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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nYet, as the Eastern seaboard gets pounded with one of the biggest storms in history, and local, state and federal government are working to mitigate damage as the storm progresses, the nation is still coming to grips with making a choice next week over what exactly the role of government should be. <\/p>\n
Is it to help those who need it the most? Or should we cut government down to a size where it could be drowned, perhaps in the 14 foot waves flooding Manhattan’s Battery Park?<\/a> Maybe, at a supposed cost savings to the federal government, emergency services could be contracted out like the Iraq War in the early 2000’s. Or maybe like in the case in Tennessee<\/a>, where fire fighters stood by and watched one man’s house burn down and didn’t turn the hose on to put it out because he didn’t pay his local emergency services fee.<\/p>\n
Emergency management is not a utility. It’s not your gas, water or garbage bill. It is the direct response for when an entire region is struck by calamity. Having worked in municipal public works in three different departments, in the event there is a local disaster, emergency response is your underlying duty when you get employed by city government. My job’s ID badge says on the back: “All San Francisco employees are designated by the State and City law as ‘Disaster Service Workers’. In the event of a declaration of emergency, any employee of the city and county of San Francisco may be assigned to perform activities which promote the protection of public health and safety or the preservation of lives and property.”<\/em><\/p>\n
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When I was living in San Francisco’s Marina district — the section of town hardest hit during the Loma Prieta 7.1 magnitude earthquake of 1989 — my entire neighborhood had no power or running water for a week. Aftershocks were coming three to five times a day. Knowing there were shelters to go to if our homes were uninhabitable, food and water if we ran out, that public works was out shoring up buildings so they wouldn’t collapse, and that there were places to go to get federal financial assistance from FEMA for losses was a tremendous relief.<\/p>\n
Our losses were on a relatively small scale compared to the losses inflicted now and to be suffered in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Yet at this moment, the very question about diminishing the role of government — thanks to the Tea Party — is part of our current political discourse. The people pulling their Tea Party strings in Congress are also paying big dollars this election for initiatives to deny state and local public employees including fire fighters, police and other emergency workers their right to unionize and have a political voice. <\/p>\n
One of California’s state initiatives on the ballot — Proposition 32 — is proposing in essence to do in California<\/a> what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin. I guess these wealthy backers trying to break the backs of public employees can simply airlift themselves out of the region and land safely somewhere out in the Caribbean where their fifth home is located. They don’t give a shit about us, and are willing to pay to codify what will eventually become privatized public services across the states, all from the savings of public employee salaries stripped free from government budgets. And they will probably profit from it.<\/p>\n
Government’s black eye in the view of a large swath of the public is not entirely undeserved. Yes, covertly and directly, bad things have been inflicted on us by forces of government, and we do have cause to distrust it as a whole. You can look at what happened recently with the government’s too-cozy relationships with big business — the contracting out of warfare in Iraq, the management of environmental disasters such as Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, and for the West Coast the silence behind the environmental aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima disaster — and it can cause you to grow quite cynical about government if you aren’t already feeling that way.<\/p>\n
But this, as we have said time and again, is what government HAS become. What we took for granted as public service has eroded over time. Metaphorically and literally polluted by private interests, greased palms of dirty politicians, and bald and blatant grabs for control over natural resources, government has become a mixed bag of policies that are too qualified and compromised now to make a larger impact on the public good.<\/p>\n
What we have taken for granted for so long is the age-old concept that government is there for the larger good of society. That government’s role is as the main force for development and maintenance of public infrastructure. That role of government is a concept as ancient as the time of the Roman emperors who built roads, bridges and aqueducts for the health and welfare of the people and the empire, as was the care of the public affected by natural disaster. This was so that their society could function at its fullest, protecting public health and safety and preserving lives and property<\/em>.<\/p>\n
During this time of climate crisis and calamity, when storms like Sandy and last year’s Irene<\/a> are becoming more norm than anomaly, destruction will be greater and more costly over time. To consider diminishing government’s role this election year when so many will be so much in need is no longer a matter of a loss of compassion. It is a loss of reason. Given the portents of wind and rain, what we take for granted — that we have time to experiment with the public’s safety if we decide to diminish government’s role in handling and securing it — is nothing short of insanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a terrible irony shadowing the catastrophic events of today in the Northeast. The damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy, the subsequent casualties and the aid and rescue responses by FEMA, local and state emergency management is a not-too-subtle reminder of one of the primary roles of government: when faced with calamity, the government is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}