OPINION - Shields and Brooks 9/1/2017

"Shields and Brooks on Hurricane Harvey unity, climate change politics" PBS NewsHour 9/1/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Miles O'Brien to discuss the week's news, including how Hurricane Harvey might redirect Republicans' fall agenda, the Trump administration's response to the emergency, how the government will pay for the long and arduous recovery, whether the storm will shift political discourse about climate change and more.

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  In addition to the grueling work of rescue and recovery on the ground, Hurricane Harvey has stirred up political challenges and marked the first natural disaster on President Trump's watch.

For what's at stake, we get the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Gentlemen, good to have you with us.

To what extent has the storm on Friday and what has ensued changed what's going to happen in Washington in September?  Do you think this is a reset in a sense, David?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times:  I have decided to take the most willfully confident or least optimistic point of view just maybe post-flood, that the dove comes bearing the olive branch.

And I do think there's potential for things to get better.  The Republicans were headed toward dysfunction this fall with the budget showdowns, with this fight over the wall, possible government shutdown.

And now they at least have a pretext, all the while knowing they look dysfunctional and they have to get something done.  Now they have a pretext to change the subject, to put some budget relief in there for the flood, without doing offsets, without trying to rip the money out from other programs.

And they could say, hey, we can't do the wall right now.  We got to rebuild Texas.  And, by the way, on the background, a lot of people are going to need a lot of construction workers in Texas.  And this is a construction with a construction worker flourish.

So, maybe this isn't the time to crack down on immigration.  And so I think there's a possibility, if they want to look functional, to seize this moment, whether they will or not.  But I'm going for maximal optimistic unrealism.

MILES O'BRIEN:  So, Mark, would you agree that the storm has given Republicans some cover for a kumbaya moment?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist:  Not necessarily kumbaya moment, because I think that's impossible with Donald Trump; because he's so mercurial, so volatile, and so self-obsessed.

But I think it's great political opportunity for Republicans, partly for the reasons that David said.  The old maxim in combat in World War II was, there are no atheists in a foxhole.  There no libertarian, conservative, small-government people at a time when they're in the wake of a hurricane.

People turn — what's the government going to do?  I want it done.  Even the much ridiculed — and legitimately so — Ted Cruz, who ran for President proclaiming he was the most unpopular man in the Senate, earned that epithet, sobriquet by opposing any hurricane aid to the citizens of New York and New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.

And 22 of the 23 Republican members of Congress from Texas, including John Cornyn, the senator and Cruz, opposed it [Sandy relief].  Now, of course, they are the biggest exhorters for federal aid, federal involvement, national government rushing in.

But I do think it's an opportunity for Republicans to unite and to get away from the wall and President's empty threat to close the government if it weren't funded.
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MILES O’BRIEN:  What about tax reform?  That was something that, in the midst of this storm, President Trump was talking about.  Is there any chance there will be any traction on that?

MARK SHIELDS:  There is no tax reform.

What it is, is a tax cut.  And they have concluded that there’s a real problem in this country when it comes to money distribution, that the poor have too much and the rich don’t have enough. [Republican view]  And this is the solution.

DAVID BROOKS:  Just to make Mark feel good, I don’t think anything is going to pass.

I was thinking, who was in office, who was in power in 1986?  You had Dan Rostenkowski in the House, a guy named Bob Packwood in the Senate, James Baker,

MARK SHIELDS:  Patrick Moynihan.

DAVID BROOKS:  Patrick Moynihan, Bill Bradley.

MARK SHIELDS:  Bill Bradley.  Dick Gephardt.  Yes.

DAVID BROOKS:  This was like the dream team of legislative skill.

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes.

DAVID BROOKS:  And there’s just nobody like that, because they don’t — people do not have the experience to pass complicated legislation, let alone a White House.

Tax reform is incredibly hard, because every time you cut a loophole, there’s an army that wants to preserve it.  And it’s just hard to…

MARK SHIELDS:  Dick Darman.

