Bacon's Rebellion

Every disaster has a name. A disaster has many names when you know the faces of its casualties. You know who suffered what. You know how people are doing. You care and you contribute – just like everybody else. Hurricane Isabel is the name of the disaster you see on TV. Everyone in my town – Poquoson, Virginia – knows the names of some of the 50 families who lost their homes and the 2000 with damage to their houses out of 4360 plus residences. Isabel means the many names for neighbors we know and care about.

One week after, most people still do not have power. Many will do without for another week or so. Yet, there is praise that no one was killed. Doesn’t that speak to our values – sacred life, injury, then property? Among property there are memories like photos/videos, sentimental values and then stuff – no matter the price.

The emergency center in the ruined Middle School Gym is full of items freely donated for those who lost the most. The government didn’t stock the long tables, the people did. Volunteers operate the center.

We have much to applaud in our civil servants. The police, fire fighters and emergency medical personnel left their loved ones to serve us all and the most dangerous time. City/County, Commonwealth and Federal Governments all do their part to help in the recovery. Their roles are clearly defined. It’s the earnestness and dedication of their performance of duty of the officials that makes them so appreciated. Again, we have much to be grateful.

One good that comes from this devastation is the sense of good will among citizens. There is the realization that we don’t live in a cruel or heartless community. Our officials, our bureaucrats, are our neighbors and they care – and some of them had losses. Our public servants serve. The workers in companies that provide us power – under government regulations – and other utilities like cable – make personal sacrifices to bring our services back.

There was no looting on our peninsula on The Peninsula. There are only two roads in and out and one was under water. Besides, the homeowner guns per capita in this Conservative community would make looting more fatal than foolish.

The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) headquarters is set up in the Christian Outreach Center (our gym) of my Baptist church home. Funny, no one is concerned about the separation of church and state. Food distribution is made at other churches in town. This suggests what safety nets we should have in Virginia and in what order.

Individuals have a personal responsibility to carry insurance. For those who don’t or don’t have enough, the General Assembly should create communities of common interests as multiple safety nets – before you get to a government agency.

First, every extended family should be able to share their resources and discount every penny they provide for relief from their taxes. Dollar for dollar it’s more efficient by a factor of 5 than going through government.

Second, church families, community of faith, should be the second safety net – and they are already for many folks.

Third, communities of co-workers – like credit unions with new capabilities – and (Fourth) neighborhoods organized into credit union-like legal entities should be able to operate tax-free to pool resources and provide relief, loans, etc. for individual members. These should be the third and fourth safety nets.

If a person has none of these – in the future after the legal entities are created – then a welfare agency of the Commonwealth or a Federal agency – for a loan, etc. – should be the fifth safety net.

But, this is a vision for the future. For today, we must deal with the helping agencies as they are. Our churches are stepping up to provide real assistance.

We should be thankful for all that is good in our government – our neighbors who share our burdens and our joy – who represents the best in us – today. Yet, we need to be certain that no government gets too powerful, because sooner or later it will represent the worst of us. Power will be abused.

Here’s to our common cause on high ground indeed. We will recover and rebuild – even better than before Isabel. We will not forget the many names of this disaster. Yet, storms don’t defeat my proud Virginian neighbors, they just set folks back a spell.

Our material losses remind me of what New York City feels after 9-11-01. Think what families across the country suffer when the flag-draped coffin comes home from WW IV. Let’s honor their loved ones and their loss with courage of conviction. Let’s pray for them. Let’s cry with them. Let us never give up.

James Atticus Bowden

Barnie is right to be angry and he is right to call the pre-Katrina preparation and the post-Katrina response a governance disaster. He deserves better responses than blogspammers which was all I saw before his two Katrina posts vanished.

While I share much of Barnie’s disgust, I hope he is even madder about the workings of contemporary government after reading our column next Tuesday. But what to do?

We can all be fairly sure that – at least for the next decade – water, food and body bags will arrive in a more timely manner. We can all hope that police officers will not turn in their badges and head for high ground. I expect all sorts of post-event things will change even if the President and the Governor are also from different political tribes the next time there is a disaster.

But what is it that an individual can do beside being mad and hoping their donations do not end up in the wrong pocket?

