The flood in New Orleans is a very good example of why the republicans shouldn't be allowed to shrink government until it is small enough to be taken out and drowned in the bathtub. It didn't have to be this way. Maybe we couldn't stop the hurricane, but we could have shored up the levees and the pumps and taken other actions to prevent the massive flooding that is currently occurring. Why do I believe this? Because my home was saved by big government from a flood that would have been a lot like this one.
Ten years ago I lived in Marysville, California. Marysville is one of the oldest cities in California, with a rich history as the jumping off point of the gold rush. It has a population of about 10,000, and is totally surrounded by rivers. It is below the winter high water level of rivers that surround it. Well maintained levees put up in the 1800's protect it from being flooded on a regular basis. There is huge park, called Riverfront Park, that is actually a river overflow plain that takes pressure off the levees when California has high rainfall. During the summer, the park hosts music festivals, dirt-bike racing, and soccer. During the winter, it is periodically flooded.
In 1997, a freak tropical storm hit the day after new years. It was unusually warm. I was wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. The sky was blue with puffy clouds, because the warm tropical air passed right over our city and dropped it's warm moisture onto the Sierra Nevada, melting the snow that had fallen in the fall and causing massive runoff into every stream and river in the region. The reservoirs were already full, because it had been a good rain year. As more water flowed into the reservoirs, the operators had to release massive amounts of water to prevent breaching, adding to the already high water flow in the rivers. The Feather and Yuba Rivers rose higher and higher, until they were inches from the top of the massive levee that had held rivers back for over a century. I walked up to look, and saw the water about a yard, horizontally, from the top of the gently sloping levee. Riverfront Park was totally flooded. It looked like a teacup full to the very brim. Then I turned around and looked down on the roof of my house. That's when I decided to leave. No house is worth my life, and the lives of my pets. I loaded what I could into the attic, knowing that if the levee breached, that would probably flood, too, then I loaded my dog and cat into the car and evacuated, about an hour ahead of the mandatory evacuation order.
As I left, I saw National Guardsmen stacking sandbags near the levee, so they could use them to plug any leaks before they got big enough to cause a breach. It was a wonderful sight to see. The Army Corps of Engineers was walking the levees and reporting on levee conditions regularly. The city council was advising citizens of where and when to go. I was never so glad to be surrounded by California's "bloated" government.
When I arrived at my parent's house in the San Francisco Bay Area, I turned on CNN and saw the report... Marysville had flooded. But it wasn't Marysville. It was a city just to the south. a rural region of low population density. Tragically, people died in that flood, but not as many as would have died if Marysville proper had flooded. We got lucky. Or did we? Was it really luck?
Not really. The Army Corps saw how close the Marysville levee was to breaching, and took action. They breached a farm levee downstream, flooding a rural residential neighborhood. A few people's homes were flooded to save the homes of thousands. . Big Government at work. National Guardsmen and firemen and ambulance companies were evacuating hospitals and nursing homes and helping people who couldn't leave their homes on their own. Politicians were implementing emergency plans that had been writing just for this occasion. Army Corps Engineers were monitoring levee strength constantly through the night. Policemen drove through the streets to prevent looting. It wasn't luck that got Marysville through the floods of 97. It was a dedicated effort by thousands of individuals who were employed by the government, on top of millions of dollars that had previously been invested in the levee system. Nobody could have stopped the freak tropical storm that hit us. But they could plan for the "worst case" scenario and implement those plans so that when the storm hit, they would be ready.
That is what "big government" is all about. The republicans talk about government as if it is a bad thing. They talk about taxes as if they are always too high. But my tax dollars went toward building those levees, and paying those Engineers and Guardsmen and Politicians. And, ultimately, saving my house. Government does so many things for us that we don't think about, until they aren't there. The shrunken government currently being promoted by the right will not be there to protect the homes of future Marysville residents, just like it wasn't there to protect the people of New Orleans. We need big government, because we are a very big nation. And if government isn't there to shore up levees, and put up sandbags, and evacuate those who can't leave their homes, and warn us of impending floods, then who will be? I wonder, if I lived in small government Lousisiana instead of "bloated" California, would my house have been saved?