Sandy, complexity, competence
IMAGE: NYS
It may well be that next Tuesday, Republicans will take control of the entire Federal government, winning the White House and the US Senate.
This is a political party that has moved into full and direct opposition to many (if not most) of the services that Americans take for granted that government will provide, from the social safety net to the kind of emergency FEMA response that we saw during tropical storm Irene and Hurricane Sandy.
The one exception to the GOP’s ideological distaste for government is the US military.
Where most other aspects of the Federal government’s role enter into the debate, the party’s distaste — though sometimes veiled or muddled — shines through. Government is a force that shackles creativity, limits freedom, and stifles entrepreneurship.
North Country congressional candidate Matt Doheny — though supportive of some government infrastructure projects — regularly describes Federal social welfare programs as “a hammock,” the implication being that services of this kind create a disincentive to hard work and independence.
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave full-throated endorsement during the GOP primary to eliminating FEMA, dispersing emergency response functions to the states, or even to private companies.
“Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction,” Romney said, in answer to a question about natural disasters and FEMA funding. “And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”
The problem with this approach is that Republicans still haven’t explained how this new system — which, remember, involves life and death matters — is supposed to work.
If we downsize the social safety net, how do we as a moral people prevent more poor and vulnerable Americans from dying for lack of food, medicine, and safe housing?
What do we do when an entire region of the US is crippled by a storm, or an earthquake or a series of tornadoes?
In the past, Republicans have offered answers to these questions that sound wholesome and satisfying, arguing that 19th century values like generosity, independence, faith and community spirit can fill the gap.
But as we’ve seen this week in New York City and New Jersey, America doesn’t look or work like that anymore. Lower Manhattan isn’t a village where the local deacon and the mayor can help out those people who are struggling with a potluck dinner and a barn-raising.
This is a massively complex social structure involving more than ten million people, all of them bound together by incredibly intricate layers of infrastructure and technology. Just the mechanisms for delivering safe food and water — let alone electricity — to that region beggars the imagination of the layman.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself a former Republican and now an independent, spoke to this ideological question after the storm this week.
“New York City taxes itself and spends the money to protect us and to have the services that will keep us going,” he argued. “Which always annoys me when they say ‘You’re a high taxed place.’ Yeah, and we get something for it.”
Indeed, we saw this week what happens when competent, well-funded government works well. Government forecasters warned us of the storm. Government first-responders led by elected officials prepared and offered support and guidance to civilians.
In the end, roughly 75 people died in the US because of this disaster. Without the intervention and courage of taxpayer funded government workers, institutions and programs, that number would certainly have been much, much higher.
If Republicans do take control in January, they owe it to their constituents to study the response to Hurricane Sandy, by Bloomberg, by New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, Republican Governor Chris Christie in New Jersey and Democratic President Barack Obama.
The storm is a metaphor for much larger questions about the role of government and governmental agencies when Americans are vulnerable.
It’s one thing to argue that the Federal government should play a limited (or no) role in saving big companies or industries, or to argue that bureaucrats shouldn’t pick “winners and losers” in the private sector economy, or to debate the need for stimulus spending during a recession.
Those are important economic matters, and they’re fair game for dispute, because they are not literally life and death. But there are also moments when people’s safety and welfare hangs in the balance.
Consider this: 74 people died, so far, from Sandy.
But independent studies from groups like Harvard Medical School, the Cambridge Health Alliance, Families USA and the Institute of Medicine have found that between 18,000 and 50,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance and access to basic medical care.
That’s an invisible hurricane of much greater magnitude. Buried in those statistics are shockingly high rates of death from preventable and curable disease, and a dismal record of infant mortality.
So it’s time for the modern conservative movement to fill in some blanks.
Out on the campaign trail, it may suffice to say that “government is the problem” and that the private sector will answer all our needs with the lowest cost and the greatest efficiency. It’s enough to say we’ll overturn Obamacare without explaining what new reforms to the healthcare system will replace it.
