The world is depressing
There are many ways in which I do think the world does get better and that my country does get better, but there are also so many ways in which I see it getting worse.
Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult (his title, not mine), and I suppose that's why I know various people who used to identify as Republican or used to grudgingly settle for Republican as the best fit between the major parties that now do not. I really have wondered how bad they used to be when I wasn't paying attention, but all signs point to the idea that I wasn't that badly mislead, and they really have become a party that stands for something quite different than they used to and than they claim to. Not that Democrats are good, but at least they don't spend as much time actively working to destroy the country and the economy for most of the people in it.
Rick Perry slashed funding for volunteer fire departments by 75%. He claims you can't plan for the sorts of wild fires happening in Texas. There was a record drought going on. Anyone who can't foresee the risk of serious fire during severe drought years is clearly incompetent to manage such protections. Yes, you can't know whether or not it will happen, but you very much can know it's a risk. And while you may not be able to plan your disaster spending in advance, one thing you can do is not cut spending to programs that deal with disasters that are likely to happen in the near future. I suppose the political upside of this is that you get to claim that you reduced spending at one point in time, and then later when you pay for the inevitable fires afterward, you are accounting it separately. And, of course, paying to deal with the fires will be politically popular, everyone recognizes it has to be done. So, you fool people into thinking you saved money when you didn't; you just irresponsibly didn't budget for it in advance. It's like a household that "saves" money by getting rid of its emergency budget when writing up its spending plan. Look, I saved all this money by assuming I wouldn't run into any unexpected household or medical expenses! And then when they do come up, you pay for them anyway without having taken them into consideration. Brilliant idea!
And it'll work, until the GOP gets enough of its way that it starts seriously cutting disaster programs to the point that we can't respond.
I hope Texas is mostly alright. I'm glad lots of people did evacuate, and I hope they assisted people who weren't able to evacuate themselves. I haven't read articles, but I worry that they didn't, since it seems that it's normal during emergencies to not help people who can't evacuate on their own to evacuate - the poor, the disabled, the elderly, people in prisons. I really hope they did evacuate them. There are fires burning.
Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult (his title, not mine), and I suppose that's why I know various people who used to identify as Republican or used to grudgingly settle for Republican as the best fit between the major parties that now do not. I really have wondered how bad they used to be when I wasn't paying attention, but all signs point to the idea that I wasn't that badly mislead, and they really have become a party that stands for something quite different than they used to and than they claim to. Not that Democrats are good, but at least they don't spend as much time actively working to destroy the country and the economy for most of the people in it.
Rick Perry slashed funding for volunteer fire departments by 75%. He claims you can't plan for the sorts of wild fires happening in Texas. There was a record drought going on. Anyone who can't foresee the risk of serious fire during severe drought years is clearly incompetent to manage such protections. Yes, you can't know whether or not it will happen, but you very much can know it's a risk. And while you may not be able to plan your disaster spending in advance, one thing you can do is not cut spending to programs that deal with disasters that are likely to happen in the near future. I suppose the political upside of this is that you get to claim that you reduced spending at one point in time, and then later when you pay for the inevitable fires afterward, you are accounting it separately. And, of course, paying to deal with the fires will be politically popular, everyone recognizes it has to be done. So, you fool people into thinking you saved money when you didn't; you just irresponsibly didn't budget for it in advance. It's like a household that "saves" money by getting rid of its emergency budget when writing up its spending plan. Look, I saved all this money by assuming I wouldn't run into any unexpected household or medical expenses! And then when they do come up, you pay for them anyway without having taken them into consideration. Brilliant idea!
And it'll work, until the GOP gets enough of its way that it starts seriously cutting disaster programs to the point that we can't respond.
I hope Texas is mostly alright. I'm glad lots of people did evacuate, and I hope they assisted people who weren't able to evacuate themselves. I haven't read articles, but I worry that they didn't, since it seems that it's normal during emergencies to not help people who can't evacuate on their own to evacuate - the poor, the disabled, the elderly, people in prisons. I really hope they did evacuate them. There are fires burning.