On October 6, 1950, science fiction author David Brin was born.
Brin is the author of many novels, including Startide Rising and the very popular The Postman, a fix-up set in a post-apocalyptic America. He has also written a thought-provoking book on privacy.
On Wednesday, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made headlines by saying that the federal government did not have enough funds to meet emergency needs through the hurricane season, which does not end with Helene.
Despite his careful wording, which acknowledged that it was the full hurricane season that was in doubt, but enough funds were on hand for the Helene disaster, Thursday’s assurances by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has the funds needed for ‘immediate response and recovery’ in the wake of Hurricane Helene’” were taken as a clarification. It was not. It was a mere restatement of Mayorkas’ initial point:
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
President Joe Biden said Wednesday, Oct. 2, during a briefing that it will cost billions to recover from the storm and that Congress must ensure states have adequate resources. The funding shortage has led to outrage among Republicans.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded on X.
“This is easy.
Karah Rucker, “FEMA’s spending on hurricane disasters and migrants crisis under scrutiny,” Straight Arrow News, October 4, 2024.
“Mayorkas and FEMA — immediately stop spending money on illegal immigration resettlement and redirect those funds to areas hit by the hurricane.
“Put Americans first.”
Governor Abbott’s point was headlined with startling clarity by the editors of the New York Post: “Sorry, hurricane victims: Harris-Biden already spent your relief funds on migrants.” Those editors also restated a point Paul Jacob made earlier last week: “But don’t expect any of this to rise to the PR disaster that Hurricane Katrina proved for the George W. Bush administration: Too much of the media is running interference for Harris ahead of Election Day.”
First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. Marx, its founder, concluded that the only way to abolish the class monopolies was to centralize and consolidate all industrial and commercial interests, all productive and distributive agencies, in one vast monopoly in the hands of the State. The government must become banker, manufacturer, farmer, carrier, and merchant, and in these capacities must suffer no competition. Land, tools, and all instruments of production must be wrested from individual hands, and made the property of the collectivity. To the individual can belong only the products to be consumed, not the means of producing them. A man may own his clothes and his food, but not the sewing-machine which makes his shirts or the spade which digs his potatoes. Product and capital are essentially different things; the former belongs to individuals, the latter to society. Society must seize the capital which belongs to it, by the ballot if it can, by revolution if it must. Once in possession of it, it must administer it on the majority principle, though its organ, the State, utilize it in production and distribution, fix all prices by the amount of labor involved, and employ the whole people in its workshops, farms, stores, etc. The nation must be transformed into a vast bureaucracy, and every individual into a State official. Everything must be done on the cost principle, the people having no motive to make a profit out of themselves. Individuals not being allowed to own capital, no one can employ another, or even himself. Every man will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage-payer. He who will not work for the State must starve, or, more likely, go to prison. All freedom of trade must disappear. Competition must be utterly wiped out. All industrial and commercial activity must be centered in one vast, enormous, all-inclusive monopoly. The remedy for monopolies is monopoly.
Benjamin R. Tucker, Liberty 5.16, no. 120 (March 10, 1888), pp. 2 – 3, 6.
Such is the economic programme of State Socialism as adopted from Karl Marx.
On October 5, 1910, the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown and a republic declared.
One target of California’s two new laws, the Babylon Bee, is filing suit against them.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the Bee, says that the subjects of the lawsuit, California’s AB2839 and AB265, “censor speech through subjective standards like prohibiting pictures and videos ‘likely to harm’ a candidate’s ‘electoral prospects.’… AB 2655 applies to large online platforms and requires them to sometimes label, and other times remove, posts with ‘materially deceptive content.’”
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon observes that, contrary to the wishes of “self-serving politicians [who] abuse their power to try and control public discourse and clamp down on comedy,” the right to tell jokes they dislike is secured by the First Amendment.
The vague nature of the laws would enable California officials to “police speech they disagree with,” according to ADF and Captain Obvious.
One of the laws requires a disclaimer to be attached to satirical content, a mandate that also violates the First Amendment.
The immediate incentive for fast-tracking the censorship bills into law was a parody video of Kamala Harris that includes a simulation of her voice. The video does bill itself as parody but that is obvious regardless. This video “should be illegal,” Newsom asseverated.
No, it shouldn’t.
Anyway, watch the hilarity on YouTube … while you can.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When we finally plug in the numbers, we will likely discover that the coverage difference is best explained by two factors: there are fewer reporters yet more “journalists” than ever before, and (you guessed
You see, Katrina coverage helped besmirch George W. Bush and the Republicans.
Covering Helene in the same way, or to similar extent, could hurt the incumbents (FEMA has been especially lame), and the presidential race is too close for the Democrats’ lackeys in the media to do that.
So let’s blame Helene on Trump.
Or, the low coverage on Trump. Trump’s the why of the y!
It’s just as sensible as blaming Helene on man-made climate change. Nearly every newsperson intones the plausible-sounding theory that the warmer the climate the more damaging the storms. It’s a great hypothesis. But pre-Helene studies have shown scant evidence for it.
Further, the oft-repeated line that “never before” has a hurricane reached so far inland is also untrue. Asheville, North Carolina, was destroyed by a similarly horrific hurricane in July 1916.
These are rare events. Or, perhaps, cyclical, on repeat by century.
The pity with all this theory and conjecture and political nonsense is: less coverage means less knowledge outside the hurricane zone of how horrible Helene is, and thus less sympathy elicited from the general population of generous Americans. Thus, less aid.
Making major media complicit — with the U.S. Government (FEMA, etc.) — in not helping relieve the suffering.
So maybe we should thank the climate change agenda. Without that devil to fight, we might get no coverage of Helene at all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Midjourney
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