As the late, great Florence graphically testifies, we are smack in the middle of "hurricane season." Far worse, though, is the other storm natural disasters always unleash: unconstitutional, corrupt, incompetent and even lethal government.
The Constitution is as trashed as the homes in Florence's path. Only with academic interest, then, do we note that the country's highest law never empowers the feds to provide erroneous forecasts of weather, sell subsidized "flood insurance" to encourage building in dangerous areas, squander over $15 billion on "first responders" who exacerbate emergencies and steal yet more billions from taxpayers for "disaster relief."
The country was surprisingly young when Congress first grabbed such authority — or so the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] claims: the bureaucracy "can trace its beginnings to the Congressional Act of 1803. This act, generally considered the first piece of disaster legislation, provided assistance to a New Hampshire town following an extensive fire."
Leviathan lies about everything, all the time. So I verified that "an extensive fire" did indeed ravage "a New Hampshire town," and that it spawned legislation in 1803. It's also true that the Act "provided assistance" — but not in the way we interpret that, with bureaucrats and billions of the taxpayers' dollars drowning the place. Rather, the bill "authorized and directed" the "secretary of the treasury" "to cause to be suspended for months, the collection of bonds due to the United States by merchants of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, who have suffered by the late conflagration of that town." Or, as a modern source puts it, Congress "provided relief for Portsmouth merchants by waiving duties and tariffs on imported goods."
Desisting from thievery, allowing entrepreneurs to keep their profits, differs as dramatically from "making federal funding for recovery available to individuals impacted by" Mother Nature as your morning shower does from Florence's deluge.
But nowadays, "Federal funding will also be available to state and eligible local governments, as well as certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work on those affected counties." In other words, our rulers will force us to compensate the hurricane's victims. Many have already contributed to private efforts at relief. Americans are famous as the world's most liberal donors, nor must the government compel us to compassion. Yet it nonetheless taxes us so that politicians can "generously" redistribute the loot in Florence's wake. Their robbery of us downgrades charity to naked theft.
Remember, too, that most folks would never have built, much less rebuild, in a coastal neighborhood but for federal encouragement to do so — again on our dime: "The National Flood Insurance Program aims to reduce the impact of flooding on private and public structures. It does so by providing affordable insurance to property owners, renters and businesses..." And why is FEMA's insurance "affordable?" Because a private company would have to charge astronomical rates to cover the liability of a neighboring ocean: even as long ago as 1986, "Federal flood insurance ... costs those who qualify, by virtue of owning property in an official hazard zone and enlisting in the program, only about one-third of what private insurance premiums would be."I.e., politicians and bureaucrats bribe people to risk not only our money but their lives by residing in areas prone to weather that kills. And an article published in the Department of Homeland Security's own Homeland Security Affairs bemoans such recklessness: "Moral hazard is defined as when people do not assume the full risk of an action or decision; people are not [then] inclined to make a fully responsible or moral choice..." This "redistribution of risk" is especially culpable when it comes to floods because "flood-related hazards are the most prominent and significant hazards in the United States and account for the highest percentage of major disaster declarations and direct economic losses."
Count on the state to exploit every tragedy: "The NFIP [National Flood Insurance Program] was created as a mitigation program with the goal of preventing future loss of life and property from ... flooding." But as always with Leviathan's schemes, the NFIP's results diametrically diverge from its alleged purpose: "...from 1978 through 2015, 3.8 percent of policyholders have filed for repetitive losses, accounting for a disproportionate 35.5 percent of flood loss claims and 30.5 percent of claim payments." (Nor does such moral hazard come cheap: "...the impacts of 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2012 hurricane seasons have generated $24 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury and revenue is unlikely to cover future catastrophic losses or repay the billions of dollars in debt.")
We can't even depend on accurate warnings of impending storms, thanks to the federal "National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the National Weather Service and its underling agencies, including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, where the nation's weather models are run..." Those "models are significantly flawed in comparison with commercial and European alternatives. American forecasting also does poorly at data assimilation, the process of integrating information about atmospheric conditions into modeling programs; in the meantime, a lack of available computing power precludes the use of more advanced systems already operating [elsewhere]. And there are persistent management challenges, perhaps best represented by the legions of NOAA scientists whose innovations remain stranded in research labs and out of the hands of the National Weather Service operational forecasters who make the day-to-day predictions..." Moreover, "...accuracy is everything, often the difference between life and death, given that extreme weather — tornadoes, flash floods, heat waves — kills more than 500 Americans each year. 'An incremental improvement would make a huge difference,' [Cliff Mass, a meteorologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington] says. Industries like shipping, energy, agriculture and utilities lose money when predictions fail. Even slightly more precise wind-speed projections would help airlines greatly reduce fuel costs." Yet these botched forecasts cost us $1 billion annually.
Despite government's horrific record on all things weather, even conservative Americans expect its "help" during calamities like Florence. Why?
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