DAVID BROOKS:  Dick Darman is another figure.

(CROSSTALK)

MARK SHIELDS:  Yes.  Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

DAVID BROOKS:  We have sort of lost human capital in Washington of people who know how to do complicated stuff.

MARK SHIELDS:  It’s a good point.  We have devalued it.

When you run against Washington long enough, and deprecate public service, I mean, after a while, you stop attracting or making it appealing for talented people to come and to stay.  And [back] then public service was an honorable and important…

(CROSSTALK)

DAVID BROOKS:  The talent is a side, but the experience is low.

Those people had put through, over the previous 20 or 30 years, lots of complicated legislation, especially under Johnson, and even under Nixon.

And the people now, they just don’t have the experience of doing that.

LOUISIANA - Historic Floods

"How Louisiana plans to rebuild after historically damaging floods" PBS NewsHour 8/18/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  As the Louisiana flooding begins to subside, the state looks toward rebuilding.  The disaster affected over 20 parishes, including areas outside flood zones -- meaning residents there do not have flood insurance.  William Brangham speaks with Billy Nungesser, Louisiana's lieutenant governor, about how the state is planning to use FEMA funds, the help of volunteers and Red Cross shelters to recover.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  As the flood waters start to recede, the hard work of assessing and rebuilding begins.

CLEVE BROWN, Baton Rouge Resident:  Basically, we lost everything, you know, other than our lives.  Couple of hours, we probably had six-foot of water.  Water is probably one of the worst Mother Nature beasts there is.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  An estimated 40,000 homes were damaged in the flooding that inundated Baton Rouge and Lafayette, killing at least 13 people.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson got a first hand look today.

JEH JOHNSON, Secretary of Homeland Security:  The federal government is here.  We have been here.  We will be here as long as it takes to help this community recover.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Four thousand people are still living in shelters across the state.

GAIL MCGOVERN, Red Cross President and CEO:  This is the largest operation that the American Red Cross has responded to since 2012, Superstorm Sandy, and driving s around the affected area, it's really devastating.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  In the most damaged areas, only about one out of every eight homes is covered by flood insurance, because these areas weren't considered likely to flood.

CLEVE BROWN:  No one was expecting this.  This is, I mean, you can see, I might have gotten from here at it's worst to up here.  So, that's why no one was expecting it.  So, they're not going to have flood insurance.  They were, you know, they thought they were high and dry.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  More than 9,000 insurance claims have been filed so far.

For more on how Louisiana is doing, I'm joined now by the state's lieutenant governor, Billy Nungesser.  He joins us from Louisiana Public Broadcasting in Baton Rouge, where many of our colleagues there have also been flooded out of their homes.

AMERICA - Hurricane Sandy Recovery Still Slow

"Sandy Recovery Continues at Slow Pace as People Wait for FEMA Relief" PBS Newshour 1/1/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY: While storm victims of Sandy find hope as some businesses re-open in hard-hit areas, debate on how to rebuild the shore has slowed the pace of recovery. Jeffrey Brown talks to New York Times' Sarah Maslin Nir and New Jersey Public TV's Mike Schneider on how federal disaster relief aid will be used to rebuild smarter and better.

POLITICS - FEMA Shutdown?

"Shields and Brooks on Romney vs. Perry, Disaster Aid Deadlock in Congress" PBS Newshour Transcript 9/23/2011

Excerpt on FEMA shutdown

JIM LEHRER (Editor, Newshour): All right, let's go to the two votes in Congress, yesterday in the House and this morning in the Senate, about -- well, the bottom line is, are we going to have another "shut down the government" crisis?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times columnist: Yes, well, I look at history, and I assume that we will just do just enough to stay stagnant and miserable. We never seem to solve our problems, but we never quite walk off the precipice. So I'm going to assume that's going to happen again.

