Yes, we all feel bad for the victims of the flooding in Texas. And I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but they sort of make it worse for themselves. Texas has a long history of supporting the Republican notion that ‘the Gubmint’ needs to keep its nose out of people’s business. And also that corporations are people.
This has led to some dangerous practices. Did you know there are almost no zoning laws in Texas? They can build anywhere, including flood planes, or the places where water from floods usually goes to drain away. They also have almost no fire safety codes, but that is for another post.
Oh, and they have no laws requiring the owners of chemical plants to disclose to people living near those plants what is kept in those plants. I am assuming, without researching it, that the laws on storing those chemicals are also pretty loose. This led to some dangerous situations during the latest flood when some of those plants caught fire.
In a final ironic twist, Texas has very little restriction requiring pollution controls… which, whether they want to admit it or not, is adding to global climate change and making hurricanes worse.
It is the perfect storm… pun intended… of poor decision making.
But now that another flood has happened, the same people who made these decisions think that the same government they wanted to have leave them alone should hurry up and fix things. I’m not saying we shouldn’t fix things. I’m just saying that they are going to go right back to rebuilding on flood plains, polluting the world, getting flooded, and then asking for more help.