But as Sandy has shown, sometimes problems arrive on our doorstep uninvited. Sometimes it’s a storm hitting a vulnerable community. Sometimes it’s cancer or heart disease hitting a poor person who lacks insurance.
When challenges are that big and lethal, I have no doubt but that Americans will continue to look to Washington for a competent, compassionate response. If Republicans are in power, they should be ready.
Mitt Romney, who was opposed to funding FEMA, is not in favor of funding FEMA. What a surprise.
That should be “now” in favor of funding FEMA.
We are lucky that we live in a country where a death toll like 74 is all you get from a storm of this magnitude hitting an area as populated as this. A friend of mine lost her home in this storm her family is safe, thank god.
Brian, You must have written this article before listening to the late news yesterday, Romney as predicted has totally changed his position on FEMA, he now supports that part of the federal government because he thinks it will get him more votes after the storm. Although he may change that position again soon when the far right blasts him for now supporting FEMA. Watch and see.
I am comfortable with Governor Romney’s flexibility.
The Federal Government. Where else can you get $2B dollars in hurricane relief for $50B dollars?
Marcus –
I’ve heard the reports of Mitt Romney’s shift. I’m not so much worried by a political triangulation in the final days of a campaign as I am about the lack of a broader, more coherent argument about how the conservative vision for limited government works when moral and life-and-death issues such as these come into play.
When Romney was asked about the health insurance issue, for example, he noted that Americans have the right to be taken to the hospital in emergencies for triage care to stabilize them. But that’s not really a plan for handling tens of millions of uninsured Americans and their complicated health needs.
In the insurance realm, part of the political problem here is that Democrats have adopted many of the Republican Party’s ideas, including the individual mandate and the use of for-profit doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to provide the backbone of universal healthcare.
While Democrats gravitated toward those possible solutions (infuriating many in their own liberal base), Republicans moved away from them — without coming up with anything new.
–Brian, NCPR
–Brian, NCPR
The reason “we live in a country where a death toll like 74 is all you get from a storm of this magnitude” is because we have BIG government to provide public transportation for evacuees, first responder and search and rescue services, coordinated management, public health services, water and sanitation, etc.
I’d like to hear, just once, the right-wingers acknowledge that at a time like this we need “big government.” Imagine where we’d be now if the Tea Party-mentality had been in power for the last eight or ten years of Katrina, Irene, and Sandy.
The modern republicans have two approaches to these problems. One is magical thinking where somehow the government gets out of the way everything fixes itself. The other approach is darker. Tough luck/tough love – bad stuff happens and if it happens to you, its your fault. Next time you will work harder and not make the same mistake.
The right is in a state of denial, not just on global warming but on the state of our country in general. They sit around polishing a fantasy of American superiority in EVERYTHING as if we could do and have never have done anything wrong. That vision is based on a glorified notion of the country at its founding ignoring both that the industrial revolution and subsequent movement of the majority from farm to city fundamentally changed our society from individual based to community based. The technological revolution has pushed that even further yet they cling to the audiology of an imagined past like a life raft.
Here’s the truth. The country is not longer 13 scrappy colonies of farmers and merchants carving out a living from the wilderness (it wasn’t that simple even then). It is an incredibly complex society that is interdependent in ways the founders could not have imagined. It needs a government that deals with the way things are, not a glorified version of a much simpler past.
I experienced the hurricane first-hand in NJ and am still there. I’ve seen no evidence of “big government” other than Obama’s public appearance (which was the right thing to do, but hardly brought substantive relief) yesterday. In fact, politician that he is, Obama wanted first to visit New York but was told to stay away by Mayor Bloomberg. New Jersey was obviously Plan B. What I have seen are people helping each other and reaching out to those in need. I have seen city and state workers, aided by volunteers, doing all they can to clean up, repair damage and help the helpless. I am not suggesting that there’s no role for the Federal Government, nor am I suggesting that they won’t do all they can. I am validating the belief that these things are best handled at the local and state level because I am watching it happen.
Larry –
Your comment conveys the difficulty that Americans have with this issue. What you see out your window. But that anecdotal experience is, bluntly and factually, false.
The Federal government has huge boots on the ground right now, including 2,200 FEMA workers alone. The US military is helping with transportation of supplies and equipment.
The Feds had “5 million liters of water, 3 million meals, 900,000 blankets and 100,000 cots” standing by to help afflicted families.
The Federal government provided the forecasting, and the monitoring, that allowed local and state governments to prepare for this storm adequately.
The major disaster declarations at the Federal level will funnel short- and long-term financial aid to homeowners, businesses and local governments struggling to cope with a disaster of this scale.
This stuff is not “symbolic”. And it is simply not accurate that disasters like this get solved with “people helping each other and reaching out to those in need.”
Not because Americans are uncaring or callous, but because this is just too big and too complicated.
I know there is a strong, passionate desire for the world to work otherwise. We prefer the model of a simpler world, where neighbors help neighbors and the local mayor can sort out trouble in his own backyard.
But the Feds are busy helping stabilize and secure nuclear power plants. They’re monitoring potential outbreaks of diseases. They’re helping with security and law enforcement.
That’s not white picket fence stuff. It’s not stuff that can be handled at the local and state level.
The local and state effort that you’re seeing out your window is supported by a vast national infrastructure. Whether it works well or not means life or death for a lot of people.
–Brian, NCPR
James, when the republicans take over next year the sky won’t fall. Nor will we all be living in huts waiting for the next storm and our impending doom.
I also think that death toll is low because this storm hit a relatively affluent area. The pigs that live in the brick house always fare better when the wolf shows up.
Brian Mann: “But the Feds are busy helping stabilize and secure nuclear power plants.”
Let me just pull this one point as representative of your comprehensive point.
What are talking about?
The nuclear plant engineers will be busy securing their own plants, today, as they do every day. There isn’t one Fed employee who is going to show up and do something magical to ensure anything.
New York State is sending health officials from our county to the greater NYC area to insure health safety and disease control. I spoke to someone this morning who is getting ready to leave.
If the “Feds” are on the scene, I would certainly like to hear what capacity they are serving.
One thing we can all agree on is that it takes lots of money to deal with a storm like this. To pay for the big or even medium sized government is going to require substantial growth in our economy.
Yet the federal government is subsidizing the over-building of flood prone, disaster prone areas by offering federal flood insurance when private insurance companies have long ago decided that it was not economically feasible to offer any flood insurance in these areas. So our tax dollars are going to be used to rebuild mansions on the beach in estuaries that should NOT have any development and that the private sector would not build on if it were not for federal payments and support.
Brian,
Glad to hear from Saranac Lake that my first-hand experience in New Jersey is “false”. My point, which you missed in your haste to assure me that your philosophy is more important than my experience, is that although the Federal Government has and will play a huge role in recovery efforts, what you derided as the Republican approach actually is working. I’m sure NYC Mayor Bloomberg would be interested to know that the “anecdotal experience” that led him to decline US military assistance as well as the Obama photo op is “false”. He won’t make the mistake New Orleans Mayor Nagin made by depending on FEMA for relief.
Paul,
The death toll is relatively low because Gov. Christie, Mayor Bloomberg and to a lesser extent Govs. Cuomo and Malloy, mobilized state and local governments to prepare, coordinate and execute disaster and evacuation plans. Your comment about the hurricane hitting an “affluent area” has no basis in reality. The storm did not discriminate.
If storms like Sandy become more normal as it looks like they will over the next 50 years, how long should we continue to subsidize re-building in areas that should not be re-built?
I am not saying of course abandon NYC, however we should not be re-building anything on the beaches with public money. If private homeowners want to take the risk that is their choice, but they are doing what the banks did and are doing, they are privatizing their gains and socializing their losses.
Mervel,
I have often heard that “we continue to subsidize re-building”. Can you please let me know how those subsidies work?
From the FEMA web site:
“On July 6, 2012, President Obama signed the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 extending the National Flood Insurance Program’s authority through September 30, 2017.”
But Mervel (and others) complain that the Gov. should stop subsidizing re-building in flood prone areas.
Then, they criticize Romney for wanting to cut funding for FEMA.
I’m confused….please explain how all this works.
“Imagine where we’d be now if the Tea Party-mentality had been in power for the last eight or ten years of Katrina, Irene, and Sandy.”
I’m not sure about the Tea Party but I do know how FEMA’s response to Katrina worked out. I also know that it was Gov. Cuomo who brought state funds to rebuild the Keene firehouse. It sure wasn’t Obama.
Human fatailities and injury were minimized by advanced warning of the Hurricane and its projected path from scientific observation and reporting by the National Weather Service, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These important Federal government agencies are always under attack by anti-government, anti-science Republicans.
“The right is in a state of denial, not just on global warming but on the state of our country in general.”
The Left has been crying wolf for so long, about so many things, that it’s hard to know what’s real and what isn’t. 40 years ago we were assured by left-wing “environmentalists” that all the oil would soon be gone. Now we learn that the US probably has more crude oil than Saudi Arabia. We were also told that the nuclear power industry would kill us all. It hasn’t hurt us; not in the US. Now the Left’s new mantra is “global warming”. There is empirical evidence that temperatures are rising; no intelligent person disputes that. The debate is about cause, effect and remediation. Hard to trust the Left on that.
myown,
Nobody disputes that NOAA does a fine job, but saying they saved lives is quite an exaggeration. Anyone with an internet connection, TV, newspaper or transistor radio knew the storm was coming and when. Your unfounded, anti Republican diatribes are not only tiresome but untrue.
Larry – The internet, TV, newspaper and radio sources you cite were all sharing information with you collected by the Federal government.
–Brian, NCPR
NJ’s Gov. Christy seems to think Obama is doing a great job. But, that’s his impression not Larrys.
Thanks for the heads-up, Brian. Do you think nobody would have figured it out otherwise? There is a whole world out there that operates just fine without the Federal Government sticking their nose into everyone’s business (and their hands into everyone’s pockets).
Only a simpleton thinks Christie’s Sandy-inspired interaction with Obama amounts to an endorsement of his overall performance. Earlier in these comments I said I thought Obama did the right thing coming to NJ, even if it was his second choice.
Mervel: “If storms like Sandy become more normal as it looks like they will over the next 50 years”
Mervel. You are about 7 years out-of-date. Here is the 2005 doomsday prediction from climate warmers:
“the science is extremely clear now, that warmer oceans make the average hurricane stronger, not only makes the winds stronger, but dramatically increases the moisture from the oceans evaporating into the storm – thus magnifying its destructive power”
Here is the 2010 reality check:
“According to a new peer-reviewed research paper accepted to be published, only 69 tropical storms were observed globally during 2010, the fewest in almost 40-years of reliable records.”
When was the last “big” storm before this one? Katrina? 2005?
What makes this the new “normal”?
Larry – I’m guessing that you feel attacked in this thread. I don’t want it to sound like piling-on. I’m just trying to make a factual (as opposed to a political or ideological) point.
The short answer is yes, before the Federal government took on the effort of professionally monitoring and predicting weather in the US, storms like this one killed a lot more people.
The Galveston storm in 1900 — in a much less populated area — hit with very little warning and killed thousands.
It may be that there is a solution here whereby the private sector takes over this service and runs it and we don’t need a substantial Federal role. But we haven’t heard a clear plan for that kind of transition.
–Brian, NCPR
You are too funny Larry. LOL ;-) I’ll take it as a win. Bye.
The other point made in Brian Mann’s article, is how the Republicans intend to cut funding for EVERYTHING BUT THE MILITARY. I support the preservation of a strong military, but we have gone so far beyond , and at tremendous expense, as to approach the ridiculous. We indeed have the world’s strongest military, but we would have the strongest even if every nation on Earth banded together against us. This level of lunacy has not made us safer…it has enslaved us to the government and the military and it’s related industries. All of the social programs, all of the infrastructure projects, and all of the pollution and climate related projects together, (which get the blame for running up the tax bills that American’s pay), cost us less than this military burden.
Unless we solve THIS problem, we will never be able to afford to solve the others.
Brian,
Don’t waste your time trying to figure out how I feel or what I think. I’ll tell you. I object to your thesis that the Federal Government is the answer to everything and that people who think it should be reduced in size and effect are somehow out of touch with reality. There is most certainly a role for the Federal Government in many areas, but an over-reliance on a bureaucracy that specializes in wasteful spending and imposes national solutions on local events, is, in the opinion of many people (including myself) who are well-grounded in reality, a bad idea. I think the difference is one of focus: should events be directed and dictated from a national level or should they begin locally and expand outward, with assistance from progressively higher levels of government, as needed? The supercilious implication that a conservative viewpoint is divorced from reality is offensive and the idea that philosophy trumps experience is even worse. When applied from a distance it’s ridiculous.
Larry – Fair enough. I was trying to be polite and not contribute to a sense of piling on.
I don’t think my original point was supercilious or snarky. I think I raised valid factual questions about the conventional conservative wisdom of the day.
You don’t want Obama care? Fine. What should replace it? You don’t want FEMA? Fair enough. What fills its place? You don’t want government entitlement programs?
Legitimate position, but what fills those needs for vulnerable old and poor people?
So far, the conservative movement has tended to answer with two broad ideological arguments: a) The private sector will sort it out, and b) there isn’t really a problem — it’s the government’s fault.
My point was that Sandy raises real questions about what happens when government patently isn’t the problem. What then?
To be responsible, I think it’s fair to argue that Republicans running the government will need to answer that question.
–Brian, NCPR
This is a classic string. The right is dissing federal disaster funding and the left is dissing military spending. Just like we don’t have “13 colonies…” or whatever James’s comment was we have a population of over 300 million people who now live in a country that really doesn’t have any borders like we had 75 years ago. One that has global responsibilities related to our own defense. No other country is going to do that work for us. The president is correct we are not defending ourselves with muskets and using wagons. But he also should understand what else James said above:
“It is an incredibly complex society that is interdependent in ways the founders could not have imagined. It needs a government that deals with the way things are, not a glorified version of a much simpler past.”
That society requires a huge military investment to protect. Comparisons of the size and scope of other countries military’s to ours makes little sense in my opinion. Also the GOP is not anti-big government like some describe above. They just have different priorities.
Larry, my point, and I think it is quite accurate, is that relatively speaking the area hit by this storm has some very well designed and constructed buildings. Those cost money. The kind of money they don’t have in places like Indonesia and even other parts of the US. For example floods in the Midwest are far more destructive in low income areas. Also, insurance costs money.
Magical thinking is the result of wearing magical underwear.
Perhaps our troops will be safe if Romney is elected and he sends them into a war with Iran if he provides them with magical underwear.
If only he and all the Republicans would send their sons and daughters into the war wearing magical underwear.
It may simply be my interpretation, but I thought that the evacuation announcements took a more serious (almost demanding) tone. In the large part, it appears that those warnings were heeded. That must have contributed to the low death toll. Apparently people took the message seriously and opted not to try to ride it out.
Paul,
You couldn’t be more wrong on this. Money was no protection from this storm. Buildings of every description were swept away and crushed.
Larry, in response to your question about the use of federal dollars to encourage the building in flood and storm prone areas.
They work through federal flood insurance programs. You can’t buy private flood insurance in many of these areas. The free market has determined that the risk is simply to great, and thus private insurance companies refuse to offer any flood insurance at any price. Now as a homeowner-landowner you are still free to build your beach house, it is just not going to be insured against flooding, many rational people will say well in that case I won’t invest my money in building there, others however will still take the risk. However what actually happens is that the federal government steps in and says ok we will use taxpayers dollars to sell you flood insurance from the government, thus they encourage building in these areas by using our tax dollars. It is particularly ironic in that these are often multi-million dollar beach homes that are being re-built on the backs of those who could never hope to own a beach home or even go to a party at one.
The same could be said for offering direct assistance to re-build in areas that are risky, mountainsides etc. It’s fine if people are crazy enough to want to do that on their own land, but don’t ask the public to subsidize your risky bet.
Brian Mann says, “The short answer is yes, before the Federal government took on the effort of professionally monitoring and predicting weather in the US, storms like this one killed a lot more people.
The Galveston storm in 1900 — in a much less populated area — hit with very little warning and killed thousands.”
And like many other government functions, monitoring and predicting weather in the US was of no interest to the private sector – that’s why the government stepped in to provide it. If your answer to a problem is let the private sector handle it instead of the government – why haven’t they done it already? Almost every function of the government is a response to a need that was left unaddressed by the private sector or a problem created by free market abuses and excesses. Don’t get me wrong, the free market and private sector have their place in our economic world but it is foolish to think we can depend on them for public services or that they do not need oversight and regulation to prevent financial disasters.
Larry, I will try one last time then give up. As I said my point was not about this storm only it was comparing it to other strong hurricanes that have struck other areas. When a hurricane hits Haiti it kills many more people than it does when it hits NJ. The reason? The folks in NJ can afford to build much better homes. If they were crap there would be many more people dead and homes destroyed from this storm. Now for this next sentence I am not talking about this storm. Statistics prove that you are much more likely to be killed or injured in a storm if you are a lower income or poor person living in substandard housing. Now for this storm you may be right that well build homes were ripped apart as easily as poorly constructed homes. Or the other possibility is that if you can afford to live on the beach in NJ you probably don’t live in a poorly constructed home. Just a guess. It sounds like you know the area. Are there many low income people living on the beach in NJ. That is not the case on Long Island or in CT which I am more familiar with?
Federal tax dollars should not be used to re-build expensive beach homes that were without private insurance. It is about personal responsibility, I think that is what most conservatives feel very strongly about. Unless it is them begging to the federal government for a handout.
The private sector pays for everything the government does, including weather prediction.
If it is called a “barrier island” I don’t think it is a good idea to live on it.
Mervel’s last post is absolutely correct.
My experience?
I live on Fire Island
I was a Building Code Official
I hope nothing demolished in the flood zones are rebuilt
40% or less damaged, you can rebuild
No Fed Flood Insurance allowed on vacation homes, 2nd homes in flood zone
Paul, it can be fun, beautiful, untill the time comes to pay the fiddler.
I happen to feel if you can afford to build there, and have the desire, go ahead–at your own risk and cost.
I don’t like paying the band if i wasn’t at the dance.
I’m beginning to realize that the problem with the radical anti-government crowd is not just that they want to get rid of federal services (and have no clear ideas what to replace them with). No, this is just the symptom.
The real problem is that they are woefully ignorant of, or intentionally blind to, the things the federal government has, and is, doing for people… including themselves!
After all, if someone really thought that the federal government did nothing of value… then of course they are going to complain about how much it costs and want to get rid of it. That is a perfectly reasonable opinion to have. The problem with it, however, is that thinking that the feds really do nothing of value is utterly unreasonable.
Suggesting that the feds did not play a huge role in reducing the impact of this disaster, and will play a huge role in recovering from it, is so contrary to reality and the obvious facts of the matter that part of me thinks we should be laughing at and ignoring these types of statements… not debating them.