You know, substantively, I disagree with both parties. I don't think we should offset our disaster spending with cuts elsewhere. I don't particularly think we should do corporate welfare for electric cars either. So I think they're both wrong.

But the main takeaway, I think, is the whole world is now in a very precarious situation. Europe is sliding off the edge of a cliff, banks in Europe really teetering, our economy really looking like it may go through a double-dip. And they're fighting over this stuff.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: It's just unnerving.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, it raises the question. You think, what is it about -- that's going on in this country that the members of Congress don't understand and don't understand the polls that show them, what, 82 percent unfavorable? And they're still playing the same games, like nothing has happened.

Why? What is it they don't get? And it's both Republicans and Democrats in this case.

MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Yes. Well, I think they came back chastened and severely defensive after the August recess, because after the showdown and the debt ceiling being raised, both sides were hurt, both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House was hurt. The Congress was hurt institutionally, politically, across the board.

This is interesting. I mean, this really is -- we have voted literally hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. And this is -- you're talking about $7 trillion to rebuild, in fact, the storm-ravaged United States.

And I think -- I think the Democrats, quite honestly, part of this is the chemistry of -- they have been rolled, they feel, on every showdown, I mean, starting last December, in April and in August, and there was sort of a -- I can't say manhood, because that's no longer an appropriate term, but there was a sense of, we have to earn and stand up and we're not going to take this any longer.

JIM LEHRER: Show how tough we are, yes.

MARK SHIELDS: And I think there will be a showdown. I agree with David. There will not be a shutdown.

JIM LEHRER: But there will be a show -- so, but what is the showdown about now? I mean, is it still about little things? They're not having a showdown about anything large, are they?

DAVID BROOKS: Oh, it's Pavlov dog time. It's: We can do things. We're fighting for you guys, for our base, those guys saying, we're fighting for our base.

And right now, both bases are feeling pretty good, actually. Some of us are left out. But Obama came out, tax increases for the rich. Liberals are feeling pretty good. The Republicans saying, we're not doing business as usual, we're going to shut things down, conservatives feeling pretty good.

Whether we're actually governing, that's another question. But I do think it's a combination of that. And the minusculeness of what they're trying to do is just a function of being stuck in the little pressure zone in Washington.

JIM LEHRER: And that's going to continue?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I mean, I think that FEMA is going to run out of money. I think it's a legitimate place to make a stand.

But I do think that there is an awareness that this doesn't look good in the country and, at some point, that it could lead in fact to a -- just a surge on the part of voters against incumbents in both parties.

AMERICA - Dealing With Storm Recovery

"FEMA Chief Fugate on Challenges of Widespread Storm Recovery Needs"
PBS Newshour 5/4/2011


I wish ALL my fellow citizens well in recovering from this extreme weather and the damage caused.

Having said that, the flooding along the Mississippi River:

This problem is 100+ years old, it is what happens when human beings live and build in what Mother Nature set aside as flood planes.

I have been in countries that deal with flooding, like the Philippines and the Monsoon season floods. What they do is:

• Build homes/cities ABOVE the possible flood level.


• OR their homes/buildings are at least two-story, the bottom floor only for parking (garage) or storage of non-perishables, the upper floors for living. Even bamboo homes do this.

So the question for Americas along Mississippi River is, why haven't you moved your cities and homes higher, out of the flood planes? Leave the flood planes for what they are good for (in human terms), farming. It is the rich silt left by flooding that makes the flood planes good farmland. Flood planes are NOT good for homes/cities.

I do remember from past reading that some cities have already done what I suggest. I also see some homes built on top of high mounds, you can see all the flooding around them but the home is safe.

The bottom line, while we all should sympathize with Mississippi River flood victims, we should ask them, "Why are you rebuilding in a way that your problem will repeat WHEN the next flood happens?"

POLITICS - 6 Reasons the GOP Can't Win the War on Terror

What follows is the article in its entirety with minor formatting changes. Also there is an error in his title, he list 6 reasons.