Here is a brief list of items. It is not intended to be exhaustive, there are books on the topic and every household should have one. These are just things to jog your thinking:

In your New Urban Region:

Go to the regional agency responsible for mobility, access and settlement patterns and ask to see the long-range plan for preventing and managing known potential catastrophes. Find out if it outlines areas to harden the defenses against wind, water, fire and earth (as in quakes, slides, subsidence, etc).

Ok, that is a trick task. There is not one single agency in any region in the United States with that responsibility. Given the current trends in destructive weather patterns and stated threats to life and infrastructure would it not be a good idea to have such an agency for every region? Our next column outlines the issues our firm examined 33 years ago for the Louisiana State Office of Planning and the suggestions we made. If these strategies had been implemented the impact of Katrina and the next Big One to hit Greater New Orleans would have been fundamentally different.

So your first region-scale task is to work for Fundamental Change in governance–think PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

In the meantime, you can address some specifics. See if the building code in your jurisdiction is “post Andrew” and if the very same code applies in all jurisdictions in the region.

You can also be sure no one tries to sell “the roads for evacuations” myth. The physics of mobility / access and the reality of storm track predictions makes building roads to escape large urban are to avoid hurricanes a non-starter. Even with a lot of warning a large percentage of any urban population has no access to private vehicles. Trying to run away from most natural phenomena or acts of terror is useless but details are beyond the scope of this note.

Unfortunately, you will not have much more luck at the Alpha Community scale than at the New Urban Region scale. No big municipality (e.g. Fairfax County) covers just one Alpha Community and no small municipality (e.g. the City of Falls Church) covers all of any one Alpha Community. See our column “Where is Northern Virginia.” 18 August 2003 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com . Again the first long-term task is governance restructuring. The same is true at the Alpha Village and Alpha Neighborhood and Alpha Cluster scales.

At the Alpha Dooryard scale there are some things you can do.

Who in your dooryard has a generator? If it is not you, have you asked the owner if you could store extra gasoline and heavy duty extension cords. How about getting together to acquire enough generators in the dooryard so that power is available for a few hours a day–not just for the ice maker but for sump pump, fans and heaters–for say 2 weeks. How about a Labor Day block party where everyone test their generators and emergency wiring plans.

What about snowblowers? Take the same steps with snow equipment as with the generators.

What about tree maintenance? Even healthy trees fall in bad storms. If there are substantial trees in your dooryard treat chain saws like generators and snowblowers.

Are there enough plastic tarps in the dooryard to cover holes in the roof and ladders long enough to reach the roofs?

You have even more control inside the dwelling unit. Is there enough water and food for you and your pets for a week? Here we slip into the area where there is a lot of good advice. Be sure it is not just advice for other people.

If you have a hard to maintain house or yard, it might be smart to think smaller and more easily maintained.

The nice thing about the dooryard scale projects is that you can drum up citizens support for taking action at the larger scales of the settlement pattern.

Together you can get after the power company to harden and defend the power grid–not just the transmission grid but also the distribution grid.

Together you can get after VDOT to unblock the culvert that backs up over the road in every thunderstorm.

If you and your clustermates have a special vulnerability think about organizing a subdivision recycling program–recycling the subdivision, not plastic bottles and aluminum cans.

That should be enough to focus your post-Katrina anger into future event security.

EMR

With Jim Bacon out of town, I will reprise the Alexander Haig role.

This open post is offered for anyone to comment on any aspect of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort and on those involved in that effort. It will not and cannot replace the posts and comments on the subject that were deleted, but Bacon’s Rebellion is not about censorship.

Naturally, I would ask that personal attacks on commenters be avoided, but the passion this terrible disaster has aroused is almost unprecendented. Consider the comments section of this post a free speech zone.

When Jim returns, we’ll sort out any long-term lessons.

It will be obvious to any readers of this blog that posts regarding Hurricane Katrina have disappeared. This deletion was noted in the comments section here, where Jim Bacon responded and said he had not removed the material.

I just got off the phone with Jim. He asked if I had deleted the posts. I did not. I would never delete another contributor’s post and don’t believe I even have the security authority to do so. I would never delete one of my own posts or comments to one of my posts without offering a corresponding post explaining my actions.

