Tornadoes of historic proportions are turning towns across the Southeast into trash heaps. Families are homeless, hundreds of people are dead, kids and families are crowded in shelters and the devastation will scar the region for years.
Americans are watching in horror and, in a sign of the times, with an uneasy sense of familiarity as well.
Footage of unprecedented disasters destroying communities in the United States and around the globe has become unsettlingly commonplace. Tragically, what has also become commonplace are disaster responses that have been disasters in and of themselves.
The failure to protect our kids isn't just a moral failure, it's a canary in the coal mine.
Simply put, if we're not prepared to protect our most vulnerable citizens, then we're not prepared as a nation.
That's why a bi-partisan Congressional coalition worked with the Bush White House to establish the National Commission on Children and Disasters in 2008. The Commission has been something of a bulldog, cutting through red tape, forcing change and stepping into the field.
Working alongside an aggressive and energized Obama Administration, the Commission helped bring the federal government a long way, with kids' needs now a priority across the federal bureaucracy.
A great deal of this positive movement is because President Obama empowered FEMA with an activist director, Craig Fugate, who is as much an advocate for disaster victims as he is an agency head.
Still, a lot of work needs to be done, particularly in the states. Save the Children's U.S. Programs issued a landmark report last year that found only 12 states (including Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi) meet minimal standards for protecting kids.
And much more work needs to be done at the federal level, including assuring an adequate stockpile of anti-radiation medicine in proper doses for children, a need made clear by the crisis in Japan.
Ironically, just as the tornadoes struck, Congress sat idly by as the Commission shut down this week, without providing a blueprint for its unfinished agenda. This happened despite the efforts and leadership of Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Thad Chochran (R-MS), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Harry Reid (D-NV) and Congresswoman Corrine Brown (D-FL).
Just as alarming, without the Commission, which I chaired, there is no empowered watchdog over the White House, Congress, FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security and over the states, where some of the biggest gaps remain.
With this aggressive advocate gone, smaller organizations will have to pick up the slack, including Save the Children's U.S. Programs. In fact, we're offering assistance to three governors in tornado-struck states.
Ultimately, we need Congress to do more, not less, when it comes to protecting America from disasters. No one expects the pace of disasters to slow and no one thinks terrorists have given up. No one, perhaps, except some members of Congress.
Bishop Larry Benfield: How the Violence of the Tornadoes Brought Churches in the South Together
Rev. Gerald L. Mansholt: A Long Journey Of Faith: Walking With Joplin's Peace Lutheran Church
Adam Hamilton: Faith, God and Tornadoes
if you are serious about this you would be pushing for the end to the bush tax cuts.
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“You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter,"
Dick Cheney to Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill who opposed the original bush tax cuts
“I believe that until we find out the costs of this war (Afghanistan) and the reconstruction that we should hold off on tax cuts.”
Senator John McCain on the original bush tax cuts.
It's heart they're short on.
Vote death and destruction. Vote Republican.
http://www.lyrics007.com/Steppenwolf%20Lyrics/Monster%20Lyrics.html
The part that always strikes me as stunningly prescient:
"The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching"
How can a song that old capture the America of today so succinctly? America hasn't changed. Perhaps it will never change...
Ok......that wins.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
Was 98 percent of the population so unproductive they failed to deserve a slice of their own work?
They "earned" it, on our backs. Every single step.
Not only do these states not contribute to the welfare of their residents (or the country for that matter), they kill people on a daily basis with these selfish, racists, anti-intellectual policies.
There is only so much the federal government can be held accountable for when they are beaten back at every front anytime recommendations for improvement come across the table. At some point, the people of these states must hold elected officials accountable.
We will be a much better country (and profitable) when we finally add social welfare to our economic equations. They will tell you that it is in there already. If it is, it does not hold nearly enough weight in the calculations.