I hope you can read this article in the Miami Herald. Might be behind a paywall. It's a good look at what reality is like today in Florida.
One homeowner who has now been flooded three times said he is selling his home and moving. Another guy who's been flooded twice declared that he wasn't going to "give up paradise for a little bad weather."
It's insanity.
Part of my struggle with the cognitive dissonance that is the normal state of mind in Florida is due to my career in the navy.
When you're out at sea and there's a catastrophic event, there's no place to run. You fight to save the ship. The navy learned a lot from accidental fires and disasters, as well as combat or near-combat actions (STARK) and made sure it trained and equipped sailors to save the ship.
We would hold "mass conflagration" drills. These were all hands efforts. The entire ship would go to general quarters to maximize the watertight integrity of the ship, bring all of its firefighting capabilities to their maximum state of readiness. Fully man all the repair lockers, get people out of their racks and into their spaces where they were alert and informed and ready to take action when directed to.
There is a fire aboard spaceship earth and it has reached the life support system, and the officers on the bridge are debating what the best liberty port will be.
You can't blame Republicans for the catastrophe we're facing. It's been a couple of centuries in the making and we've all played a role in causing it.
But you can blame Republicans for our failure to do ANYTHING about it.
We just passed a law to delete the words "climate change" from the state's statutes.
It's madness. MADNESS!
This wasn't a named storm. This was just weather. Ordinary weather. You can't call it a "1000 year event," when it happens two years in a row! (And please, no lectures about "that's not how statistics work." Go learn physics and meteorology and then come talk to me.)
If we have one major hurricane strike Florida this year, we will have an unprecedented, catastrophic insurance crisis in this state.
The "reforms" the legislature enacted chiefly made it harder to sue insurance companies, and made it easier for them to deny claims. And they will still lose money and leave the state, and their clients and customers will not be made whole and will not be able to sue to be made whole. Blue tarps and property values in the toilet. Tax base collapsing. Let's see DeSantis reject federal money then.
He'll be begging for it.
This issue has been well known and well understood for decades. Florida has been exclusively governed by the Republican party for more than a generation, and they have done nothing to prepare this state for what has been foreseeable, predicted and now experienced.
It's insanity. Stupidity.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 09:34 Friday, 14 June 2024