America’s New Job Creator – The Hoax that Just Keeps on Giving

"This will cover your house…You will not survive all this storm surge."

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R-FL) urging evacuation just before Irma slammed into the southern reaches of his state.

New infrastructure jobs:

 Construction jobs (that cannot be sent overseas):

Travel and hospitality jobs:

Better retail sales:

Fixer-upper Investment Opportunities:

A huge boost in new car sales:

No one can say for sure if there are more hurricanes by reason of global warming. But it is scientifically proven that the increasing the seawater surface temperature makes those inevitable tropical storms (hurricanes included) a whole lot more intense. Hurricanes Harvey (warmer Gulf water) and Irma (warmer Atlantic water) reflect that result – part of a litany of “once in half a millennium” storms that have battered the United States over the last decade and a half. For more details on how hurricanes form, see my September 6^th blog: Size Really Does Matter.

Donald Trump clearly did not cause these horrific storms, but his policies and reprioritizing the use of coal and other fossil fuels as our primary energy sources, decimating of the EPA and its pollution standards, considering reducing automotive emission and mileage standards and withdrawal from the Paris climate change accords are going to make the impact of global warming that much worse.

I am reminded of right-wing talk show host, Rush Limbaugh – joined with Donald Trump as a leading climate change denier – who claimed on his September 6^th broadcast that liberal media was clearly behind the spread of panic over an approaching hurricane simply for political gain: “[There] is a desire to advance this climate change agenda, and hurricanes are just one of the fastest and best ways to do it… You can accomplish a lot by just creating fear and panic. You don’t even need a hurricane to hit anywhere.” Palm Beach, Florida resident Limbaugh later and reluctantly evacuated to safer ground.

Those two late summer hurricanes alone will ultimately cost the United States dozens and dozens of lives as well as several hundred billion dollars, with a significant portion of those damages picked up by taxpayers. Just fixing what was damaged, reinforcing and upgrading building codes but otherwise failing to deal with the underlying cause… are not remotely enough.  Let’s just say this could be the new normal. I wonder what the Houston and South Florida real estate markets will look like in a couple of months. Which lenders will continue to provide long-term mortgages for low-lying coastal communities? Who will want to live in these hard-weather corridors? Will government flood insurance be available to obviously dangerously located buildings?

As with the Trump administration’s federal support for Houston, “Trump has offered the full resources of the federal government to Florida and the affected states, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters during a visit to FEMA's Washington headquarters on Sunday. [9/10]” AOL. Com, September 10^th. The states impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, part of that Gulf/Southeast Atlantic U.S. warm water system that generates most U.S. hurricanes, all voted for Donald Trump. That can’t matter, right? It did for Superstorm Sandy with droves of Republicans voting against federal aid because the impact was mostly felt in blue states. Still? Seriously? A final note.

In the days around Labor Day, fire trucks from neighboring California and Washington streamed into fire-prone Oregon to fight 24 wildfires. Oregon accounts for about one third of the “scorched acres” fires that increasingly impact the Western states. The U.S. Forest Service participated in the relatively small numbers as is usually does, but the Eagle Creek Fire along the locks on the Columbia River Gorge (near Portland) was soon raging into a mega-disaster. Thousands of homes had been evacuated (some lost). But that wasn’t the big fire.

The Chetco Bar blaze near Brookings (on Oregon’s south coast) was breaking records as the largest wildfire in the state, having consumed an estimated 180,000 acres. Oregon desperately needed additional forces to contain these massive and devastating fires. “But if there is wildfire management to second-guess, Oregon’s Democratic governor [Kate Brown] would direct it at the Trump Administration and its response to a request she made last month. ‘I talked with the federal authorities two weeks ago, asking for additional federal assistance, I was told point-blank ‘no’,’ said Brown.” OPB, September 6^th (Oregon Public Broadcasting). Donald Trump lost Oregon to Hillary Clinton in the November election.  Oh Donald, tax cuts – less money for the big fix this country needs at every level – cannot be your going-forward priority… but you are so desperate to get something big passed with your name on it…

I’m Peter Dekom, and we will stand behind our brothers and sisters who suffered hurricane damage in Texas and South Florida with no agenda based on red or blue… our agenda has to be a uniform response: red, white and blue!