toms River. She said she feels that her and her family are fortunate.

“Things are far from better, but I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

FEMA And The National Guard–working For Or Against The American Public?

By George Spelvin

FEMA truck 1024x704 FEMA and the National Guard–working for or against the American public?

A nationwide flu outbreak could be a sufficient excuse to call up the National Guard Rapid Response Parallel support module to take control of a “national emergency” with possible declaration of martial law protocols. According to a North Carolina police lieutenant, in some three to six months declarations of martial law could be made throughout the nation. In a two part radio broadcast aired by a Virginia pastor, Lieutenant McCoy has attracted the attention of more than 20,000 listeners. “We’re in huge trouble,” he says as he calls up memories of white, granite gravestones all over Europe; gravestones marking the final resting place of veterans who died “for us” during World War II.

Tragically, many of our veterans are now referred to as potential “domestic terrorists” by President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security. Men who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have been declared “risks” should they choose to purchase a firearm for private use. A devout Christian, the 31 year lawman tells listeners, “I cry. . .when guns are gone, you won’t be able to worship the Creator. . .gone. . . Freedoms gone.”

When Katrina made its way through New Orleans leaving portions of the city in ruins, George Bush praised FEMA director Michael Brown, saying “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” It was an incredible statement given the display of incompetence not only by FEMA, but by federal agencies throughout the bureaucracy. Residents of New York City can attest to the fact that things have not improved given that providing water to victims of Sandy was too complicated a task for federal relief agencies DAYS after the hurricane had passed through the area.

Perhaps it’s time to ask the true purpose of FEMA and other federal agencies. When the necessity arises, National Guard Units under martial law paradigms will be rolled out for “control of widespread domestic unrest.” A 2009 report discusses something called a Stability Police Force resembling a hybrid military/ law enforcement entity created “under the guise of controlling domestic riots.” Use of National Guard units became familiar to residents of New Orleans during the Katrina episode, so citizens may initially not consider it unusual to see guard members serving along with FEMA in these 10 regions.

Executive Orders, “…have been on the books for a half century now, empowering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take control of everything from public and private communications, energy and transportation to housing and more.” (5) And since 9/11, the president has been given nearly limitless power, permitting officers of the Executive branch to ignore completely the constitutional rights of the American people.

In March of 2012, Barack Obama created Executive Order number 13603, entitled National Defense Resources Preparedness. “In this Executive Order, Obama essentially gave himself the authority to declare Martial Law in times of war or peace.” War OR Peace! No longer will the federal government need the excuse of a disaster to impose its full will and authority on the American public!

Lieutenant McCoy was right when he observed that “we’re in huge trouble!” The question is, will We the People have the courage to reclaim our constitutional rights?

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

Video: State And Local Officials Plan To Defend Citizens From NDAA Detentions And Gun Confiscations

By Bobby Powell

At the invitation of elected representatives and members of the law enforcement community in Northern Michigan, veteran investigative journalist Bob Powell spoke for half an hour, warning the gathered officials about imminent civil unrest sparked by an EMP attack on the United States during an all-but-inevitable war between Israel and Iran.

The briefing included proof of the Federal government’s plan to round up those unruly citizens that they haven’t shot for attempting to escape the death traps that used to be American cities, and their detention in FEMA camps where leaked U.S. Army manuals state that inmates are to be brainwashed with military-style psy-ops.

The officials listened intently as they heard – probably for the first time – about the 1.6 billion rounds of hollow point and sniper ammunition the government has purchased, and how Subsection 502 of Presidential Executive Order 13603 allows the President or those he designates to force any U.S. Citizen into slavery.

One of my viewers expressed frustration last fall when her phone calls and letters to her elected representatives went unanswered, and she asked “Bobby what else can we do?” All I can say to this dear lady is to reach out to her local government instead of the treasonous scum in Washington and warn them about the plans of the federal government by sending them the link to this post.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

Junk Laws

By Michael Reagan

Congress Junk Laws

We have junk food, junk mail, and junk bonds.

Now, thanks to our dysfunctional and devious Congress, we have junk laws like the “Taxpayer Relief Act.”

Junk laws are really nothing new. The people we send to Washington to represent us have been passing legislation larded with pork or special privileges for their friends in business, agriculture, and labor since the country was born.

Insiders have always known how this cynical bipartisan game is played. But now, thanks to the failure of Congress to deal with the government debt crisis it in large part created, the average American is starting to become aware of these junk bills.

Even the liberal media were outraged by what went on when Congress passed the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012″ — which, ironically, raised the taxes of every working American by 2 percent by returning the Social Security tax to its usual 6.2 percent level.

The “Fiscal Cliff Bill” did virtually nothing to solve the federal government’s money problems or create a single job. But it was junked up with nearly $70 billion of pure pork — including tax credits for the owners of NASCAR racetracks, wind turbine makers, Hollywood moviemakers, and rum-makers in Puerto Rico.

While President Obama was promising to raise taxes on the rich but really shafting the working poor, congressional folk were so busy loading up the “Fiscal Cliff Bill” with presents for their friends that they forgot to pass the relief bill to benefit victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Members of Congress are grandmasters of deceit and dishonesty. Taking maximum advantage of every crisis or disaster that comes along, they attach their favorite pieces of pork to dishonestly- named bills such as the “American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012″ and the “Affordable Healthcare Act.”

