As Ida Flooding Kills at Least 29 in Northeast, Biden Uses Disasters to Promote Spending

RonJ

4 years ago

1972. Hurricane Agnes. It was the heaviest downpour i ever saw in my upstate New York home town. It was much cooler in 1972. No global warming hysteria back then.

http://weather.gov. “This
torrential rain followed the abnormally wet May weather in the Middle
Atlantic States and set the stage for the subsequent major flooding.The
record-breaking floods occurred in the Middle Atlantic States in late
June and early July 1972. Many streams in the affected area experienced peak discharges several times the previous maxima of record.” Downtown Corning, including the Corning Glass Works, was flooded, as well as Elmira, NY.

“The
widespread flooding from this storm caused Agnes to be called the most
destructive hurricane in United States history, claiming 117 lives and
causing damage estimated at $3.1 billion in 12 States. Damage was
particularly highin New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.“

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Casual_Observer2020

4 years ago

Gotta spend money to rebuild stuff.

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Curious-Cat

4 years ago

Well, Joe was our senator in Delaware for just about forever (he ran for the Senate before he was old enough to legally serve) and I did notice over that time he never met a dollar he didn’t want to spend. I used to call him the bionic mouth; he never shut up. But he was also the friendliest, kindest human being you’d ever want to meet.

Regarding his big bucks bill to beef up our infrastructure, i don’t recall anyone objecting to Eisenhower’s plan to build an interstate highway system. I wonder why that was.

Meanwhile, as we spend trillions playing the world’s premier armed force to urge everyone to form a democracy (whether they want to or not), China is spending trillions building new infrastructure. In 40 years it has gone from a 3rd world shithole country where the most common form of transportation was walking or the bicycle, to the world’s 2nd largest economy with the capability of putting a lander on Mars. While we point fingers, choose “freedom” over science and common sense, and pretend Trump is still president, they are continuing to prosper. Could it be we need a new national strategy?

It makes me wonder if, in the long run, democracy will continue to be a viable form of government, especially as the nature of our problems becomes increasingly complex. “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.” – Marcus Aurelius

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ColoradoAccountant

4 years ago

Reply to Curious-Cat

Regarding why Eisenhower built the highway system? Because he had just fought an enemy who could move their troops from the eastern front to the western front liceity split, then back again. Autobahn and he wanted one too.

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Casual_Observer2020

4 years ago

Reply to Curious-Cat

China uses our electronic money to spend. It doesnt take a genius to realize we can do that too. The Fed will monetize whatever we need to spend. Just like Chinese central bank. This isnt going to work if we try to play by the old rules of limited spending and small government.

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Captain Ahab

4 years ago

I could be cynical and say this is the difference between southern and northern states, but I won’t. That said, a friend in New Orleans reported difficult conditions from no electricity. People are driving 45 miles to find food and gas. Her biggest worry is looters.

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thimk

4 years ago

Reply to Captain Ahab

where’s fema/national guard when you need them . another 3 trill will help

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StukiMoi

4 years ago

In the epicenter of this undifferentiated financialized dystopian sh-hole, mere people drowning is, of course, a cheap price to pay; for letting the child-brains making up all of influential New York continue in their merry illusion that wall fungi in “homes” somehow creates wealth. By the same old enforcement of entirely artificial and arbitrary scarcity: Preventing people from living somewhere other than in basements, like rats.

It’s America in the FedAge. We fall out of the sky and drown here. And live off of wealth produced by wall fungi. That’s what we do. It’s all we know how to.

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Casual_Observer2020

4 years ago

Reply to StukiMoi

You think it’s different anywhere else ?

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StukiMoi

4 years ago

Reply to Casual_Observer2020

It was. And could be.

Banning people from growing food, simply to ensure a few connected idiots who are arbitrarily allowed to get to charge usury prices while the rest starve, is pretty darned sad any way you look at it. Yet that is exactly, 100%, full stop, without exception; what American “leadership” has degenerated into. Good thing more civilized people seem to have no problems slapping the monkeys around militarily. Too bad those guys are so far away.

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CristiC

4 years ago

I wrote this … well… rant in another topic as a reply to a self-identified “scientist”. It is about the topic of spending, more spending and what I call hypocrisy of the elite rulers, either politicians, or scientists.

Let’s start from this piece of news:

“Himalayas visible for first time in 30 years as pollution levels in India drop

7 apr. 2020 — Now some residents in northern India say they can see the snow-capped … Himalaya mountains can be seen from Jalandhar since pollution …”

You can find the story on the net. But the global lockdowns (in place in most of the Europe and in some of the US) caused the main economies of the planet to go into minimum essentials-only consumption. And this is what cleared the air and reduced the pollution. Let it be clear, nobody starved in Europe or US. People still bought all the essentials, food, water, replacement parts if something broke. But no, they did not buy cars, phones, TVs, they did not travel, they did not shop for pleasure. So, they did not spend what is called discretionary spending.

The net results are: pollution in Europe, India and pretty much everywhere dropped significantly. In many large cities the air quality improved so much that it was acclaimed as “mountain quality air”. The downside? The real GDP dropped to about -20-30% on annualized basis.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/11/positively-alpine-disbelief-air-pollution-falls-lockdown-coronavirus

If the GDP would fall -20% in order to save the planet, would there be any money left for the government to finance the science? Would the scientist be starved and be forced to work on more productive sectors? Are the scientists from today financed from the money produced from taxing the consumption that actually depletes/kills the planet? Are they in any moral position to criticize the society for not being green enough? People, wake up…. we have seen the alternatives. Go minimally, drop the pollution but also kill the buoyant economy that pays jobs for the scientists. Or just continue as we are, spending like crazy, stimulating the consumption like crazy as otherwise the whole societal mechanism would fall to pieces. Who would finance the army if GDP would be -20%? Who would finance the retirees? Who would pay for NASA and other non-product related scientists?

