Texas Flood: Campers died because of money

Question for Kerr County officials: How much money are search, rescue and recovery efforts costing the county right now and who is going to pay for it?

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Those sneaky bastard county officials in Kerr County, Texas are trying to pass the buck for this tragedy to the National Weather Service. But the real reason all those girls died is because they didn’t have enough time to flee to higher ground. And the reason they didn’t have time is that the county rejected years of study recommendations that a series of gauges and sensors upstream could trigger sirens during a heavy rainstorm to warn people to flee.

The NWS needn’t have been involved at all.

A siren might have been enough. A SIREN.

The area is notorious for flash floods. People have died from them before in that area. The study recommended a number of mitigation efforts and technologies for spreading the word including cell phone alerts but cell service is spotty in the area. The sirens may have been enough.

But we will never know now because the system would have cost $1 million and the local county government didn’t *think* the taxpayers would pay for it.

Something about this story encapsulates absolutely everything that is wrong with libertarian ideology that thrives in Republicans.

The area is prone to flooding. A simple siren system might have given people time to flee. LACK of sirens gave them no time to do anything.

Could they have appealed for federal funds? An army corps of civil engineers project worked on a flood system in Bound Brook, NJ about 25 years ago. ) What about the state of Texas? Maybe Greg Abbot could have made a case to the state legislature to fork over some money for it instead of using some of their budget surplus on chasing down women who are going to New Mexico for abortions. Or the county itself could have had a referendum with the cheapest option of putting rain gauges and water level sensors in the rivers upstream that would trigger the low tech sirens. At least ASK people before assuming they didn’t want to pay for it. Let them go on record as having a vote.

But no. They listened to the study and said, “No thanks, we’re good”. And now, over 80 people are dead and missing.

What’s the libertarian mindset? We’re all rugged individuals responsible for our own prosperity and well being? Based on my limited experience with school board referenda, a few hundred dedicated libertarians can squash the most thoughtful, frugal, fiscally responsible design over less than $400/year per household. In our case, the over all cost was $52 million for a new high school, intermediate school and retrofitting a couple of elementary schools. The HS wasn’t even going to have an auditorium because they’re mostly unused energy drains. Kerr county was only going to have to spend $1M and has a total of 50,000 residents, more than my township. They couldn’t have floated a bond back in 2017 to install the gauges, sensors and sirens? Or is it that the resorts and wealthy landowners didn’t want to bear the burden of poorer residents over time? That kind of selfish, short term, magical thinking cost 80+ people their lives.

That camp should have been prepared? Those girls should have stationed lookouts at 4 am?What if the sirens had gone off at 3:50 am and campers had 10 minutes to run to higher ground?

I guess we’ll never know because money.

Well, they can’t say they weren’t warned, even though history and geology were clear. But we can all say they didn’t even try.

From the article:

“I think there’s going to be a lot of places in the United States that will look at this event that happened in Kerr County and determine what could be done,” Mr. Moser said. “I think things should come out of this. It should be a lesson learned.”

Current city officials on Sunday did not discuss the earlier deliberations over warning systems. Dalton Rice, the Kerrville city manager, sidestepped a question about the effectiveness of local emergency notifications, telling reporters at a news conference that it was “not the time to speculate.”

That sounds so familiar. Where have we heard that kind of talk in Texas before?

Parkrose Permaculture explains why Trumpers hate the NWS

This sounds right. Also check out Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.

If you aren’t ready and maybe even prepped for what’s coming, your time is running out. It may sound crazy to your family until you have to make a run for it at 4am. Last year, there were four tornado warnings in my area including alerts from the National Weather Service. One of them touched down on both sides of my township. And you may think that’s weird for such a hilly area as Pittsburgh but I have coworkers who saw tornados land not too far from them in a a suburb east of me. The threat is real, as are flash floods and mudslides that wipe out local roads.

I don’t know if I can count on the NWS this year. So, I have my bag packed, my jackery charged, multiple fuel sources for cooking and warmth, and enough food and water to last about a week. Yes, my family thinks I’m crazy. I don’t care.

One thing we haven’t addressed yet is that the people running the country right now have severe personality issues and they have money and power to shape the country in their image. I just have to ask myself how it is that we’re going to start looking like Russia soon. Why do we never get personalities that want to turn the country against its will into Finland?

God Demanded Sacrifice?

