Barrasso and Enzi among Republican hypocrites on Hurricane Sandy relief bill

From ThinkProgress:

When the Senate passed the long-delayed $50.5 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package Monday, 36 Republicans voted against the bill. But of the 32 no-votes from Senators who are not brand-new members, at least 31 came from Republicans who had previously supported emergency aid efforts following disasters in their own states. 

While opponents complained that the bill contained too much unrelated “pork,” each of the 30 of them who had been present earlier this month when the Senate passed the much-smaller $9 billion Sandy relief bill also voted no. All five top members of the Senate Republican leadership voted no on both. 

Most incredible among the no voters were Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Those two had not just backed disaster aid in the past — they actually sought disaster aid for their own states for relief from Hurricane Sandy. And Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) endorsed disaster relief for snow storms damages in Arkansas just four days before casting his “nay” vote. 

The “hypocritical” list includes: 

John Barrasso (R-WY), Republican Policy Committee Chair: Requested disaster aid after flooding.
Mike Enzi (R-WY): Requested disaster relief after flooding.

Not one of the opponents has co-sponsored Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) “Extreme Weather Prevention and Resilience Act” which would encourage Congress to “prepare and protect communities from extreme weather, sea-level rise, drought, flooding, wildfire, and other changing conditions exacerbated by carbon pollution” and “reducing pollution, promoting the use of clean energy sources, and improving energy efficiency.”

We'll see how this Senatorial duo reacts the next time flash floods swamp Kaycee or Lander, wildland fires burn their way through thousands of acres of pine-beetle-ravaged Wyoming forest, a tornado lifts roofs off houses in Wright, drought wipes out Big Horn Basin crops, a plague of locusts descend on Wheatland or a 100-year blizzard inundates Cheyenne.

Here's the complete Senate roll call vote:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=1&vote=00004

Smoke and Black Hawks and history in the air over Mount Rushmore

We cruised up to Mount Rushmore National Memorial yesterday afternoon. It's a 27-mile drive from Rapid City past a weird assortment of tourist attractions -- sprawling waterslide parks, Bear Country USA, Reptile Gardens ("See Maniac, America's Giant Crocodile"), Old MacDonald's Farm petting zoo ("Pig races!"), Black Hills Maze, Sitting Bull Crystal Caverns, etc. Most are closed for the season. A few are closed for good.

Anyway, we got to Mount Rushmore. I've been there but my wife Chris has not. I took the kids there 13 years ago when my son was at Boy Scout summer camp near Custer. It's an impressive place. It took 14 years and 400 workers and a million dollars and tons of dynamite to carve the faces of four presidents into Harney Peak Granite. Why bother, you might ask. But therein lies the tale. Local promoters thought it would be a great celebration of American freedom and a terrific tourist attraction. They were right about the latter. The former is still being debated, which seems fitting. The ranger at the visitor center said there was a recent History Channel documentary that called Mt. Rushmore a "testimonial to white privilege." Or maybe that was "testament to white privilege." He seemed upset by the idea. But you have to admit that those are some big white faces up there on a mountain that is still claimed by High Plains Indian tribes. I'm not privy to the current state of white-Indian relations regarding Paha Sapa. But it's always been testy, not to mention bloody.

We took many photos. We walked the Presidential Trail. A beautiful day in the Black Hills. As we made our way from one interpretive placard to another, we heard the sounds of a helicopter. Looked up to see a Black Hawk hovering nearby. We wondered if it was some sort of spring weekend military demonstration. Or maybe a visit by a V.I.P.? A president, perhaps? But we would have heard about that.  

The Black Hawk dipped behind the trees, hovered, and the buzzed off. We forgot about it until we got back to our car in the parking lot and saw a plume of smoke on a nearby ridge. Uh oh. The Rapid City Journal's cover story Saturday morning talked about the extreme fire danger caused by unseasonably warm temps and high winds. On our return to Rapid City, we passed fleets of police cars and firefighting trucks blocking a side road. Smoke was in the air. So was a Black Hawk.

