The answer (IMHO)

I think the answer to the question that I posed in my last post is fairly simple. FEMA, like Social Security, like the EPA, represents those aspects of the government that the Bushies most desperately want to either privatize or eliminate, because in their narrow view of representative government, these agencies are tainted by the foul odor of SOCIALISM, their definition of which is anything that suggests entitlement to the middle class on down in our society, or, in any shape of form, provides regulatory function over corporate excess.