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The time our politicians spend planning for disaster
Michael Swickard
This last week was interesting because I asked in my previous column how government should plan for the threat of a terrorist nuclear explosion on American soil. Some readers denied a terrorist nuclear attack is possible. No explanation; just said it is not possible. They declared it a waste of government time and money to prepare for such a threat.
Waste of time?
That is all that governments have – time. How the Legislature spends its time says much about its priorities and our future.
An example is the current legislative session in Santa Fe, which opened a little more than a week ago and will close after 30 days at noon. The time will pass and then everyone goes home. They will get lots done that we citizens will either not like or feel is a waste of time.
Besides preparing for disasters, what New Mexico needs is more jobs. Santa Fe likes to create more jobs by hiring more state workers, but that does not increase New Mexico’s wealth. The only way to grow more jobs in our state is for state government to provide the rules and regulations that increase productivity in the private sector.
The Legislature must improve the capitalistic landscape since it can only spend more money when the capitalistic landscape produces more money. You cannot stand in a bucket and lift it off of the ground by tugging on the handle.
How should we view it when our elected leaders spend time on things for which we citizens have no priority? Somehow we must impress upon our leaders what is important to us and try to help them see what we citizens want.
How should our government spend its time?
Back to preparing for a terrorist nuclear bomb in an American city. Two questions: First, how do these naysayers know terrorists could not blow up El Paso with a nuclear bomb? This is an issue since Las Cruces would experience nuclear fallout and the loss of government services in the crisis.
Second, how should our government spend its time if not protecting citizens from outrages and disasters? I brought up the fact that New Orleans had 40 years to plan for Hurricane Katrina but not the will to do so. It was not if the town was going to be devastated, only when.
While there should be, there is no wall of shame in New Orleans for the names of every politician in Louisiana who had all of those years to prepare New Orleans for a Category Five Hurricane and did not. In fact, they even took money set aside to shore up vulnerabilities from a storm surge moving through Lake Pontchartrain, which is exactly what breached the levees.
They used the millions of dollars set aside to deal with this vulnerability in other projects unrelated to disaster preparedness because environmentalists objected to the Lake Pontchartrain storm surge plan.
Likewise, California is just one major magnitude nine or larger earthquake away from having total devastation. The infrequency of several hundred years between these catastrophic events means a number of generations will never face that moment of extreme devastation. But some will.
Here in New Mexico there are a number of disasters locally and statewide just waiting to happen, and our political leaders are fighting over things like transparency in government as if that is the end-all and be-all. Yes, I would like the politicians to be less scummy, but I would tolerate any of them and their naked power and money grab if in the middle of lining their pockets they would make sure the state is truly ready to withstand a terrorist nuclear attack and all other kinds of disasters.
Suffering equally?
The most disturbing response to last week’s column was people who said that no disaster planning and preparation should take place so that each person, regardless of wealth, status or privilege, would suffer equally. Those people were more interested in the social justice issue so that no one suffered less than their neighbor.
This notion of social justice has been around a long time. I remember when I was in high school and got caught chewing gum in class teachers would say that I should have brought enough gum for everyone in class. I brought enough one time to test them and they really did not mean what they said. No one got to chew gum. So if I chew gum during a disaster, must I have enough gum stored so that everyone gets some?
What do we do with citizens who prepare for disaster while other citizens decide to not prepare and hope the government takes care of them? How to we arbitrate that they will be suffering due to their lack of planning and preparation. Should the rule be that if you prepare you must share what you have with those who do not? Any answer to that question is better than no one even thinking about it.
Plan however you wish for disaster. If you are wrong you can likely reabsorb your investment. But if I am right and there is a big event and you are standing outside my house hungry, thirsty and covered with nuclear fallout, I will not remind you that you were warned. To the limit of my ability I will even try to help.
I really do hope I am wrong about the danger of a terrorist exploding a nuclear bomb in our country.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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“The only way to grow more jobs in our state is for state government to provide the rules and regulations that increase productivity in the private sector.”
This is called supply side economics and has been proven not to work. We can produce and be as efficient as all get out but if there is no money to buy then we are no better off. We have had excessive deregulation since Reagan and it has not created a stable or secure economy. We need to try demand side tactics to get this economy going. Hiring gov. workers is the best plan especially in the short term because only the gov. and Wall St. has any money to spend. Wall St. is investing in other countries so that only leaves the gov. to create market demand by creating jobs right now. Jobs pay people money so they can buy from business. After awhile business can start hiring again.
There is no way that El Paso is going to get nuked by Terrorists. The Cartels would not allow some Al Qaida to get to the border because nuking the port of entry for drugs would be bad for business. I suspect that given the bad-a$$es just across our border that any Jihadist would not have the huevos to make a run through Juarez suicidal or not. I don’t see Al Qaida attempting to pass through a red hot Drug War to get to us.
The best disaster plan for this state would be for us to start making and growing our own stuff. We need to defy multi-national corporations by saving seed and producing our own goods here. Produce local, buy local, vote with your dollars.
As far as disasters go, this state is vulnerable to drought, pandemic, national destabilization, quake and environmental degradation. We also have a pretty hot war just one hour’s drive away.
Dr. J – my column really just asks: should we as a community be talking about this?
As to a terror threat… “Well, punk,” snarls Dirty Harry as he sights down the barrel of his .44 mag that is either empty or has one shot left, “Do ya feel lucky?”
Well Dr. Swickard, like buying insurance against a highly improbable, but not impossible, catastrophic event, I would have to know what it would cost me to do this exercise. If it were a few thou and cheap, heck yah, if it costs taxpayers tens or hundreds of millions, no way. Simple risk/reward analysis using conditional probabilities on costs and benefits. And of course since this is our tax money spent by our government, an additional analysis of the opportunity cost of doing this vs. doling other higher priority things would be in order.
Dr. J – unless you are a member of the planning group for Al Qaeda you do not know? Further, you are using your Western intellect to try to think like the Near East thinkers in Al Qaeda. I am not saying what they will or will not do because I do not know. Here is what I do know: there are no plans to deal with such a terrorist attack in our area. Are you willing to bet the lives of perhaps a million innocent victims including yourself and your loved ones that you **KNOW** what Al Qaeda will do?
Dr. Swickard, do you really think Al Qaeda is interested in bombing El Paso??? Poppycock. Al Qaeda wants to destroy something that gets on the international news and cameras are rolling as it happens with huge casualties. That is why they chose NYC for 9/11. The whole country and world thinks NYC is the center of America’s media, business, and cultural universe. I don ‘t but everybody in NYC does. It is foolishness to think NM, or even Arizona would be a target of some crazed nuclear bomber. I could easily see LA, Chicago, and NYC, but not around our fair area. Actually London or Tokyo would be great targets due to the population density, but ‘Cruces? And then let’s look at your other disasters. Hurricanes, Cat 5? Nope, not in our backyard. How about earthquakes? The Rio Grande Rift is a seismically active area, but not a major plate boundry like CA. or Haiti. Sorry, not scary or probable either. How about a tsunami? Nope. Or a super sized tornado? Maybe, but not too probable either. How about floods, plagues, and pestilence, 40 days and 40 nights kind of real Old Testiment disasters? Nah, not too probable or scary either. So what are we left with? The only thing that mght get me interested is a giant volcanic explosion. There have been numerous ones around our state, but these have many, many warning signs long before they happen, and there are none now. I agree it would be fine for our legislators and government officials to use time to plan for all these things. I would keep them busy and keep them out of my wallet and personal choices and freedoms. That’s OK, just no spending of my money on such foolishness.