Mississippi has a history of natural disasters, including hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and, on rarer occasions, ice and snowstorms. From the New Madrid seismic zone, scientists say there is a 10% chance of an earthquake being felt in the state in the next half-century.
As a matter of record, a WalletHub.com report relying on Census and
National Centers for Environmental Information ranked Mississippi first
among states most impacted by natural disasters from 1980-2023. That
same report ranked Mississippi 10th for the most
climate disasters causing $1 billion in damage—tied for first with four
other states.
Mississippi has been at least part of the scene of some of the greatest
natural disasters in U.S. history – the Great Flood of 1927, Hurricanes
Katrina in 2005, Camille in 1969 and Cheniere Caminada in 1893, and two
of the worst tornadoes in U.S. history in
Natchez in 1840 and Tupelo in 1936.
With documented evidence, much has been made of the amazing resilience
of Mississippi survivors of natural disasters. From the movement of
refugees from the flood waters of the Mississippi River and Yazoo River
basins in 1937 to Tupelo’s recovery and rebuilding
after a major tornado during the Depression to Mississippians helping
themselves and others after Hurricane Katrina.
I thought of that often grim yet inspiring legacy in our state as I
reviewed stories of federal disaster relief and recovery funding
grinding to a standstill during the recent presidential election.
Republicans on Capitol Hill accused the Biden Administration
of squandering Federal Emergency Management Agency funds intended for
victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton on housing for illegal migrant
workers – as had been suggested during the campaign by now
President-elect Donald Trump.
FEMA and the White House categorically denied the allegations, calling
them “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.” However, the partisan
debate slowed the provision of assistance to storm victims from Florida,
Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina.
While the Senate seems to have reached a consensus, the House
negotiations have stalled amid GOP calls to “pare down” appropriations
for items they believe are outside the scope of true disaster relief.
Amid the scene playing out over the Helene-Milton appropriations from
Congress, it is impossible not to reflect on a similar December scene on
Capitol Hill in 2005. Congress was wrestling with reaching a consensus
on a bill to provide relief to victims of Hurricane
Katrina in Mississippi and Louisiana. With Republican President George
W. Bush in the White House and the GOP in charge of both houses of
Congress, there was then as now strong House (and some Senate) GOP
opposition to funding a Katrina relief package as robust
as was being sought by then-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and
then-U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, the Republican chairman of the Senate
Appropriations Committee.
Cochran finally balked at additional negotiations. After putting decades
of goodwill and personal relationships on the line without success,
Cochran notified the leading appropriators working on a holiday deadline
that nothing – including the vital defense
appropriations bill – would advance through the committee until the
Katrina appropriations reached an acceptable compromise.
The result was that Cochran obtained $29 billion in Katrina relief for
Gulf Coast states impacted by Katrina, including exclusively for
Mississippi an unprecedented $5 billion in discretionary Community
Development Block Grant money. That provision allowed
the state to provide homeowner grants for rebuilding. It saved the
Mississippi Gulf Coast.
After Cochran and Barbour achieved that “Mississippi Miracle” in
focusing Congress on disaster relief (against opposition from “Up East”
states), Superstorm Sandy struck New York and New Jersey in 2012. Their
leaders seeking relief funds from Congress encountered
a new level of opposition from House GOP conservatives and several
advocacy groups who argued that the Sandy relief appropriations were
“laden with pork.”
The process of appropriating congressional disaster relief funds has
never been the same since Mississippi played hardball in 2005 over
Katrina. The current obstacles to getting the Helene and Milton packages
passed trace directly to the 2024 presidential election
and old scores that some are still trying to settle in Congress since
2005.
As representatives of Mississippi on Capitol Hill who will likely need
disaster relief again soon enough, Mississippi’s congressional
delegation would do well to recall that history.
19 comments:
Yep, that GO zone money funded two shopping malls 180 miles north of where the hurricane hit. Thanks Haley!
Luckily, Mississippi didn't suffer a major natural disaster like Katrina under the Biden administration.
But what are the chances that an asteroid hits Mississippi sometime in the next 500 years? Get your milk and bread now while supplies last.
YGTBSM! "...there is a 10% chance of an earthquake being felt in the state in the next half-century." BFD! On the west coast we felt earthquakes multiples times per year. BFD!
I smell a scam to funnel taxpayer's money to friends of politicians.
8:09 am That's true and party hacks got the school trailer money when we had a company here.
Worse, more than a few insurance companies were less than helpful especially for those damaged by power outages and roof damage farther north.
But, without out the funds, the coast couldn't have recovered as well as it did and you've forgotten the Mississippi towns and cities further north needed some of those funds as well. Like Helene, the ravages of a hurricane don't stop at the coastline.
What happened to the free market? What happened to pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? Why are conservatives so quick to the hog trough for themselves when they don’t want marginalized people to even have a trough at all?
The disaster is not so natural when it is caused by your own environmentally destructive behaviors!
@9:38 AM Mississippi "conservatives" are re-branded DixieCrats. Similar to how many of them are Baptists with DUIs.
Learn something Wokester....
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of fucking Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!
We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.
The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”
Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin
Cool your jets, boomer. Carlin has been dead a long time. Absolutely nothing he ever said is relevant today. Microplastics are 100% verified to be destroying the fertility of all living creatures on this planet. Also, Carlin knew nothing about man made disasters such as the the Corp of Engineers flooding in South Mississippi and earthquakes caused by Hydrolic fracking.
Thanks 10:30 AM, I enjoyed reading that.
Come on, Sid. It was not "partisan debate" that slowed the FEMA assistance. It was real people, with real power and authority, who made real and conscious decisions. They either decided not to help people, or they were instructed not to help them. Ask those on the ground in North Carolina about it. If you're going to discuss it, then discuss it fairly.
I have friends who suffered no loss of revenue but who enjoyed the "Go" money checks. Much like the corporate welfare that was PPP.
10:45 is spreading the same fear that all environmentalist have spread since that religion started. They have been wrong every time.
10:45 said, "Microplastics are 100% verified to be destroying the fertility of all living creatures on this planet."
So no more spaying and neutering dogs and cats. The next time a single woman gets pregnant she can look to 10:45 for child support. She trusted 10:45, if she gets pregnant, 10:45 can pay all the bills.
Judging by the asinine replies I deduce that @12:01's and @12:11's parent's similarly ignored the lead warnings as well.
Much like the corporate welfare that was PPP.
Jackson Free Press had $119,000 of that corporate welfare forgiven. The Barksdalers wet their beaks to the tune of $257,500, also forgiven. Its a liberal family affair.
Speaking as a boomer, I am old enough to remember when Earth was just about to enter a deep freeze period if we didn't do something about thr climate and do it quickly likerightnow!
As a Millennial, I am old enough to know about Climate Cycles Which is how it all works. But climate cycles can hardly fix the red algae from crop runoff, and other human-made disasters.
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