A Rant

Real Life™ is the curse of the blogging class, and I have been busy lately dealing with some things for my Mother. She would take care of them, but it avoids a lot of paperwork if I do it, as she doesn’t ‘suffer fools lightly’, and that cane is probably considered a blunt instrument.

I’ve been popping in to update the storms and feed the cats, but haven’t been able to stay as current as I prefer to on what is going on, so much of what follows is old news.

Before they could finish the bailing from Irene, the remnants of Lee decided to check out the Appalachian Trail resulting in a hundred-year flood of Susquehanna River system. They are talking about flooding on the Chenago,, which is mind-boggling to me – you have to work at it to get wet in the Chenago. There is normally barely enough water in it to float a rubber duck, and it is so old has carved a valley to contain it. [OK, so a glacier did the heavy work, and the ‘river’ just follows the groove, but I can’t imagine it leaving its banks.]

The dry air from the Texas drought, prevented Lee from dumping all that water where it would have done some good and been welcome. The storm tried, but all that got through was the wind field, and that helped to fuel the deadly wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes.

The voters have a chance to see the ‘Perry government’ in action in response to this emergency. For example:

KVUE tells us that: “State funding for volunteer fire departments is taking a big hit. It is going from $30 million to $7 million. Those departments are already facing financial strains.”

McClatchy chimes in with:: “The Legislature cut the agency’s funding this year to $83 million from $117 million, according to Robby DeWitt, the forest service’s associate finance director.”

Not exactly world-class planning when you are facing a multi-year drought, and have already had huge wildfires.

CBS notes that Frustration grows for Texas fire evacuees. Some people wonder where FEMA is. Probably taking care of the dozen other natural disasters from this year that resulted in more than a billion dollars in damage each. Given that the paperwork for the disaster declaration didn’t get to FEMA until Friday, it might take them a day or so to respond.

Of course, the House Republicans led by Cantor will use the disasters as hostages and stall the money. They plan as well as Perry does.

Oh, yes, Zero gave a speech this week. The CNN/Money headline sums up my reaction: Obama’s 17 tax breaks for small business: Big whoop!

Useless, the man is just useless. He continues the policies that got us into this mess and ignores the proven way out. It really doesn’t make any difference, because the Republicans in the House have no intention of doing anything that will improve the economy, and frankly, what was proposed won’t do much, even if it was passed.

WASF