Good news. The authorities jumped on the fire and put it out quickly. The cause appears to be target shooters, as shotgun shells littered the charred ground and targets were affixed to surrounding rocks. Not sure what to say about that. There are many things one can do safely in a tinder-dry forest. Discharging firearms is not one of them. 

Brownie: "Feets don't fail me now!"

Sometimes life dishes up some ironies that you have to share.

Colorado Media Matters blog reports that former FEMA Director Michael Brown (a.k.a. "Brownie") was one of the residents evacuated from a Boulder County wildfire in Colorado this past week. The CMM web site reports that Brownie’s role in previous disasters was overlooked when he was interviewed on KOA radio.

On the January 8 broadcast of Colorado's Morning News on Newsradio 850 KOA, co-anchors Steffan Tubbs and April Zesbaugh interviewed Michael Brown, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security's Division for Emergency Preparedness and Response -- previously the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) -- about his evacuation due to a major wildfire in Boulder County. Neither news anchor mentioned Brown's leadership role in the federal government's much-maligned response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005.

As The Washington Post noted in a January 8 online article:

Former FEMA Administrator Michael Brown, a.k.a. "Brownie" was among approximately 11,000 residents of Boulder, Colo. evacuated yesterday amid raging wildfires that have scorched at least 1,000 acres. After his eagerly anticipated resignation in Sept. 2005, the poster boy for the Bush administration's botched response to Hurricane Katrina moved back to the Boulder area, where he once served as legal counsel to the Arabian Horse Association and now operates a disaster consulting business.

You can read sections of the KOA transcript, and find other meaty insights on the Front Range media scene, at http://colorado.mediamatters.org/items/200901080002.

Rain needed in land of little rain

We drove west out of Laramie along I-80 into a landscape wrapped in a fire-spawned haze. We don't get much fog so when the mountains aren't visible, I suspect storms. If only that were the case. We need storms, and not the dry, windy type that produce only lightning that ignites still more fires. We need rain.

Wyoming doesn't have the fires that its neighbors do in Idaho and Montana (see NIFC map). These are the larger fires, but you can see that WYO has largely been spared up until now. But the forecast reveals a week of little rain in this land of little rain. Cheyenne is already down three inches of moisture for the year. We started July with a couple of good thunderstorms, but it's been dry for weeks.

We were heading west to get out of the high plains heat. First we had to drive through even more high plains heat. In Saratoga, which is just west of the Snowy Range, we swam in the town pool. Later, my daughter took her dog for a walk in the North Platte River that runs through the town. Water levels are down, so you can walk right across it, if you want. I didn't see a single raft or flat-bottomed fishing boat floating the Platte, unusual for this time of year. Ten years ago, when my son was a Boy Scout, we had to wait until August to canoe this section of the Platte. We had Tenderfoot canoeists with us, and we felt that rapids spawned by high water levels would swamp them. Even in August that year, we hit one set of rapids that tipped two canoes. On this July day, we would be out of the boats half the time, portaging over shallow spots.

"Water Restriction" signs were posted on all Saratoga businesses. Outdoor watering of lawns and plants is forbidden until further notice. The town's 100-foot-deep water tank, usually at the 80- to 90-foot level this time of year, was at 12 feet. The town draws its water from the Platte, so you can see the problem. Still, here we were, swimming away in the pool while tomatoes wilt in the heat. Better tomatoes that the tourists, eh? The season is short.

We drove back to Cheyenne over the Snowies. We kept the car window down, anxious for some mountain coolness. Very few cars on the road. A few cattle trucks and an ocassional haywagon. Can't avoid the RVs this time of year, but we didn't get stuck behind a single one. We picnicked on the shores of Lake Louise. Not exactly on the shore, as swarms of mosquitoes greeted us. Not wishing to consume mosquito carcasses with our food, anxious about West Nile Virus, we rolled up the windows and ate in the car.

A bit later, we watched the sunset from the lookout at the top of the pass. Couldn't see the Colorado mountains because of the smoke. But the particulates in the atmosphere made for glorious swatches of reds and oranges across the Wyoming sky. The West may be burning up, but it will go down in a blaze of color.