Controversial opinion ahead. Plus, I’m a panentheist so I can only guess that god(s) think like we do or like Christian fundamentalists think.

Yesterday, a flash flood descended upon a Christian summer camp in Central Texas. As a result, more than 20 girls are missing, presumably swept away.

It has crossed my mind that this is almost exactly the number of children who were gunned down by a mass murderer in Uvalde, Texas a few years ago. Those kids were annihilated by a semi-automatic rifle and parts of their bodies were blown apart.

Maybe the god(s) didn’t like that.

Maybe the god(s) also wanted to make a point about the budget bill passed on Wednesday. For one thing, there’s FEMA, or there was FEMA. I guess the federal government could send disaster relief to Texas but how are the people in North Carolina and Kentucky going to feel about that? So god(s) is sending a message to Texas about fairness and compassion?

It also hasn’t escaped my attention that in the near future, immediately, actually, there will be children all around the country who won’t be able to count on after school programs or summer nutritional assistance now that school is out and they can’t get free lunch or breakfast. (Except in Minnesota). Those programs have been cut in the Trump Feed the Rich Bill that Republicans, and ONLY Republicans, passed on Wednesday.

Let’s not blame natural disasters for this or climate change because many Christians don’t believe in that. And anyway, that’s science and with science goes evolution, cause and effect, and keeping an open mind to other possibilities in the service of understanding our universe and to use that understanding to benefit mankind and the planet. (Unethical cloners need not apply)

Based on their own theology, we might conclude that the god(s) demanded sacrifice to teach those Christians a lesson and demand that they focus their attention on the “least of us”.

It sounds so heartless coming from a person who is not a Christian evangelical or fundamentalist. Imagine how trying to guess god(s) plan or punishment sounds to someone who lost family members at Katrina, or Pulse, or Marjorie Taylor Douglas HS, Uvalde or Sandy Hook.

How would it feel if we said there could be no other explanation than god(s) anger at Christians. Normally, god(s) send natural disasters to trailer parks and levees but maybe those tragedies weren’t getting through to Texans and Christians. This seems intentional. It happened after the end of pride month and, presumably, no homosexuals were targeted.

Maybe God(s) killed those innocent children. God(s) had a plan for the parents who are now sick with worry or grieving. I don’t think god(s) thought it was more important that some of those kids were at a Christian summer camp while some in Uvalde were trying to get an education. It just makes more of a point if they ARE Christian. Judge not lest ye be judged or something like that. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. God(s) can be capricious.

Some may think I’m heartless and that the sorrow of those girls’ parents’ is real. It is real and no one should suffer like this. But this is what evangelical Christians have been telling me for as long as I can remember. God(s) send floods that wipe out civilizations, mothers, fathers, innocent children, then send a rainbow as compensation and a promise that is never kept. God(s) do this to innocent people for reasons, for plans, to send a message. We can only speculate on what God(s) are trying to say to the Christians in Texas.

This is why I am a panentheist.

Mad Distraction

If you need to take your mind off of you know who for a bit, take a five minute break and watch this jaw dropping dance with the Mad Hatter in The Royal Ballet’s Alice in Wonderland. Choreography by Christopher Wheeldon, Mad Hatter by principal Stephen McRae, Alice by principal Lauren Cuthbertson.

Let’s go down the rabbit hole together to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

Happy Fourth of July 2025

Bad things don’t last forever. They just hang around longer than we like.

This song was written during the Depression.

We got through it.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

Woody Guthrie

What can we do to make a difference today?

Congress has stopped funding Planned Parenthood.

Consider a donation today so that women can get the healthcare they need.

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Where will you make a difference today?

Happy Independence Day

No, MAGA voters, it can’t be fixed later.

It’s true that the Medicaid cuts don’t go into effect until December 2026.

The problem is the billionaires are robbing the bank NOW.

If the bill passes, the billionaires get their tax cuts and other juicy paybacks NOW. This year.

By the time 2026 rolls around, even if you replace every single representative and senator who voted to gut Medicaid and SNAP and a lot of other things you like, there won’t be any money in the treasury for it and there will only be more debt for the next 10 years.

They’re going to gut Social Security or they’ll hold your deferred compensation until you meet a social compliance score. Oh yeah, I have every expectation that your social security payments and Medicare will depend on how much you obey Trump and his Project 2025 masterminds. They have all your social security information, all your medical information, all your bank account information, all your IRS information, all your voter registration information. And Peter Thiel’s Palantir is capable of using all that data to profile you and make your life miserable if you step out of line.