What is my point? Let’s face it. We can only do micro-steps to move the society to less polluting economy but let’s also stop being hypocrites…. we shall not live to see it in action. This transition would take many, many decades, more than a century. Don’t you like the current very expensive steel that cause high inflation? Wait until you buy a “green” steel, produced ecologically…..

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Captain Ahab

4 years ago

Reply to CristiC

How about you get yourself and your family sterilized, because the ultimate cause of pollution is too many people.

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CristiC

4 years ago

Reply to Captain Ahab

So, in other words, you advocate for zero, or one child policy. This is not a policy that Western world can impose. Just look at China which imposed such policy in the last 30 – 40 years only to fall behind the neighbor India. More people means more manufacturing capabilities and more GDP growth. Thus, you can either dream of imposing such policy at global level (good luck with that, you will have better chances to kill your offspring and save the planet), or you can start real wars to kill 10-20% of the population, or get real and admit that no individual country/continent will self mutilate itself, allowing other regions to prosper and get more populous .

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Captain Ahab

4 years ago

Reply to CristiC

For liberals and progressives, zero children. Since liberals are most worried about climate change, it’s logical that they contribute the most to stopping it. However, it is well known that liberals have a tendency to hypocrisy–‘I know what’s good for you better than you do’ and ‘what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.’

The greatest population growth tends to occur with groups least capable of providing for their offspring. If it continues, we end up with idiocracy. Personally, I’m tired of paying taxes to support congenital welfare recipients. You want welfare, get sterilized.

As for China falling ‘behind the neighbor India’,what metric are you using?

However, you are right in pointing out that no country will ‘self-mutilate itself, allowing other regions to prosper’. Even with micro-steps, it applies at the margin. I suspect this means green technology, solar, etc will never achieve a less-polluting economy.

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Eddie_T

4 years ago

I called my daughter in Queens at 7 am and woke her up when I got to work and saw the news…No emergency for their immediate area, thank goodness. Not what I was expecting to read this morning.

On Biden….they never let a crisis go to waste.

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TexasTim65

4 years ago

Reply to Eddie_T

Both sides never let a crisis go to waste.

Sadly Biden is literally using anything and everything now as a reason he needs to spend 3.5 trillion dollars on top of the 1 trillion he’s about to spend on Infrastructure (which in theory would be handling this very problem) and don’t forget the trillion or so spent on Covid relief by himself and Trump.

If he ever gets to spend this 3.5 trillion he will undoubtedly go down as the worst president ever for the amount of pure waste spending (he wants to spend more in 1 year than Obama did in 8).

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Casual_Observer2020

4 years ago

Reply to TexasTim65

I think America has been under investing in infrastructure for decades thinking somehow that lesser infrastructure will produce a more productive economy. Look at what China and others are doing on infrastructure over the last 20 years.

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Doug78

4 years ago

Reply to Eddie_T

We called our daughter in Brooklyn. Someone had left the door to the roof open. She saw it fortunately and got her husband up there to close the door before too much damage was done. She said it was like a waterfall. Other than than that no problems because they are on high ground.

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conservativeprof

4 years ago

Pathetic response and comments from Biden. All the EVs, solar panels, and wind turbines will not change the weather. However, they will dramatically increase energy prices and decrease grid reliability. The storm was coming. Why did not NYC and other areas prepare better? Instead of accepting responsibility for poor preparation, Democrats can only blame others and use the storm as justification for even more explosive growth in government spending.

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TexasTim65

4 years ago

Reply to conservativeprof

Yup, it’s all about the push for 3.5 trillion.

– Lots of hurricanes and floods? It’s climate change and we need to spend 3.5 trillion to stop it.

– Lots of droughts and fires? It’s climate change and we need to spend 3.5 trillion to stop it.

– No discernible climate change weather effects? We need to spend 3.5 trillion to keep it that way.

Biden is what the old west referred to as ‘a rain maker’. Whatever is happening, he needs money to fix it (if you don’t like how things are) or money to keep the the same (if you do like how it is).

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Captain Ahab

4 years ago

Reply to TexasTim65

Climate change is an interesting hypothesis. How, exactly, do you test the hypothesis when the weather changes? What ever happened to the global warming hypothesis?

From a propaganda point of view, however, climate change is an easy sell. Any weather event is ‘proof’ the climate is changing. Keeping in mind that climate science is highly politicized, and scientists are very interested in getting grants (because without grants there is no publication, or promotion), I have no doubt that a lot of climate research is questionable.

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Doug78

4 years ago

Reply to TexasTim65

The success of a rain dance depends a lot upon timing.

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Barpi

4 years ago

Hey Mish, perhaps if NY state was wearing a huge cloth face mask the water would not get through?

Mish has done expert analysis that loose woven breathable cotton stops microscopic water droplets

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Captain Ahab

4 years ago

Reply to Barpi

Spinnaker cloth (nylon) like hot-air-balloon cloth is so tightly woven air doesn’t get through, so microscopic water droplets definitely won’t get through. So there’s your solution. Skip the face mask! Instead, float hot-air balloons holding up big spinnakers over NY. It would be ‘pretty’, too.

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As Ida Flooding Kills at Least 29 in Northeast, Biden Uses Disasters to Promote Spending

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