Yesterday as I tootled about doing errands in my flat and boring burg, I listened as usual to NPR and the Diane Rehm show and then followed that up with a locally produced show called With Good Reason.. Taken in tandem, they presented a pretty breathtaking picture of just how fast the US is being outpaced in terms of technology and infrastructure by the rest of the world.
“Left Behind” will be the appropriate title for history textbooks in the future, as other less ignorant and corrupt countries plow a path towards energy independence that will leave the US an impoverished, doltish nation - a Busch Gardens for the rest of the world to visit to see how silly Americans still burn oil and coal.
The Diane Rehm show gives a good insight into the brutish intellect required to drag us down to this level, courtesy of a guest from the Cato Institute who would like to dismantle FEMA as well as many other Federal Departments dedicated to the Health, Safety and Welfare of the general public.
Here is the link to the transcript: Financial and Political Challenges for FEMA
Guests:
Ed O'Keefe
author of The Federal Eye blog and federal government reporter for The Washington Post.
Dan Mitchell
senior fellow at the Cato Institute
Jane Bullock
former chief of staff, FEMA
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Independent U. S. senator from Vermont
The crux of the discussion is whether FEMA should exist at all (!) and how they should be funded. Bernie Sanders, like any rational citizen of a COUNTRY, takes the traditional position that a COUNTRY unites and helps the citizens of any natural disaster within the COUNTRY. Taking the opposite and bizarre view that states should be in it alone is a man of breathtaking shortsightedness and just plain stupidity, Dan Mitchell, “senior fellow” at the Cato Institute. He has one metaphor for federal government which he deploys lovingly and often - “a leaky bucket”.
Now here are some selected quotes which basically summarize the positions of the speakers - They are NOT chronologically a response to each other.
Bernie Sanders:
Our state, as most states in this country today, has a very serious deficit. We've been impacted by the recession. And again, what a nation is about is that we come to the aid of communities who are in the midst of a crisis situation. You know, this debate about whether or not we are going to be one country or we're going to be a confederation of different states, I thought was settled way back at the moment when our country was born.
I think, frankly, at the time when China is spending 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure, building high-speed rail, building roads and bridges and airports, the United States of America will look like a laughingstock in front of the entire world if we cannot rebuild communities and roads and bridges, schools that have been devastated by natural disaster.
Dan Mitchell
Well, my complaint has never been about whether FEMA was acting effectively or ineffectively. I'm glad. If it's all true, if they're doing a better job, that's certainly good news. But my fundamental issue is whether or not this could be handled better if it was a state and local responsibility. The state of North Carolina or the state of New Jersey, or whatever state we're talking about, should be perfectly capable of putting in place the MREs, the tarps, the baby food, the blankets and all those things.
I don't see why we should have this leaky bucket strategy of bringing money to Washington, having a bureaucracy in Washington and then sending a leaky bucket back to the states whenever there's an emergency. I think this goes against what served our nation so well for a long time, which is to have the innovation, the diversity, the local and state responsibility and control of these issues.
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I might put getting rid of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Energy and Education before getting rid of FEMA. But, by God, FEMA's on my chopping block as well.
Jane Bullock does a good job at pointing out that FEMA was created at the request of the states and how they only act at the request of the states but that process has been streamlined and improved since Katrina.
I think that the people of the United States believe that the government has a right to keep them safe and secure in their homes and their communities. Ron Raul may be right, that the Constitution does say the public safety is the responsibility of state and local governments. However, the federal government only comes in when state and local capacity is exhausted.
We do preposition, but we don't preposition, as Ed was talking about, unless the state asks us to. The other thing that, I think, is really important to know, one of the other major factors of having a agency like FEMA is to promote improved building practices, to promote mitigation so that the states and localities that go through a disaster will not be faced with the same disaster again. Look at the Northridge earthquake.
Overall, it is a pretty good discussion, but I can’t get over the bellicose smug stupidity (no other word for) of the Cato Institute guy. It is mind boggling to me that his 5th grade reasoning is taken seriously by anyone. Unfortunately, no one asked him ”What if the state capitol goes under water or is crumbled by an earthquake? I wish no ill to anyone, but if he ever finds himself sitting on his own roof in the future, I demand that he turns away the Coast Guard rescue team and the FEMA boats and insists that he will wait until he is rescued by his local sheriffs. I also would like to know if he has Federal Flood insurance.
Now, on to the second show I had occasion to listen to - a local show called With Good Reason and the episode entitled Sea Ice and Sunlight No trans script, unfortunately. (On a personal note, I have always found the vocal patterns of the host of this show annoying in the extreme - more like a Romper Room teacher than a serious interviewer, but that’s just me.)
The first part is an interview with a female scientist who is measuring the loss of Arctic Sea ice in temperatures of -40, but it’s the second interview with the French electrical engineering professor that I found so compelling. In this interview I learned the following things:
* We’re falling way way behind in the deployment of solar energy and only have a very small window left if we want any piece of the global research and manufacturing that going into this elsewhere.
* The countries on the leading edge right now are Germany, Japan and China. Germany has renounced nuclear energy and is going solar big. Their banning of incandescent light bulbs is the energy equivalent of taking 7 million cars off the road .
* The US could supply ALL of its electrical needs if we built a 100 mile by 100 mile solar grid in the Southwest at a cost of about 4 trillion dollars. To put that in perspective, how much have we spent on our endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and what actual benefit has accrued to us?
*A person could be solar independent at a cost of about 20K which would pay for itself after 10 years when you would have essentially free electricity.
*The utility companies (surprise!) don’t want solar because they think they will lose profit
Now, let's talk a little more about the 100 mile by 100 mile solar farm built at the cost of 4trillion dollars, because that is where these 2 shows intersected and converged on a point of crystal clarity for me:
As long as we have small minded sycophants like the Cato guy and the austerity mongers, the US WILL NEVER BE GREAT AGAIN. That is just the plain vanilla truth. It goes very much to the point raised by those great Rachel Maddow ads where she shows the Hoover Dam and says "A Nation was necessary to build this" and goes on to say that a company or even a state is not capable of building something so mammoth and requiring so much vision.
Do we have this will and this vision anymore? Has it been whittled away forever by the Deficit Commissions and the Paul Ryans and the self-serving corporatist Republicans and the complicit Democrats who buy into and advance the vision of a shrunken, poor, Balkanized, privatized America?
Hurricane Irene, Unemployment, Failing Infrastructure, the Technology Race of the Future, the Role of Government , the Failing Economy have all converged in one great historic moment and opportunity. President Obama’s current campaign slogan “Win the Future” will be revealed as shallow and bereft of any political will, unless he finally grabs the opportunity and takes on the Good of the People as opposed to the Good of the Corporations.
The future of our country, the path we go down and the future of Barack Obama's Presidency in my opinion are dependent on the scope and reach and vision of his speech next week and then the implementation thereof. Small and piecemeal will not cut it. I would advise the President to skip conciliatory and go right to confrontational backed with the confidence of being right and just. He (and we) need BIG, BOLD vision or he can count on being a one termer.