The recent cases regarding people who have bamboozled the federal government into providing their children with health care when they could have continued to work at lousy jobs that provided health insurance seven years before they had kids, or simply refused to have children in the first place until they had health insurance coverage, made me realize that all too often people in our society expect the government to bail them out when they are perfectly capable of taking responsibility for their own misfortunes and misdeeds. For example, do we really want to get the government involved in this situation?
ATLANTA, Oct. 15 — For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water. […]
In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days. […]
“Here’s the fly in the ointment,” Mr. Hayes added. “The vulnerability in the Southeast has changed. Population shifts, increased competition and demand for water has increased, so that’s made this drought worse than it might have been.”
Within two weeks, Carol Couch, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, is expected to send Gov. Sonny Perdue recommendations on tightening water restrictions, which may include mandatory cutbacks on commercial and industrial users.
If that happens, experts at the National Drought Mitigation Center said, it would be the first time a major metropolitan area in the United States had been forced to take such drastic action to save its water supply.
“The situation is very dire,” Mr. Hayes said.
I know, I know. Many good people live in the South. Some of them may even have moved there at a time when they weren’t aware that there were real possibilities that droughts could happen in the Southeastern United States. Still, it’s not like they don’t have options, after all. They can always move away to some place else where water is more abundant, abandoning their homes and businesses, families and friends (and churches, don’t forget the churches). I mean if it was good enough for the Okies in the 1930’s, it should be good enough for people who live in today’s version of the dust bowl, right? Just saying, it’s something to consider should the worst come to worst (i.e., all the reservoirs dry up).
Personally, I have a soft spot for people in need, and my liberal, do-gooder nature, which often influences me at such times, gets the better of me. If it was up to me, I’d provide these people with all the government assistance they need to get them through this awful situation so that they have enough water to drink, etc. Thank goodness we have the firm and steadying hand of President Bush to keep these potential freeloaders from taking advantage of our good natures. I’m sure he’ll treat the water deprived folks of Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas the same way he’s treating the SCHIP kids — by telling them to take responsibility for their problems themselves.
That’s the “Republican Way.”
I’ve felt that way about the South for years. After all, those red states get their good fortune based on the taxes of blue staters like me.
I’d be happy to cut off their government aid. They like small government and libertarianism so much, let ’em fix their own fuckin’ problems.
Well, there are liberal and progressive southerners too. I know, because my aunt and uncle are among them. So for their sake we probably should be willing to bite the bullet (so to speak).
I disagree strongly, with one proviso. If the Federal Government wants to offer assistance to the South for water, then the Federal Government had damned sight better be offering assistance to the Northeast and Midwest for energy costs (especially home heating) this winter. If the Federal Government program is some sort of outrageous capital investment program to provide water diversion from the Northeast and the Midwest to the Southeast or wherever, then that energy assistance had better come with an ironclad long-term guarantee.
Otherwise, regarding the pigs in the Southeast and Southwest who have been sucking at the Federal teet for the last seventy years, screw’em. They can move, as many Northerners were forced to move in search of work.
Very few Southerners are “small government” and “libertarian” – even among the Republicans. You’re thinking of Western Republicans (who are often either very hypocritical, or very unaware, in their “libertarianism”). Southerners tend to be suspicious of government-types, but that’s partly because they’re Americans (who have a long history of being suspicous of government-types) and mostly because of the history of Reconstruction post-Civil War and the myths and realities that cropped up around being a semi-occupied country while also being part of the larger US.
Many Southern Republicans are “States Rights” advocates, but that’s because their racists who want to be able to decide the civil rights laws on a state by state basis, not because they don’t want Federal subsidies. You won’t find many libertarians among the Southern contingent in Congress (though you’ll find plenty of anti-tax nutbars who CALL themselves libertarians as they cut taxes and up the earmarks for their cronies in their own districts).
The current “big government conservatism” is largely because of the Southern conservative domination of the Republican Party. They love the handouts, they just don’t like the Feds telling them who they can and can’t discriminate against.
From their record, I would say that Bush will provide water for the South East because they voted for him. If it was a blue state that needed water he would happily watch them die of thirst. That is what happened when Enron decided to “steal from grandma” in California people died because they didn’t have enough power.
Now, are you saying Republicans like Bush have no principles? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you …
The Republican Way: Atlanta? Let ’em drink Coca-Cola! Privatize drought!
Only classic Coke though. None of that coke zero stuff.
I wonder how much water Cocacola is taking out of the limited supply in order to resell it at a buck or 2 per quart. And whether the restriction will apply to them. I suppose if the drought becomes a crisis they’ll make a big show of distributing bottled water “at cost” and being hailed by “journalists” as heroes.
if any city in the south needs help its new orleans…and look at what’s been done there. let’s help those that have suffered, and are suffering to worst first.
you may well assume that my sympathies lie elsewhere.
lTMF’sA
Someone once penned a pretty poignant (and rather Rude-esque) response to that question…
Thanks for link to your Underground Railroad, great site plus great links to other blogs.
If I were a Republican.. I’d say move to where there’s water, not my problem. It’s raining in here today, show me a water problem.
looks like a little relief is on the way…
http://www.weather.com/maps/maptype/currentweatherusnational/usdopplerradar_large.html?from=wxcenter
_maps
I live here in the Piedmont of North Carolina down from New England for a dozen years or so. Our immediate reservoir is down a goodly amount, but still has about 200 days of draw left. Most of it feeds the big city of Cary, us’uns out in the rural area have to hope the Cary folk don’t use it all up sooner than expected.
