Michael Swickard
This last week was interesting because I asked in my previous column how government should plan for the threat of a terrorist nuclear explosion on American soil. Some readers denied a terrorist nuclear attack is possible. No explanation; just said it is not possible. They declared it a waste of government time and money to prepare for such a threat.
Waste of time?
That is all that governments have – time. How the Legislature spends its time says much about its priorities and our future.
An example is the current legislative session in Santa Fe, which opened a little more than a week ago and will close after 30 days at noon. The time will pass and then everyone goes home. They will get lots done that we citizens will either not like or feel is a waste of time.
Besides preparing for disasters, what New Mexico needs is more jobs. Santa Fe likes to create more jobs by hiring more state workers, but that does not increase New Mexico’s wealth. The only way to grow more jobs in our state is for state government to provide the rules and regulations that increase productivity in the private sector.
The Legislature must improve the capitalistic landscape since it can only spend more money when the capitalistic landscape produces more money. You cannot stand in a bucket and lift it off of the ground by tugging on the handle.
How should we view it when our elected leaders spend time on things for which we citizens have no priority? Somehow we must impress upon our leaders what is important to us and try to help them see what we citizens want.
How should our government spend its time?
Back to preparing for a terrorist nuclear bomb in an American city. Two questions: First, how do these naysayers know terrorists could not blow up El Paso with a nuclear bomb? This is an issue since Las Cruces would experience nuclear fallout and the loss of government services in the crisis.
Second, how should our government spend its time if not protecting citizens from outrages and disasters? I brought up the fact that New Orleans had 40 years to plan for Hurricane Katrina but not the will to do so. It was not if the town was going to be devastated, only when.
While there should be, there is no wall of shame in New Orleans for the names of every politician in Louisiana who had all of those years to prepare New Orleans for a Category Five Hurricane and did not. In fact, they even took money set aside to shore up vulnerabilities from a storm surge moving through Lake Pontchartrain, which is exactly what breached the levees.
They used the millions of dollars set aside to deal with this vulnerability in other projects unrelated to disaster preparedness because environmentalists objected to the Lake Pontchartrain storm surge plan.
Likewise, California is just one major magnitude nine or larger earthquake away from having total devastation. The infrequency of several hundred years between these catastrophic events means a number of generations will never face that moment of extreme devastation. But some will.
Here in New Mexico there are a number of disasters locally and statewide just waiting to happen, and our political leaders are fighting over things like transparency in government as if that is the end-all and be-all. Yes, I would like the politicians to be less scummy, but I would tolerate any of them and their naked power and money grab if in the middle of lining their pockets they would make sure the state is truly ready to withstand a terrorist nuclear attack and all other kinds of disasters.
Suffering equally?
The most disturbing response to last week’s column was people who said that no disaster planning and preparation should take place so that each person, regardless of wealth, status or privilege, would suffer equally. Those people were more interested in the social justice issue so that no one suffered less than their neighbor.
This notion of social justice has been around a long time. I remember when I was in high school and got caught chewing gum in class teachers would say that I should have brought enough gum for everyone in class. I brought enough one time to test them and they really did not mean what they said. No one got to chew gum. So if I chew gum during a disaster, must I have enough gum stored so that everyone gets some?
What do we do with citizens who prepare for disaster while other citizens decide to not prepare and hope the government takes care of them? How to we arbitrate that they will be suffering due to their lack of planning and preparation. Should the rule be that if you prepare you must share what you have with those who do not? Any answer to that question is better than no one even thinking about it.
Plan however you wish for disaster. If you are wrong you can likely reabsorb your investment. But if I am right and there is a big event and you are standing outside my house hungry, thirsty and covered with nuclear fallout, I will not remind you that you were warned. To the limit of my ability I will even try to help.
I really do hope I am wrong about the danger of a terrorist exploding a nuclear bomb in our country.
Swickard is a weekly columnist for this site. You can reach him at michael@swickard.com.
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