"Five Reasons Republicans Can't Win The War on Terror" by RJ Eskow, Smirking Chimp

The reports are in and the debate is over: The Republican Party, that bastion of hard right ideology, has fumbled the war on terror. The question is no longer whether conservatives are failures in the national security arena. What's important to understand now is why they've done such a poor job. While many factors contribute to their dismal record, there are five key reasons conservatives are ill-equipped to protect our nation.

First, a quick review of the facts: It's now clear that they ignored the flashing red lights warning of an imminent terrorist attack in 2001. We'll never know if 9/11 could have been prevented, but the evidence demonstrates that they failed to do their jobs properly to avoid it.

What's happened since then? Worldwide terrorist incidents have skyrocketed in the last three years alone. They've grown exponentially - from 165 in 2003, to 655 in 2004, then exploding to 11,111 in 2005. Holy Katrina! That's a lot of incompetence.

The President has declared a "Global War on Terror." The result is global collapse of antiterrorism.

The Iraq war has spawned a lot of anti-US hatred and created quite a few new terrorist recruits, as many predicted. Even so, Iraqi incidents only accounted for approximately 30% of the 2005 figure. Even if you exclude war-related acts, there were 44 times as many terrorist attacks last year as there were in 2001. Those figures reflect four years of GOP mismanagement.

But we haven't been hit since 9/11, comes the conservative response. That's like driving with your eyes shut and bragging that you haven't hit anything yet. Let's look at the facts: Our ports are no safer. We're only inspecting a tiny fraction of cargo containers coming into the US. And for all the theatrics at airport screening locations, the government has yet to respond to two reports that indicated their TSA efforts have made us no safer we were on September 10, 2001.

If this crowd stays in power, it's just a matter of time until the next attack.

That's the what. Now for the why. Here are the five reasons why the Republican record on national security is one of failure:

1. They don't believe in government.


National security is a government initiative. It requires an interlocking network of well-functioning agencies, led and staffed by the most competent people available. The Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists who, with Grover Norquist, want government small enough that "you can drown it in a bathtub" -- or the floodwaters of New Orleans.

It's not an accident that I refer to last year's hurricane. Giving leadership of FEMA to a political crony was a typical Republican act, and organizations like FEMA have a critical role to play in protecting the American people. The GOP believes that government posts are favors to be given to their political pals, and contracts are candy to be given to their friends. (More about that later.)

Most Americans understand that government has a role to play. This crowd doesn't. Their hostility toward the institution of government itself weakens their ability to use that institution to protect the American people.


2. They help their contractors get rich off the American taxpayer, at the expense of the public.


The Republicans have run the country as their private piggy bank, with favors to be dispensed to their rich friends. The Iraq war's been one such get-rich-quick scheme, and some of our soldiers have lost their lives so that Republican cronies can get rich. (See this report on faulty bullets, then read about how the guy who sold defective body armor for our troops spent $10 mil on a party for his daughter.) America's coffers have been plundered by GOP-aided profiteers.

Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why Sen. Patrick Leahy's anti-profiteering bill has been defeated by the Republican leadership over and over, ever since the Iraq war started.

Still don't believe me? Then read this story on how the hiring of TSA screeners turned into yet another get-rich-quick orgy for contractors, complete with anecdotes charging the government $1,500 to rent 14 extension cords for three weeks. (They also paid $5.4 million to hire an executive for nine months to do "event logistics" - I wonder which party gets his contributions.)


3. They wear ideological blinders.


People who use buzzwords usually aren't thinking. People who think in terms of old-fashioned ideological terms, like equating the anti-terrorist struggle to past world wars, are truly the ones with a "pre-9/11 mindset." The Republican Party is so infatuated with pie-in-the-sky think tank mentalities that it can't see reality. That's why Cheney thought we would be "welcomed as liberators" in Iraq, or why they thought we wouldn't need a post-war military presence. They've read too many papers by flaky right-wing professors.

