When Hurricanes Strike, Forget Politics

Every day, those of us in the Midwest read stories about awful conditions in Staten Island and other parts of New York and New Jersey — people without power, without gas, without food, without help, and without hope, a week after Sandy the Superstorm made landfall — and we shudder.

The media is eager to label politicians as winners or losers in all of this.  They ask:  Did President Obama do a great job in the first 24 hours, or has he fallen down on the job recently, when he left the East Coast for the campaign trail?  Was New York City Mayor Bloomberg crazy to even consider holding the New York City Marathon under these circumstances?  And will FEMA ever perform flawlessly when a hurricane scores a near-direct hit on a major city?

It’s ludicrous to try to identify political winners and losers when disaster strikes; it just cheapens the colossal human tragedy to view it solely from a political perspective.  The conditions left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy are unimaginable to those of us who are accustomed to modern life — a group that includes all of the wretched souls in New York and New Jersey who have had their lives turned upside down.  Imagine living in a small apartment in one of the affected communities, having to deal with overflowing toilet bowls, spoiled food in the refrigerator, rotting trash at the curbside, no food or water, unheated rooms in near-freezing temperatures, and fears of armed looters when darkness falls.  The victims of Hurricane Sandy can’t understand why, a week later, they aren’t being helped to get their lives back to normal, and I expect they find it infuriating that the media has passed judgment on which politician performed well and which didn’t, and then moved on to another story.

If there is a lesson about this, it is that natural disasters are, in fact, disasters — incidents that have catastrophic consequences that can’t be easily reversed or repaired.   Mayors, Governors, and Presidents do the best they can, but often the scale of the disaster makes appalling human suffering unavoidable.  We should just accept that fact, let the governmental bodies do their job under difficult circumstances, try to help however we can, and not be quite so quick to judge.

Another Week, Another Stalemate

Ho hum.  If it’s Monday, there must be another political stalemate in Washington, D.C., and another possible government shutdown looming.

The contours of this dispute are familiar.  Federal funds are running out and a short-term spending bill must be passed.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency also needs more money.  As a matter of fiscal discipline, Republicans insist that the increased funding for FEMA should be offset by cuts elsewhere.  House Republicans passed a bill that would make $1.6 billion in offsetting cuts that target the Department of Energy’s Advanced technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, which makes loans to car companies to pay for things such as factory upgrades and the development of new, green, fuel efficient technology.  Senate Democrats object and argue that the cuts to the DOE program would cost up to 10,000 jobs.

I’m with the Republicans on this one.  Congress can always find an emergency to justify more spending.  If we don’t make cuts to compensate, spending will just spiral even more out of control.  Moreover, the DOE program sounds like a classic federal boondoggle.  If market forces make better fuel efficiency important to car buyers, car makers will have plenty of incentive to spend their own money to achieve better fuel efficiency.  And haven’t we done more than enough for auto companies lately, with the taxpayer-financed bailouts of GM and Chrysler?  We need to curb our appetite for ever-increasing spending, and curtailing programs that subsidize big auto companies seems like a good place to start.

For all of their protestations about being serious about restraining spending, Senate Democrats apparently are unable to identify even $1.6 billion in spending “cuts.”  Doesn’t that say something about how serious they really are?

The President’s Name Plate

President Obama visited FEMA headquarters over the weekend to check out how preparations for Hurricane Irene were going.

Oddly, somebody at FEMA thought it would be a good idea to make a name plate for the President and to place it in front of him as he sat at a conference table.  You see it in the photos that were taken during the President’s visit.  It says “Barack Obama President of the United States.”  I assume it was made by somebody at FEMA because it looks just like the name plates that were made for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and FEMA’s administrator.

Doesn’t it seem weird that somebody at FEMA made a name plate for the President of the United States?  President Obama is one of the most well-known figures in the world.  Is it even conceivable that somebody in that room wouldn’t have known who he was if the name plate wasn’t there?

It seems demeaning to put a name plate in front of the President of the United States, like he is just a random guy in  a blue shirt who needs to be identified.  I guess we’re just lucky that someone didn’t stick a “Hi!  My name is Barack” name tag on his shirt pocket.