re: Katrina
I didn't think it was a good idea to roll the original FEMA and other emergency agencies into a giant superagency. I think a lot of problems stemmed from that.
The unfortunate government response to a lot of crisis situations, or things that are perceived as crisis situations, is to create some kind of "czar." Our old civil defense system didn't suck, and centralizing a function that badly needs to be local was a bad idea.
FEMA was never intended to be a first responder, and I documented that. Up until recently, they were the ones who sat around after the smoke cleared and wrote checks for rebuilding.