They need to take off the rose-colored glasses and take a cold, hard look at the real world - but they won't.


4. Their "moderates" aren't moderate.


The extremist ideology of the radical right has hijacked their party from top to bottom. The party's so-called "moderates," like John McCain, are themselves deeply in thrall to extremism. (The recent cave-in on basic American principles regarding torture and habeus corpus demonstrates that.)

Even those Republicans who haven't yet drunk the Kool-Aid can't win or keep elective office without bending their knee to the cultists. That means that, when it comes to stepping outside their comfort zone and reaffirming our values, they won't do it. And, in the end, our Americanism - honored and respected worldwide - is our best weapon in the anti-terror fight. Sacrifice that, as they have done, and you've made us immeasurably weaker.


5. They're "flip-floppers" - about everything except their own power and influence.


Tragically, you can't take a Republican at his word when it comes to the fight against terror. Take Bill Frist. He was "for fighting the Taliban's supporters before he was against it." The GOP was against the Department of Homeland Security before it was for it. They wanted to kill Bin Laden before they outsourced the job at Tora Bora, then they didn't care whether they got him or not. And on and on and on ...

Why the flippety-flops? Because today's GOP has shown that it will say or do anything it needs to do to stay in power. Guys like that will never lead a consistent and effective fight against terrorism. Their half-assed management of the Afghan war (a country from which we were attacked), proves it. Sadly, so do the results.


6. They've politicized the war on terror.


This is the crime for which today's Republican leadership will forever stand in disgrace. America's national security has never been a matter for partisan political gain. The nationwide unity after 9/11 was unprecedented. But the Republicans saw the opportunity to rescue an already-failing Presidency, and they jumped on it.

The result was spectacular success in political terms, but profound failure in national security terms. Their relentless effort to exploit every circumstance for their own gain led to blunder after blunder. The most recent example is the British investigation into possible hijacking plans from that nation. Published reports indicate that British intelligence was disturbed by US interference in the case, and by our government's insistence that they move to make arrests before the investigation was complete.

The infamous manipulation of "orange alerts" during the 2004 campaign is another such example. By using our national security apparatus as a political dirty trick, they undermined national confidence and unity at a critical time.

That's more than just a disgrace. In my book, it's treason. Loyal Americans of both parties need to throw this Congressional regime out of power in November. Its executive cabal - a syndicate that's deeper and more permanent than whoever happens to occupy the Oval Office - needs to get the boot in 2008.

Then, and only then, can we begin to rebuild our national security apparatus - and the principled and idealistic America it's designed to defend.

POLITICS - Changes for FEMA ?

In a MSNBC article "Chertoff overhauls FEMA, rejects criticism" there is a short list of "Among the planned changes at FEMA."

• Tracking trucks carrying food, water, ice, blankets and other emergency supplies by satellite to ensure they arrive at disaster sites quickly and with enough equipment.



• Sending FEMA employees to emergency shelters and other temporary housing venues to register victims for aid, instead of relying on victims to register by phone or the Internet.



• Creating a database of already-approved private contracting firms from disaster regions to remove debris and provide services faster.



• Creating "reconnaissance teams" to report disaster conditions to Homeland Security and FEMA operation centers within hours, and improving communication channels to ensure the information quickly gets to the president and Cabinet-level officials.



• Hiring up to 1,500 new full-time employees as year-round coordinators.

Humm.... Something missing?

You bet. How about bring back the disaster preventative programs FEMA had before the Bush Whitehouse & (so called) Homeland Security gutted FEMA. This is a minimum need.

Here's one I would add, take FEMA out of Homeland Security and put it back as a Cabinet level agency with the added mandate to assist Homeland Security in the event of terrorist disasters.

No matter what Chertoff says, under Homeland Security FEMA cannot focus on the more urgent need of dealing with natural disasters. FEMA cannot do that if Homeland Security can override FEMA decisions.