You will feel very, very stupid for voting for Trump by the time this is done.

Just so you know. If they’re telling you that the cuts won’t affect you, they’re lying. They’ll just delay the full impact until there’s nothing you can do about it.

Signed, the Cassandras of the Dark Left who keep accurately predicting the future that you predictably ignore.

A modest proposal by the “Dark Left”

I can get behind this for a couple of reasons. One, no civil war required. Two, I’m sick of being dragged over the cliff by people who are risk takers. The only problem is I’m not sure what color state PA is now. I would say purple but the biggest cities are blue. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Check it out:

Budget Bill Summary for people who don’t like to read

For once, the NYTimes gets it right:

Any improvements in taxes are obliterated by massive increases in what they’ll pay for heath care. If they’re getting SNAP, they’ll be paying more for food.

But it’s actually worse than that. The bill will add trillions of dollars to the national debt by extending tax cuts to the very wealthy. Don’t get the wrong idea that Elon Musk is on the little guy’s side. He’s ticked because the bill strips subsidies for new industries but it doesn’t gut spending on things Americans feel are important enough. Except for massive tax cuts for their personal wealth, the tech bros are suddenly starting to realize they have no political power that doesn’t derive from Trump. You’d think these brilliant aholes would have figured this out by now.

Anyway, if you don’t want to read any further, here’s Belle of the Ranch summarizing the Senate bill that goes back to the House and how Lisa Murkowski really feels about it. She’s either a bad chess player or she is maga. There are really no other possibilities. Pick one.

Congress can make this bill less destructive to the treasury by eliminating the extension of the 2017 tax cuts that favored the rich. That would be an easy win. If the lower 80% of Americans have to be plunged into austerity to reduce the debt, it’s only fair for billionaires to give up their reckless tax cuts. But that’s the one thing that the Republicans are NOT going to do. Billionaires will be getting their tax cuts even if it means destroying the economy.

You have to ask yourself why. Ok, you don’t have to read more than that.

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Before anyone says 2 years from now that no one could have known in advance how the bill would hurt them, let’s get it out right now that the UK did almost the exact same thing to themselves with Brexit. They alienated their trading partners, expelled immigrants and barred the door, and reduced food assistance for families with children.

Their kids are now shorter than their global peers and the average Brit makes less per year than a resident of Mississippi. It will be a race to the bottom now for families living in Little Much, England. The only difference is there will be fewer people in the UK dying from untreated illnesses because as hard as they’ve tried to gut the NHS, it’s still operating. You might freeze to death in the winder without fuel subsidies but at least you can get your frostbite treated.

This is all known in advance so don’t anyone say they didn’t know.

Shorter children.

My question has two parts: 1.) What raging malevolence is behind it (I don’t think this is all Trump. He is just the agent and a loose cannon they are tolerating) and 2.) did maga voters know they were going to allow the rich to mug them last November?

That is to say, were they aware that they were walking face first info the chainsaw serial killers?

This goes beyond leopards eating faces. This is more like slavery. You’ll get just enough to keep you alive and working but you will live in a shack on a plantation and you’re life will be dawn to dusk, backbreaking labor for the rest of your life competing with robots for jobs putting little screws into iPhones or picking fruit in the hot sun.

Who voted to put the slave masters back in power? Talk about playing a long game. They want their property back that they lost in the 1860s and they’ll destroy the country to get it.

Oh, she’s being hyperbolic. Wait, maga voters wouldn’t use that word. Hysterical maybe. She’s exaggerating.

Nor really. But you’d know that if you actually read stuff.

Getting Cancer in the US with our broken healthcare system

I just saw this today even though it’s 3 months old. You only have to listen to the first minute to know how epically screwed up healthcare is in the US and how Lisa Murkowski has made it so much harder for cancer patients who need treatment on Medicaid. This man isn’t even on Medicaid and it’s still difficult to get approval for tests and procedures. And it’s expensive.

(In the US, your insurance is tied to your employer. No matter whether you have an employment plan or Medicaid, if you don’t work you don’t get treated. If you can’t afford it, too bad)

Way to go, Lisa🙄

Hey, anyone who loses their health insurance or faces economic hardship in the next 10 years can forward your complaints to Lisa Murkowski.

Utter coward.