But it's not hindsight rj. The money cut from the stimulus bill did exactly what a stimulus bill was designed to do... it saved or created jobs, provided money to buy stuff (which would save or create more jobs) and was a good thing for the country's well being. And really, who could have predicted that terrorists would hijack an airliner or a major hurricane would cause problems for New Orleans? That excuse is so damn tired these days. (In fact, RNC Chairman Steele used it yesterday talking about this very topic... good company you keep rj. ) Since the advent of modern medicine and particularly since the start of the AIDS age, there has been an overwhelming consensus that a pandemic is coming and that the best way to identify it early and deal with it systematically is to have a robust public health infrastructure. There was a huge flu scare in 2005. Avian flu has been a concern for years now. Yes, there are other possible disasters out there, but few as certain as the flu, which, as has been noted, each year kills ten times the number of 9-11 victims... and that's a good, average, run-of-the-mill flu! (For the record, the New Madrid fault is watched carefully by USGS.) And retroactive criticism is absolutely warranted. There is a need to point out who was playing politics with the public health infrastructure of our country and a need to make sure it doesn't happen again.
But wouldn't a lot of other things have done the samething too? Installing a lot of earthquake monitors in Missouri would create jobs. Anytime you inject new spending into the economy you are going to create jobs the problem is decisions have to be made since not everything can be funded. Are you advocating that we spend money on ever potential threat under the name of stimulus? I'm glad you brought up 9/11 because retroactive criticism on this matter does strike me as being similar to criticism of the Clinton Admin. for 9/11. Yes we know there are threats out there and these threats can be prevented but at what costs? Sometimes very hard decisions have to be made about them and I have a hard time saying that pandemic funding was so dire and so stimulative that it had to be addressed in the funding than say another likely threat of an earthquake, hurricane, forest fire, terrorist attack or etc.. We just happen to roll snake eyes and have a potential pandemic happen between the time of the passage of the stimulus package and the funding in omnibus spending bill.
I think if nobody had the forethought to include it your reasoning would make sense. Then we could look at it, and say, "it's too bad nobody thought of putting something like that in the stimulus bill, but hindsight is 20-20." But the fact of the matter is, someone did think of it, and other people thought to take it out. Events have proven that one side was right and the other was wrong in their thinking. I don't think it's unfair to give praise to those that were right in their thinking, and shine light on those that got it wrong.
Installing more monitors in Missouri would be overkill. Modernizing might add a bit, but not much. For public health agencies, we're talking thousands of jobs. Of course not. The question of a flu pandemic has always been when and not if. All those other examples are similar. We know there will be earthquakes, floods, fires, and probably a terrorist attack. We deal with the flu every year and know there are strains out there that, should they cross over to humans (as this one did), will cause major problems. You seem to want to equate a flu pandemic with a meteor striking earth or the magnetic poles suddenly shifting.
Do you think it was fair then to criticize the Clinton Admin for not taking a much stronger hand against Al Qaeda after the Embassy bombings and praise those who said he should have?
Yes, and I've said before that he deserves some of the blame. However, it is still different. There were very few saying that he should take a stronger tact then. In fact people criticized him for wag the dog tactics when he did go after Al-Qaeda. Clinton also wasn't the only problem or the biggest problem in the area of going after Al-Qaeda.
Howabout upgrading buildings in the fault region to higher earthquake standards? That would be a huge stimulus to the construction industry and would be valuable if there was another earthquake, and most predictions say there will be one, on the New Madrid fault. We have a hurricane season every year, you know out West there is a fire season, there is a flood season here in the upper Midwest (Fargo in the last 12 years has had 4 100 year floods and two of those were 500 year floods.) and there is a tornado season in much of the Midwest. Severe heatwaves have killed 1,000 in recent years. There is a whole host of problems that we know happen with relative frequency all of which could be greatly remediated with more spending. From those then should we spend money for all them? Should we spend money to build flood walls around cities in the Upper Midwest like Fargo and Bismark? Should we spend money for many more tanker plans and hire more fire fighters to fight wildland fires? Should we spend billions to build seawalls around all of the cities in hurricane prone areas? If Fargo is flooded next year should I blame the federal officials for not building a permanent flood wall as part of the stimulus package in 2009 even though Fargo was almost flooded in 2009?
So it matters how many people are criticizing? The fact is though there were people saying he should have just like in the current situation there are people saying we should have made pandemic funding part of the stimulus package and people saying we shouldn't. Its a crap shoot either way and it just happens that we rolled snake eyes on this one just like with 9/11.