Luckily most of us out here have wells, but everyday you have to wonder if today is the day it dries up, and you are forced to buy water at the market…sheesh…$20 a bath anyone?
Many people talk about southerners pretty derogatarily. It’s the old “us” and “them” psyche. Fact is, there’s hardly any of the old southerners left. It’s mostly New South people now, sure the old threads are still in the cloth, but things really are changing.
Any American that needs help, be it New Orleans, or Pittsboro, NC, should be looked after by the Common Weal.
That’s the kind of thinking that should differentiate us from the Republics.
Cary has just (finally) issued stricter water use guidelines…and here in Raleigh beginning next week there will be NO watering the lawn at all (presently once a week), no using the hose to water plants, no washing cars at home etc. I flew over Jordan Lake last week and was horrified at how dry it was and I hear that Falls Lake, which supplies Raleigh with water, is even lower than that.
And yep, most of the people I come into contact with down here are transplanted northerners like me.
I happen to live in Roswell, GA and although we have had strict guidelines and restrictions on outdoor watering, we were allowed to do so until 6 weeks ago. Since the situation is so dire, they should have banned outdoor watering 6 months ago. Our lakes do supply water to both Alabama and Florida which are under no such watering bans. The Governor plans to introduce legislation to stop the Corp of Engineers from releasing more water to Florida, this week. I don’t think we should receive help from the federal government. We are going to have to ship in water and I think that we should have to pay for it.
To be sure, I don’t watch TV news very much. However, I haven’t seen much of this dire situation in the MSM. I am sympathetic with the folks in affected areas, and sincerely hope and pray that nature supplies a remedy soon.
I’m wondering though, if the worst case scenario occurs, will the Republicans in the White House and Congress take the same, “who cares?” attitude they exhibited towards those “liberal heathens” from New Orleans?
To answer your basic question, of course the government should help if the situation continues to deteriorate. What good does government serve, if it ignores the suffering of its own people??
Hell no.
For years I’ve heard how the population is leaving our terrible Northeast for the paradise of the South and Southwest.
Enjoy it folks.
Here in Corpus Christi we’ve had times of drought and the city/county put restrictions in place very early on. We impounded Lake Choke Canyon for a second water supply. We built a 48 inch pipeline to Lake Texana for a third supply. The only problem with the pipeline is the fact our contract for delivery will expire in about 15/20 years. There is no way we can win a bidding war with Houston or San Antonio over that supply. We really need to look at desalination plants for a permanemt solution. As far as Atlanta, there isn’t much the goverment can do other than supply drinking water, if even that. Delivery systems/pipelines take years to engineer and build.
Like Health Care, there is no reason why Water Distribution shouldn’t be privatized & made subject to the “invisible hand” which always & without fail distributes resources most efficiently.
The profit motive will insure that the most industrious prosper whilst the lazy & inefficient learn more industrious & frugal habits.
A reasonable natural monopoly system can be developed to insure that a corporation introduces the lean, mean efficiencies that have made the American dynamo what it is today.
With economies like one bath a week, laundry once a month & the elimination of full-immersion baptism, the people of the Southeast will be participants in the great marketplace like they never have been before.
/snark
I wish that the people of south would realize that they already receive back more than what they pay in for income tax. We Yankees get far less than what we pay. One could make a case that Lincoln would have served us better if he would just let them go their own way. The sharecropping that followed was even worse than slavery for people of any color. You could also make a case that the real winner of the Civil War was the South. How many present day southerners remember that FDR saved them during the depression and WWII? They certainly remember him in 1945 when he passed on to heaven. But even though they vote for idiots like Bush we’ll continue to fund them when they are in real need (However their Bush might let them rot in hell – remember Katrina). Would they do the same for the folks above the Mason-Dixon line? I wonder how many dollars came from the South to New York City following 9/11?
Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Bingo observation. I wonder just how many Southerners would be willing to see a massive increase in energy assistance for the Northeast and Midwest for home heating purposes. Those of us above the Mason-Dixon line are expected to pay market rates established by private, non-regulated corporations but their needs are supposed to be satisfied by publicly subsidized government entities mostly funded by somebody else.
Those in the South have lived well for seventy years because those elsewhere recognized an imperative to reduce the income and infrastructure imbalance which existed between the various regions of the country. They have lived nicely because they’ve been living off the welfare provided by others, whose taxes have been higher than they needed to be so Southerners could live well. Now that they’re expected to help contribute to the national coffers, they find they would rather rewrite the rules for paying taxes. They always get subsidies and everybody else pays. Huey Long would have loved it.
Only if they promise to stop calling it
“the war between the states”
You lost we get to name it.
Those unfortunate people down South should have Cheney give his buds at Halliburton a call. They did such a damn fine job with the water supply to soldiers in Iraq. I’m sure they could do the same for those died in the wool red-state folks in the Southeast.
Please don’t break threads by pasting a LOOOOONG web address into a comment. That makes it awful hard to follow a thread’s comments when it runs off into the side columns.
Please use HTML or something like Tiny URL to insert links
Thanks. I’m done now. Carry on.