>Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who has instituted a new requirement that she personally approve expenses over $100,000, did not renew the contracts until Thursday, five days after the contracts expired.
Your classic manager who feels they are so important that hey HAVE TO be involved in X,Y,Z but they are not a responsible enough person to actually do the job.
FEMA has "Emergency" in the name. Traditionally, it's supposed to come in when the normal rescue infrastructure has failed, due to earthquake, weather, etc. You're not optimizing for cost here. You're optimizing for reliable emergency management -- and that's going to cost money.
If you wanted a different agency, like one that prioritized "recovery after 6 months", well, it would help to inform the nation that FEMA is no longer the nationwide emergency management agency. It's up to the local and state governments.
And Texas voters overwhelmingly voted for politicians who caused this and still make excuses for these same politicians. I am tired of caring for people who vote for people that harm them.
I thought that there was a bar somewhere, a line that would not be crossed, but there isn't, it's just straight up identity politics, or owning the libs, whatever you want to call it.
There has always been a place for emergency management. Just ask Kansas about tornados in the 1960s/70s before the rise of doppler radar. And even after in 2007, there was Greensburg, KS.
We can and probably should have arguments about the effective cost of government programs. But Kerr County residents fought hard to not pay $20 per resident (assuming population of 53,000) for a $1M flood warning system. So this is the outcome. And it will cost Kerr County way more than $1M in cleanup.
Please remember to take the statements posters make in the best possible light.
My interpretation of such is that they're sick of voters who expect a double standard. Don't do something ''I'' don't like when it helps other people, but when ''I'' need help godspeed.
The best possible light is that he cares about the lives of the little girls and many others that Trump and Musk and Noem and DOGE killed more than owning the libs and canceling NOAA.
The people deserving of compassion and sympathy are dead. The people who killed them are busy explaining why despite the repeated warnings and tax payer funding, this actually wasn't their fault.
The town that was flooded rejected _free funds_ from the federal government during Covid because they were choking on a red pill of conspiranoia. Destiny (the streamer) did a recent streaming session where he watched the video of the town feedback regarding accepting / rejecting federal government funds from the American Recovery Act (for sirens and standardized first responder comms systems). The short version of the plot is the people were propagandized to distrust the Biden Admin, so they rejected the free upgrades. The voters pressured the town council (one was an actual threat of violence, followed by threats of “consequences”) if the town council accepted the federal funds.
There are consequences to voters and representatives who no longer believe in our shared objective reality.
I don’t blame the little girls, but with freedom comes responsibility. Their parents were responsible for choosing the camp they went to. The camp owner and staff made the risk evaluations of allowing them to sleep in a flood plain during a storm. The local town voted for their representatives and those representatives rejected federal funds which would have given them a chance to survive without cell coverage.
Ultimately your parent comment wasn’t necessarily assigning individual blame. In a democratic republic, the voters / citizens / residents (in aggregate) are ultimately responsible for the actions that elected representatives take in their name.
> voters and representatives who no longer believe in our shared objective reality.
This hits the nail on the head. Before you talk to someone, there's no telling what planet they're going to be on. Maybe you can talk about the weather. Maybe they think the Democrats control the weather with space lasers. There's just no telling.
There is only one thing that might help: making it clear that this is going to keep happening. There are a lot of people who could help, but haven't in the past. If a small fraction of them realize that this is a problem that they can help fix with very little effort, then maybe it might get better.
Having said that, here's the really unhelpful part: I don't think this will work, either. I believe that the overwhelming majority of people vote the same every time, including choosing not to vote. The only thing that changes is a microscopic minority, and they choose randomly. I believe that if we re-ran the 2024 election again right now, the result would be identical.
I point that out only to say the my original comment is me being optimistic. I actually think it's even worse.
Yeah see you’re just putting negativity into the world.
I come here for intellectual curiosity. I want to hear new ideas. You’re not saying anything new. You’re leaving the social media equivalent of dog turds on the sidewalk. Please be a better neighbor.
So exactly what new ideas do you suggest that will make MAGA love minorities, immigrants, non straight people, and stop believing that a magical being in the sky is not going to bring hellfire and damnation down because “the gays are allowed to married”
Bad things are naturally negative. People died, and that sucks and has actively made the world a worse place. We must approach this with truth and realism.
I think the political spectrum is dangerous because people expect the Paradox of Tolerance and similar correlations to silence the left in places where the right will happily speak.
I once worked for a company that had a founder who was cancelling all contracts on a yearly basis, including renting the office. They were proud of cutting costs that way. After two times, the property owner said, "Great! I have a company that asked me about the space and is willing to pay much more" and the company of several hundred people had to move on very short notice.
Yes, it was very rich, but it did disrupt operations a lot and the new space wasn't as nice - we moved from team offices to an open layout, with my boss praising the open layout - we then found out he would get a private office.
I call people like this "octopuses". They need to have their tentacles everywhere, need to be involved in everything, no matter how little they're needed.
Your classic manager who feels they are so important that hey HAVE TO be involved in X,Y,Z but they are not a responsible enough person to actually do the job.