Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:30 PM | October 20, 2024
MEME

We have seen precious little coverage of the hurricane recovery efforts, and I think we all know why. Appalachia is still digging out from the mudslides, floods, and destruction. 

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Appalachia is remote and filled with deplorables, and the disaster happened at a very inconvenient time for the administration. Not that this fact matters that much. As the people of Maui and East Palestine, OH, this administration is much better at covering disasters up than helping their victims. 

I have no idea how many people died or are still missing; government reports have been few and far between, few corporate media reporters seem interested in digging into the reality, and reports from people on the ground strongly contradict what the authorities have told us. 

I don't assume that the on-the-ground reports from individuals are accurate when it comes to things like the number of missing and dead, just as I don't trust the government numbers. Governments and nonprofits have the advantage of having the ability to collate information from around the region but a strong motive to downplay the disaster and the inefficiencies of their recovery efforts. 

Locals may have a stronger motive to tell the story of their experience but don't have the advantage of a synoptic view. I do know that private efforts to find the missing show that hundreds or more people remain missing, and the government claims fewer than 100. I suspect that the truth is somewhere in between. I wish I trusted the sources. 

What I do know is that even government efforts to show how great a job it is doing actually make the government look bad. For instance:

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It is the perfect metaphor for government inefficiency. It shouldn't take 20 people to cut up a tree and move the logs. A tornado hit my neighborhood in 2011, and three of our spruce trees that stood 50-70 feet tall were felled. A friend of mine--a farmer in his 60s--asked if he could have the wood. 

Sure! He came with a chainsaw and a truck with a trailer and, by himself, cleared the trees in an afternoon. 

If you had a wheelbarrow in that video, you could let all but one or two of those expensive federal employees go help someone else. 

Of course, efficiency was not the point: showing effort was--and the more employees, the better. 

When the tornado hit our neighborhood--an urban area very dense with houses and trees--it took about two afternoons for private tree services to clean up the majority of the damage. They had an incentive to do as many trees as possible, regulations had been relaxed, and they cleaned up the neighborhood (and cleaned up with money, too) lickety-split. 

The disaster area from Helene is exponentially worse, of course, but at government speed, it will be 2100 before people are dug out of the mess. 

Given this level of inefficiency--about which they are BRAGGING as an example of providing "help"--why would you trust the government with anything? They cannot remove a tree--a tree!--without 17 people who stand around 90% of the time. 

Imagine, should Elon Musk actually take time to run the Department of Government Efficiency--what could be done. If Customs and Border Patrol actually believes people should be impressed with this effort, Elon will have his work cut out for him. 

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BEST OF THE BABYLON BEE:

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BEST OF THE REST...

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I love this. It made my eyes well up. 

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AND FINALLY...

And I don't know about you, but this sounds more like a threat than a promise:

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