Hopefully, an explanation of the removal will be forthcoming. We owe it to our readers.

Martin Kuhn, a doctoral student in media law at UNC-Chapel Hill has stumbled across our discussion of blogging ethics and offers some ideas of his own. His code, which he recently presented at a National Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference, resembles Will Vehrs’ draft. But Kuhn touches upon some issues that we overlooked.

Promote Interactivity
● Post to your blog on a regular basis
● Visit and post on other blogs
● Respect blog etiquette
● Attempt to be entertaining, interesting, and/or relevant

Promote Free Expression
● Do not restrict access to your blog by specific individuals or groups
● Do not self censor by removing posts or comments once they are published
● Allow and encourage comments on your blog

Strive for Factual Truth
● Never intentionally deceive others
● Be accountable for what you post

Be as Transparent as Possible
● Reveal you identity as much as possible (name, photo, background info, etc.)
● Reveal your personal affiliations and conflicts of interest
● Cite and link to all sources referenced in each post

Promote the “Human” Element in Blogging
● Minimize harm to others when posting information
● Promote community by linking to other blogs and keeping a blogroll
● Build relationships by responding to e-mails and comments regularly

If you are interested in the reasoning behind these items, ask Kuhn for a copy of his paper, “Interactivity and Prioritizing the Human: A Code of Blogging Ethics,” at [email protected].

It may be weeks before we know the full extent of the catastrophe that Katrina has unleashed upon the Gulf Coast, but it’s not too soon to start thinking about the implictions for Virginia. None of our cities, thankfully, are situated below sea level, but large chunks of Hampton Roads sit only a few feet above the water line. We need to start asking, just how vulnerable is this metropolitan area, home to one fifth of the state’s population, to a hurricane of Katrina proportions? And what should we do about it?

An excellent starting point for thinking about these questions is an October 2001 article in Scientific American, Drowning New Orleans, which prophesied the New Orleans tragedy with horrifying clarity. Over the past century, the building of dikes, levies and channels to protect the city disrupted the flow of Mississippi River sediment that replenished the bayou, resulting in the widespread erosion of wetlands and barrier islands. As a consequence, New Orleans lost its natural barriers to the 20-foot storm surge. (Kudos to blogger “Subpatre” for bringing this to my attention.)

Thanks to the efforts of the Nature Conservancy, our Eastern Shore coastline remains largely intact. But development has been extensive along the Virginia Beach coastline. I can’t imagine that Virginia Beach is anywhere near as vulnerable as New Orleans — but could it be as vulnerable as Biloxi? How are our natural buffers faring? What impact are the sand replenishment programs having?

The other question we must ask: If a Force 5 hurricane bore down on Hampton Roads, could the million inhabitants of Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Cheseapeake/Portsmouth be evacuated? The scenes of gridlock on the Interstates leading out of New Orleans are not reassuring. Hampton Roads leaders have been pushing for a “third crossing” to the Peninsula, citing hurricane evacuation as one of the justifications. I have long opposed tax increases for the purpose of congestion mitigation in the region because I think there are so many other less expensive alternatives to building more roads. But I can’t think of any other way to evacuate one million people from Hampton Roads. In light of the New Orleans tragedy, the third crossing is looking more and more like a necessary investment.

THE POLITICS FACTORY: An hour in the Dog Pound with Jerry Kilgore
By Chris Graham/AFP Earlier in the summer, Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Tim Kaine made headlines by participating in a conference call with several of the Commonwealth’s top political bloggers. Next week, Republican Party nominee Jerry Kilgore is going to make some news of his own – straight from the Dog Pound. Kilgore will participate in a question-and-answer session on Steven Sisson’s Blue Dog blog …

http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$36632

* Republican candidate Jerry Kilgore has agreed to guest blog with the Blue Dog and BD blog members on September 6th, next Tuesday, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. The Kilgore campaign has requested that I not screen questions or topics.

Check out upcoming book: Steven Sisson’s Adventures in Warnerland
www.authorstevensisson.com

Maybe I just haven’t noticed it before, but the Washington Post online edition now can show what bloggers are saying about its articles. Take a look at this article on credit reports, right hand side, half way down. This is a great promotion for bloggers–I don’t know what’s in it for the Post, other than showing how much interest is generated by their stories.

As an aside, the info about the impact and problems associated with the free credit report program is an interesting study in the law of unintended consequences. In my day job, I suspect I’ll receive lots of calls about it from Virginia citizens looking to get a report, frustrated in trying, or feeling ripped off.

According to VTrans2025, Virginia faces a $108 billion revenue shortfall over the next 20 years to pay for the state’s tax-and-build, sprawl-inducing transportation policy. That averages out to $5.4 billion a year. Meanwhile, the price of gasoline has risen about $1 per gallon over the past year, sucking another $5 billion a year out of Virginians’ pockets. In a post on the Road to Ruin blog, I argue that our current transportation policy is sending Virginia straight to the poorhouse.

When we have a natural disaster, it’s easy to see why being a governor is the best steppingstone to being president. Governors face real crisises and can’t just talk about solutions or assign blame. They have to act and act quickly. Governors Blanco and Barbour are distinguishing themselves in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and we should be proud that our governor is stepping up to help them.

Governor Warner is taking a variety steps to help with the devastation on the Gulf Coast. From a just issued comprehensive press release, he’s “activated the Virginia Emergency Operations Center to track relief efforts and offers of assistance from Virginia state agencies, other entities, and citizens.” A number of state assets, including equipment from the State Police, VDOT, and the Department of Forestry are being considered for deployment to the Gulf region. Virginia’s manufactured housing industry has been asked to ramp up production. He’s asked Virginians to conserve. It’s an impressive list of potential ways Virginia can help Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, as we would hope they would help us if the situation were reversed.

As a state employee, I’m proud of my colleagues who are shouldering the hard work of providing assistance. I only wish that I was being called upon to do something, but I will have to be content with helping privately. If I could make one suggestion to Governor Warner, it would be to figure out a way to have more state employees in non-critical jobs trained to help in some capacity when a national disaster occurs. I could man a phone, load a truck, or do any number of things to relieve/augment emergency management personnel.

Sean Tubbs’ podcast on the Bloggers’ Summit is up on his website, the Charlottesville Podcasting Network.

“I just received my copy of “Notes From the Sausage Factory,” edited by Barnie Day and Becky Dale, and I haven’t been able to put it down yet.

I’ll have a full review when I finish the book, but I can already tell that it’s a Virginia political junkie’s dream. Go buy it now. “

— Commonwealth Conservative

One of Gov. Mark R. Warner’s final acts as governor will be to present his version of a “transparent” budget understandable to the public. Buried in his speech to the General Assembly joint money committees Monday, he previewed the budget he will submit in December.

Jettisoning the program structure which has existed since the 1970’s, the new budget will be organized around “the identifiable services that each agency provides.” Within the budget bill and budget document, each service will be associated with its related funding, and will provide quantifiable objectives and performance measures. All information will be accessible to the public through the Web.

Including performance measures with the budget numbers will allow citizens to appraise the program’s effectiveness. For example, the governor noted,

If our objective is to reduce the number of repeat juvenile offenders, we will be able to tell what the Department of Juvenile Justice spends on that service, and how many juveniles are convicted of a new misdemeanor or felony. If our objective is to help welfare recipients obtain jobs, we will be able to tell how much the Department of Social Services spends on training, and we will measure how many welfare recipients are employed six months later.

Budget transparency represents a big step towards public accountability. We look forward to seeing what the governor comes up with.

The Road to Ruin blog has the scoop on an important transportation story. Former Gov. Gerald Baliles has proposed a network of tolling stations on Virginia Interstates that could raise $1 billion a year to fund maintenance and improvements. Read the details here.

First, Washington Post Virginia political reporters Michael Shear and Chris Jenkins started a blog (Race to Richmond); now, the Fairfax Extra section of the Post has started a “community blog.”

The blog’s maiden post yesterday generated a healthy 27 comments. Several commenters wondered when Maryland communities would get a blog. Most of the rest wanted to debate the tenure of Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald Connolly.

Will Arlington, Alexandria, Loudoun, and Prince William get blogs? Is the Post in the blog business for the long haul, or are they just experimenting?