Power To The People?

If you are going to be without power, summer is a pretty good time for this. On the East coast, it's still pretty much Fall so, things could be worse. Most hurricanes happen in warm weather in warm climes and, as much as they suck, once the winds pass and you can wade through flood waters in shorts and a tee-shirt, you can get on with rebuilding your life.

My personal record of 12 days without electricity happened in July several years ago. Air conditioning is one of those luxuries you really miss when it's gone, in Memphis,in July. But, you deal with it. You go outside and catch a breeze. Why be inside? There's no TV or internet. I'm gonna have to say, it wasn't that bad. My job was in Mississippi at the time. They hadn't been hit as hard by the 100 mph straight-line winds as Memphis had so they were very quickly back on line with power. I could gas up, buy cold beer, food and ice to bring home each day. A buddy of mine lived in an oddly blessed part of town that had not lost power then or during a nasty ice storm a few years earlier and I could shower at his place, charge up the phone and look at the wonder of television. That helped. For the most part though, friends and neighbors all in the same boat, sweated and drank beer each evening, wondering when the power would return. It really was a fun time, all things considered.

The folks in Jersey and up and down the East Coast are making the best of a far worse situation though and I doubt they are having too much fun. Hurricane Sandy has been all over the news. Hurricane Elvis that year in Memphis barely got a mention outside of the Mid-South. I would have thought that a city the size of Memphis, with more than 80% of it's citizens without power for days to nearly two weeks might garner more notice than a paragraph in Time magazine but, I'd be wrong. The storm sucked and did A LOT of damage but, nowhere near the death and devastation of Sandy, which, right now stands at 80 dead and 60 BILLION in damages. Yikes!

I wasn't in Memphis for the ice storm but, trying to stay warm in a disaster is far more of a challenge. I did some work for a fella whose treed lot I admired.

"You wouldn't have wanted to be here for the ice storm," he said. "Every crack of a tree in the wind..."

I could imagine. I would have gotten the hell out of the house though, somewhere- anywhere- without ice-laden tree branches overhead. They made it through.

Everything has to be politicized these days. That's the way it is, with all politics being local, Mittens Rmoney can't escape the videotape of him calling for the privatization of FEMA and emergency care. Surprisingly... he recently came off of that stance and now claims that, as CEO of America, he will support FEMA.

No shit. That must be painful for him to say. $60 BILLION in damages equals many, many more BILLIONS in profits for his buddies! By the by, I don't think private emergency companies would actually be running around with credit card swipers, rescuing only distressed folks with an ability to pay, as some foresee. Those job-creating heroes will be billing the FEDERAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS for their services and you WILL pay for it in taxes. You'll just sleep better at night (if you're of the republican persuasion) knowing that someone is making money off of this and we're that much further away from socialism. Praise the Lord!

Still, I think there will be some of the tier packaging of emergency services that we've already seen in rural areas. If you don't pay your monthly fire department bill in Tennessee for example, the Fire Department will show up to watch your house burn. While there, they will keep the fire from spreading to your neighbors house IF he paid his bill. I talked with a kid who lived outside of Little Rock, Arkansas. His local Police Department has a similar set-up. They refused to come out to his home after a burglary because he was in arrears. They did show up later that week to see if he was ready to pay.

This tea party notion of a nation will surely be a brave new world of survival, eh? Oddly expensive too. I wonder what a President/CEO Rmoney would really do with lesser performing states and citizens. Good god, let's not find out! There could be a lot of storms in our future...