Members know these big, important super-bills have to pass to avert a crisis, so they junk them up with their $200 million “Bridges to Nowhere” and their $59 million tax credits for the algae-growing industry.

A perfect example of how Congress gets its junk bills passed has to with the way it funds FEMA. Congress always underfunds the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Why?

Because Congress knows that each year, there will always be a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy that FEMA will need billions of federal dollars to address.

And when FEMA comes asking for emergency funding, members of Congress will clean out their closets and throw every piece of junk legislation they have into the relief bill, which they know will automatically pass without scrutiny.

Another reason we get junk laws is that few members of Congress actually read these monster bills before they vote for them. Nancy Pelosi’s career quote is going to be her comment on the healthcare bill: “But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”

Law-making is not supposed to work that way. There’s a rule in Congress that a bill has to be posted for 48 hours before it can be voted on. But that rule has become a joke.

Just watch C-SPAN the next time a vote is being taken in the House. You’ll probably hear someone say something like: “Under suspension of the rule, we’ll now vote.”

What arcane parliamentary rule are they talking about? The 48-hour rule. No wonder Congress is always finding out after they vote what they just voted for. If members of Congress don’t read the damn bill, they shouldn’t vote on it.

I’m getting real tired of people saying “My guy’s a good guy, and your guy’s a bad guy.” They’re all acting like bad guys.

We need to start holding every member of Congress accountable. And we need more up-and-down votes in Congress so that the next important piece of legislation doesn’t become another “Fiscal Cliff Junk Bill.”

Photo credit: Jessie Owen (Creative Commons)

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism

Standing Our Ground

By Michael Connelly

Tea Party SC Standing Our Ground

It’s time for a reality check. The election is over; and according to the results, the majority of the people residing in this country voted to abolish our Republican form of government and trash the Constitution. They voted for virtually unlimited government, redistribution of wealth through higher taxes, limits on individual liberties, and out of control spending and debt. They voted to end the free market economic system and place an unmanageable burden on their own children and grandchildren so they can collect their free stuff now.

The leftists in this country now feel that they are in a position to do what they have wanted to do for decades: impose their elitist views on the population and take control of how we live, what we do, what we think, and what God we can worship. They are confident that they can succeed in destroying our country and our way of life for good because they have a President in the White house who is committed to establishing himself as a dictator. They also control the schools, the universities, the mainstream media, many of the courts, the United States Senate, and most of the largest cities in the country.

The left believes that this is their moment in history when they impose their will on the American people, the time when we all submit to their will and become compliant subjects who will acknowledge their intellectual superiority and march in lockstep to the beat of their corrupt drummers. They truly believe this, and yet they are very frightened. They are frightened of a document called the Constitution, most specifically of the Bill of Rights and the 2nd Amendment.

The elitists like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and their lackeys in academia, the news media, and Hollywood are cowards. They are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want; but they are not willing to pick up a weapon and fight for what they profess to believe. They will rely on others to do that.

Yet, they know that in order to be successful, they must take an important step and disarm the American people. They must abolish the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution; and they must do it now. The effort has already begun, and it is an all-out assault. Bills are being introduced in the House and Senate to ban so-called assault weapons, certain magazines, various types of ammunition, and certain handguns. This is all supposed to be an effort to protect our children from another Sandy Hook tragedy.

That is where the reality check comes in. The left has always been willing to exploit tragedy to get its way. All of this proposed legislation is just window dressing to lay the ground work for the ultimate goal of outlawing the private ownership of all firearms in the United States. Once that is accomplished, the government will move to confiscate all of those in private hands.

That is why the Obama administration is purchasing millions of rounds of ammunition for federal bureaucracies, and FEMA and DHS are training thousands of people to engage in urban warfare. Not urban warfare against foreign or domestic terrorists, but against American citizens who attempt to exercise the 2nd Amendment rights that have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. In fact, the left is already calling for the people who believe in gun rights to be declared terrorists and arrested not only for supporting the 2nd Amendment, but also for exercising our 1st Amendment rights.

This is not an obscure conspiracy theory, but is happening now. It is for real. I have people telling me that it will never happen because these bills will not pass Congress. I agree that with an all-out effort, we can defeat the legislation in the House of Representatives; but Obama and the left plan to simply bypass Congress and impose gun control by Executive order and by signing the UN Small Arms treaty.

Therefore, our most critical battles may be in the Courts. For over 38 years, I have defended the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution both in and out of the courtrooms. As the new Executive Director of the United States Justice Foundation (USJF), I will make sure that the foundation is in the forefront of the fight.

This is not just a battle that we must win; this is the war that will decide the fate of our nation. We cannot compromise, and we cannot surrender. The 2nd Amendment was placed in the Constitution to ensure that the American people would be able to defend themselves against any future government that sought to become a tyranny. That is what is happening now, and we must not give up our weapons.

A friend and fellow veteran just forwarded a quote by the great Russian writer and patriot Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, who said this about the lack of resistance to the communist takeover of his country:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else at hand?…

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If……if……We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more—-we had no awareness of the real situation…….We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

Enough said. Fight back now!

Michael Connelly blog

www.usjf.net

Constitutional Law Alliance

Photo credit: formatted_dad (Creative Commons)

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism