Posted on 06/02/2015 2:32:06 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
As extreme weather marked by tornadoes and flooding continues to sweep across Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has requested – and President Obama has granted – federal help.
I don’t begrudge Texas billions of dollars in disaster relief. After all, we’re all part of America. When some of us are in need, we all have a duty to respond.
But the flow of federal money poses a bit of awkwardness for the Lone Star State.
After all, just over a month ago hundreds of Texans decided that a pending Navy Seal/Green Beret joint training exercise was really an excuse to take over the state and impose martial law. And they claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency was erecting prison camps, readying Walmart stores as processing centers for political prisoners.
There are nut cases everywhere, but Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott added to that particular outpouring of paranoia by ordering the Texas State Guard to monitor the military exercise. “It is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed upon,” he said. In other words, he’d protect Texans from this federal plot.
Now, Abbott wants federal money. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency is gearing up for a major role in the cleanup – including places like Bastrop, Texas, where the Bastrop State Park dam failed – and where, just five weeks ago, a U.S. Army colonel trying to explain the pending military exercise was shouted down by hundreds of self-described patriots shouting “liar!”
Texans dislike the federal government even more than most other Americans do. According to a February poll conducted by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, only 23 percent of Texans view the federal government favorably, while 57 percent view it unfavorably, including more than a third who hold a “very unfavorable” view.
Texas dislikes the federal government so much that eight of its congressional representatives, along with Senator Ted Cruz, opposed disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy – adding to the awkwardness of their lobbying for the federal relief now heading Texas’s way.
Yet even before the current floods, Texas had received more disaster relief than any other state, according to a study by the Center for American Progress. That’s not simply because the state is so large. It’s also because Texas is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather – tornadoes on the plains, hurricanes in the Gulf, flooding across its middle and south.
Given this, you might also think Texas would take climate change especially seriously. But here again, there’s cognitive dissonance between what the state needs and how its officials act.
Among Texas’s infamous climate-change deniers is Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, who dismissed last year’s report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as “more political than scientific,“ and the White House report on the urgency of addressing climate change as designed “to frighten Americans.” Smith is still at it. His committee just slashed by more than 20 percent NASA’s spending on Earth science, which includes climate change.
It’s of course possible that Texas’s current record rainfalls – the National Weather Service reports that the downpour in May alone was enough to put the entire state under eight inches of water – has nothing to do with the kind of extreme weather we’re witnessing elsewhere in the nation, such as the West’s current drought, the North’s record winter snowfall, and flooding elsewhere.
But you’d have to be nuts not to be at least curious about such a connection, and its relationship to the carbon dioxide humans have been spewing into the atmosphere.
Consider also the consequences for the public’s health. Several deaths in Texas have been linked to the extreme weather. Many Texans have been injured by it, directly or indirectly. Poor residents are in particular peril because they live in areas prone to flooding or in flimsy houses and trailers that can be washed or blown away.
What’s Texas’s response? Texas officials continue to turn down federal funds to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, thereby denying insurance to more than 1 million people and preventing the state from receiving an estimated $100 billion in federal cash over the next decade.
I don’t want to pick on Texas. Its officials are not alone in hating the federal government, denying climate change, and refusing to insure its poor.
And I certainly don’t want to suggest all Texans are implicated. Obviously, many thoughtful and reasonable people reside there.
Yet Texans have elected people who seem not to have a clue. Indeed, Texas has done more in recent years to institutionalize irrationality than almost anywhere else in America – thereby imposing a huge burden on its citizens.
How many natural disasters will it take for the Lone Star State to wake up to the disaster of its elected officials?
The hatred in this vile little man is patently palpable.
"President Barack Obama is less than stalwart in the fight against ISIS and doesn’t seem overly concerned about Vladimir Putin’s predation in Ukraine or China’s aggression in the South China Sea. It is the fight against climate change, an allegedly dire threat to the nation’s security, that brings out his inner Churchill.
In remarks at the Coast Guard Academy commencement, Obama pledged his undying hostility to climate change and his determination to fight it on the beaches and in the fields. He called it “one of the most severe threats” we face and “an immediate risk to our national security.” President Obama is to climate change what Cato the Elder was to Carthage.
He hailed the Coast Guard for building more fuel-efficient cutters, and the Marines for deploying with portable solar panels. It was one of the most insipid calls to arms ever made by an American commander-in-chief, and there is unlikely to be much competition until President Elizabeth Warren rallies the U.S. Navy against income inequality....."
Isn’t Robert Reich ‘the third of his name’?
As in The Third Reich.
His contempt for middle America is apparent - all us little people - stupid people, who live in fly over country, just don’t “get it.”
Well, I’m here to say we “get it,” and we reject it.
>>But you’d have to be nuts not to be at least curious about such a connection, and its relationship to the carbon dioxide humans have been spewing into the atmosphere.
<<
Since to date here is no such scientific link, you’d have to be nuts to conclude the desired effect has occurred.
Democrat Socialists hate Texas because we don’t bow to their wet dreams of an all powerful federal government. Texans will recover thanks to its people, with or without the help of ugly Democrats.
Go back to the Lollipop Guild Robert.
God Bless Texas
Yes!
This ultra lib makes it sound like none of the money held by the federal govt comes from Texas.
The left continues to try to get the uninformed to believe the federal govt creates money.
It creates nothing, but absorbs much of what others work hard to get.
Just out of curiosity, will Texas politely decline the $$$ flowing from DC?
Probably when we stop the flow To DC.
What business is it of Reich’s what Texas officials do?
Is he a registered voter in Texas? No? Then STFU, Robert.
This seems to be the liberal meme of the week, so I'll ask -- seriously:
The opposition to the Hurricane Sandy relief for the Northeast was due to all of the pork in the bill that wasn't actually "hurricane relief". It was loaded with spending that was unrelated to the disaster.
How much of the disaster relief for Texas is unrelated to the damage incurred in the past few months?
But you’d have to be nuts not to be at least curious about such a connection, and its relationship to the carbon dioxide humans have been spewing into the atmosphere.
Texas was in a drought for 3-4 years, and we were told it was due to man-induced climate change. Then, the drought ended, and now the left is claiming it is caused by man-induced climate change.
Would you (collectively) make up your minds? Is it one, or the other?
This cycle has repeated over and over, back as long as records have been kept. If you ask an honest meteorologist, he will tell you it's the result of an oscillation in global weather patterns that occurs independently of any thing man does.
“Texas dislikes the federal government so much that eight of its congressional representatives, along with Senator Ted Cruz, opposed disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy – adding to the awkwardness of their lobbying for the federal relief now heading Texas’s way.”
He disregards the that Hurricane Sandy was not a significant natural disaster, but rather just a minor storm, not unlike the thunderstorms Texas sees every spring.
Moreover, Hurricane Sandy serverd as an Obama 2012 Campaign Rally and only really served to entice people to vote for Obama.
Yet even before the current floods, Texas had received more disaster relief than any other state, according to a study by the Center for American Progress. That’s not simply because the state is so large. It’s also because Texas is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather – tornadoes on the plains, hurricanes in the Gulf, flooding across its middle and south.
Texas cannot help it if it has the most tornados and floods. However, even without expierencing an extreme drought, major flash flood, major hurricane or biker mass murder at Waco’s Twin Peaks, Texas is more vital to the survival of the United States than New Jersey or Long Island.
Just out of curiosity, will Texas politely decline the $$$ flowing from DC?
***************
Why not try and get some of the money they sent the feds back?
Bet they’ll never zero the transfers.
All these GREEN energy “improvements” cost more, are less dependable and I will venture to say, have less power.
Such a small man.....
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