New Legislation For Dumbasses

Making Stupidity More Affordable


Back in the old days (good or otherwise) I think that people had enough sense to manage their own risks based on their own abilities to deal with them.

I imagine that Ponce de Leon, Christopher Columbus, and British General Oglethorpe found that slogging their way through the mosquito, snake, and Gator infested marshes and lowlands of Florida and Coastal Georgia in past centuries was quite a deterrent to progress, not to mention having to survive sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a wooden sailboat using a Sextant to find your way rather than radar and a GPS navigation system just to get here.

The people that followed in their path in the past century and built vacation homes or otherwise settled to live on these same coasts took not only their own lives into their own hands, but they paid cash to build simple “cottages” and other structures that could survive the onslaught of the weather found living in areas that were “hurricane prone.”

There was no such thing as “building codes” and “flood insurance” to protect them and their little slices of paradise, so if they got washed or blown away they either survived and rebuilt at their own expense, else they faded away into an asterisk of history.

Not so today.

Everyone seems to think that they have a God given right to buy a piece of land inches from the high tide line, pile up some lumber, cinder blocks, and stucco, install a few elevators, and then have the GOVERNMENT not only insure their bodily safety when the next hurricane comes knocking on their back door, but also underwrite their ability to live a normal life within 24 hours of the storm’s passage.

In defense of this assertion, I tender this news article:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.--Hundreds of gas stations must have access to generators and be able to quickly get the pumps, freezers and credit card machines running after a hurricane under legislation Gov. Jeb Bush signed Thursday.

The bill was designed to ease one of the most vexing hurricane aftermath problems: an inability for people to get around because they can't get gas at stations with no power.

The measure was one of several hurricane preparedness bills the governor signed at the state emergency operations center on the first day of the new hurricane season. l

Many of the requirements, however, won't go fully into effect until 2007.

The gas station measure requires that owners with 10 or more stations in a county have a generator available and be able to move it to where it is needed. The more stations the owner has, the more generators they'll need to have ready to put in place after a hurricane…

Jim Smith, president of the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association, which represents mostly small gas stations, said station owners weren't thrilled that some would now be required to have generators available. But he said many were already getting them on their own anyway because it's good business…

The bill also requires the owners or operators of any building, including condominiums, that are at least 75 feet high to be able to run at least one elevator on generator power and be able to power the fire alarm system. Some high-rise residents found themselves stuck on upper floors with no elevator to get down after last year's Hurricane Wilma hit South Florida.

What total, complete socialist government CRAPPOLA.

Doesn’t anyone but me see that it’s not the government’s job to tell gas station owners that they need generators?

Using one of my favorite arguments let me point out that no where in the US Constitution do I see the words “life, liberty, and a continuous supply of unleaded high octane gasoline.”

It just isn’t there, Folks.

I admit that having a few gas stations around that can operate when the electrical grid is down would be a nice CONVIENCE, but as to it being required by LAW…I say that’s going a bit too far.

If I owned a gas station anywhere within 150 miles of the coast in the southeastern US, I’d already be looking into putting in my own generator and I wouldn’t need Governor Bush to tell me to do it.

It would just be good business sense.

We bought a 7.5 KW generator after Hurricane Opal trashed our farm in south Alabama in October of 1995 and we have it mounted on a concrete pad inside a wooden enclosure adjacent to the garage, hard wired into my Mother’s house so she can run things like a little AC, lights, the fridge and freezer, etc.

All you do is turn off the main breaker, push the start button, and you’ve got lights. The only problem is that the phone is probably still out and a tree might have fallen on the satellite dish in the mean time.

The farm is 110 miles north of the coastline of the Florida panhandle, but it didn’t take any more incentive than surviving direct strikes by two substantial hurricanes in twenty years (with 100+ MPH winds) to convince us to spend the thousands of dollars it took to make the improvement.

We didn’t need an act of the state legislature to protect ourselves.

It’s actually a bitch to keep enough gasoline around the house to operate a generator beyond a few days and if I had it to do over again I think that we’d look at a propane powered engine, but the one time in the past ten years that the generator has been used, it paid for itself quite well.

As I see it, all the state of Florida is doing with this type legislation is ensuring that more and more people are going to elect to stay put in the face of an oncoming hurricane rather than evacuating. Further, more and more people are going to continue to move into the hazard zones and the problem is only going to continue to get worse in the future.

I say that the federal flood insurance program—once considered insurance for rich people—is now insurance for stupidity. If people were forced to rely strictly on private insurance, Florida and other coastal real estate values would drop precipitously and that is what this debate is really all about.

Florida is actually facing a so-called insurance ‘crisis” because, after forcing insurers to take on a certain percentage of coastal risks in order to do any business in the state, many are going bankrupt or otherwise ending coverage in the state after the past two years of losses.

And the thing about requiring building owners to have elevators that operate on generators…what’s up with that?

I don’t want to get near an elevator during or after a hurricane. I suppose that they are worried about all of the elderly people and lard assed fat people riding around in “scooters” that are too stupid or otherwise unable to move with the approach of an oncoming storm.

Let me say THIS about THAT.

I you weigh five hundred pounds or you are 100 years old and you otherwise can’t get around without assistance; you’d better get the hell out NOW.

Move to Birmingham or back north to NY or Boston. Do anything but sit there sunning your bloated or wrinkled body while taking the risk of having to have firefighters and other emergency responders risk their own lives to get your ignorant carcass out in 120 MPH winds or after your condo roof has fallen on you.

For those of you not actually living in Hurricane prone areas…If your Mama or Daddy or Grandparents insist on living on a beach or retirement community in Florida—GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF THERE…NOW.

If they won’t leave or you won’t go get them when The Weather Channel issues an evacuation order, then I say that you might as well kiss them goodbye right now and be glad that they survive if they do.

What I don’t want to see is your crying face on CNN or FOX News lamenting your loved one’s demise while you piss and moan about the shortcomings of FEMA and the Red Cross.

Governor Bush and the idiots in the Florida legislature can write laws and pass resolutions from now until Christ returns, but I promise you that no amount of legislation is going to cure the root cause of the problem—that problem being one of…

STUPIDITY