Lost in the Flood, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

September 3, 2011 Martha Thomases 8 Comments

If, like myself, you are sick to death of news coverage of Hurricane Irene, you might agree that the storm was overhyped.  

Except I don’t agree.

Manhattan, the Center of the Universe (™) and the Locus of Civilization (also ™) was left relatively unharmed.  We got a lot of rain, but there was relatively little flooding.

The rest of the East Coast?  Not so much.

Hurricane Irene caused more than 40 deaths, and billions in property damage.  According to some news reports I heard (sorry, I can’t remember from where, so I can’t cite a source), there are no roads in Vermont that aren’t damaged, nor a single town in Connecticut that doesn’t have at least a few homes without power.

Then there are the hidden economic costs.  Thousands of vacations (including mine) were cancelled at the last minute.  Tens of millions of people who would have been out shopping for back-to-school supplies stayed home instead.  Stores were closed.  In New York, they closed the mass transit system for the first time ever.  This meant that people couldn’t go to work and, most likely, won’t get paid.  And that means they’ll have less money to spend.

And so on.  And so on.

One would think that natural disasters are something about which we could agree on the appropriate role of government.  If so, one would think wrong.  Eric Cantor thinks we don’t have enough money to help our fellow citizens.  I infer from the tone that he and other Tea Baggers think that there are millions of lazy welfare cheats out there, just waiting for a hurricane to destroy their homes so they can get some unearned cash.

Cantor is at least consistent.  His state, Virginia, got hit pretty hard, both by last week’s earthquake and Irene.  He is including his own constituents among those who should tough it out and fend for themselves, no matter what the disaster.

Is FEMA supposed to have a crystal ball so they can know in advance what the weather will bring each year and request funds based on that data?  This year has set records of all kinds – rainfall, drought, heat, tornadoes and other storms.  It’s not a surprise that the money is dwindling.

New York is generally pretty lucky in terms of natural disasters.  It’s the center of the country that usually suffers more from floods and tornadoes, and the hurricanes hit further south.  Nevertheless, I don’t kvetch (at least not in public) when my tax money goes to bail out citizens in other states.

I don’t want to sound like I’m defending huge deficits.  I’m not.  If anything, I wish the current fervor for ecumenic restraint happened sooner, when we were sending hundreds of billions of extra-budget dollars to Iraq.  

We can’t fix eight years of unrestrained spending in three years of austerity.

And even if we could, this is not the way to do it.  What kind of world are we living in when the Democrats, the party of Acid, Abortion and Amnesty, are the ones standing up for the rights of veterans in the face of the Republicans deficit hawks?

I thought these people were supposed to be religious.  If I remember my Bible correctly (specifically, the book of Genesis), Joseph gained the trust of Pharaoh when he interpreted Pharaoh’s dream about the seven starving calves eating the seven fatted calves.  God was warning that there would be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of want.  Because he listened to Joseph, Pharaoh stored the surplus grain during the years of plenty and had enough to feed his people during the drought.

Eric Cantor would have let the rich keep their grain, and then would complain the poor didn’t contribute.

Martha Thomases,Media Goddess, supposes she’ll get to Walt Disney World again someday.