Yesterday, I made another appearance on the Fox Business Network’s Tom Sullivan Show, going over a few hot-button issues which included the Hot Sauce Mom. I hadn’t written anything about the case of Jessica Beagley, who forced hot sauce down the throat of her 7-year-old son and forced him to take a cold shower while her older daughter videotaped the punishment, but I’d followed the case a bit over the last couple of weeks. The panel, which included FBN’s Diane Macedo and Rodney Anderson of Supreme Lending, also discussed runaway EPA regulation and its impact on the US economy, and the need to bolster cell systems in the wake of the Virginia earthquake this past week:

Actually, if you get a chance to watch this show in its entirety tonight at 7 pm ET on FBN, you should. The guests that preceded us included Oliver North and John Bolton talking about Libya and Steve Forbes talking about economic policy. That’s a blockbuster lineup.

One further word on disaster preparedness. I think that cell systems can and should be made as robust as possible, within the private-market approach that we currently have in this industry. I’m not sure that what we had in Washington DC qualifies as a failure as much as it shows the limitations of technology in disasters. Rodney says that Hurricane Katrina showed our lack of preparation, but the cell system wasn’t the failure that mattered, and in that case a system of any size still would have failed due to the destruction of cell towers and electricity delivery throughout the region.  We can’t expect cell companies to spend capital on assets that only come into play once every five years at best, and like Katrina, some disasters would destroy those extra assets anyway.  Perhaps the best policy would be to expect that cell phones won’t cut it in some disasters.

Update: Diane’s last name is Macedo, not Racedo, as I originally wrote. I hope Diane will accept an apology from Ed Rorrissey.