Why doesn't the government have a few planes or blimps fly overhead with base stations from the major mobile carriers?
If we use the map from the starlink page I feel like it would be a lot more than "a few" and I'm not really sure you'd get the places that "need" it desperately.
https://api.starlink.com/public-files/HurricaneHeleneCoverag...
Second, better to just plop a generator next to the existing infrastructure. The cell towers were recently "unlocked" and are serving any carrier.
Third, where are you going to base the blimps? They are not known for speed, even if you truck them in and inflate them. Part tovthis, why spend money on blimps when you can buy rescue helicopters and supply trucks instead? Comms is important, but short of the value of water rescue and food.
Four, what happens if the post hurricane weather is not favorable? Didn't hurricane Harvey last most of a week?
We must protect freedom. Sometimes that costs the lives of children and sometimes that of adults. But freedom is important.
I mean, it might not, but you won't know until the environmental impact assessment is complete.
Then came the US around year 2002 and forced the country to a free market, and paradise was lost. Everything is US level now (more expensive, better service is even more expensive, nothing is guaranteed, you get bombarded by advertisements, and other spam types) and the company can no longer provide universal coverage and is now operating at a loss.
It’s modern colonialism.
All of the 25 000 000 000 000 dollars the US generates a year is vacuumed right out of the palm trees of the third world.
All the rest flows out of this.
The US does meddle a lot with other countries, but the main motive IMHO is usually either to further some misguided ideological program or to keep Americans safe (kind of like how Russia's interference in Ukraine these days is motivated by a desire to keep Russians safe in future decades) not to extract wealth.
US meddling is, as you say, a function of them already having a ton of money and trying to use it to pursue their foreign policy.
Well, that's the motivation it pretends/claims to have in any case.
But you're right in that its pretenses/delusions are very similar to the US's in this regard.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic%E2%80%93C...
funny cause sergey is building exactly that - private companies for the win :)
Areas in need of humanitarian aid provided by airships is a too-small niche to (re-)develop entirely new flight technology.
Geeks like blimps, and they need a story, that is all that is.
The government has agreements in place with all of the carriers to reestablish cellular communications. The first phases are around emergency communications for first responders and recovery. The next priority is restoring power to light up recoverable infrastructure.
There a plan, and the people coordinating this stuff are good at what they are doing. That doesn’t mean your uncle will be back watching Netflix - the priority is restoring basic services so that you get closer to normal quickly.
> an additional 140 satellites are being shipped to assist with communications infrastructure restoration.
From:
Biden-Harris Administration Continues Whole-Of-Government Response to Hurricane Helene https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20240930/biden-harris-adm...
I think the majority of this country views them as the go to for "Emergency Management" at the federal level.
Are they using their money on other things that are not related?
https://www.newsweek.com/johnson-house-passes-spending-bill-...
This kind of surprised me though: https://www.fema.gov/grants/preparedness/shelter-services-pr...
I knew that the government was paying big money to buy up hotels and other migrant shelters, but had no idea $640 Million was spent out of FEMA's budget on this year alone.
This will surely turn into a powerful right wing talking point if the word gets out to that side of the media.. (assuming it hasn't already)
I'm not going to lie though, given the current situation and in hindsight how poorly Maui and East Palestine, OH were handled I think it's probably reasonable to ask whether this is what we want/expect from our Emergency Management services.
It seems at first glance like they are creating the emergency via deliberately imported avoidable costs, then short changing the tax payers when they are most likely to need their help in a genuine life or death situation.
It feels like this money should be coming out of the ICE budget or some other agency, but I'm just a proletariat.
The relevant bit: "For Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will provide $640.9 million of available funds to enable non-federal entities to off-set allowable costs incurred for services associated with noncitizen migrant arrivals in their communities.
The funding will be distributed through two opportunities, $300 million through SSP – Allocated (SSP-A) and $340.9 million through SSP – Competitive (SSP-C)."
I haven't even gotten to the other areas where they almost certainly had a similar level of waste, but I suspect over half a billion could be mighty useful right now.
EDIT: Looks like once you know the magic number the news talking about it is easy to find, and it's not just right wing media highlighting this issue: https://www.newsweek.com/fema-migrant-funding-hurricane-disa...
If this doesn't stir the pot, I don't know what will. No matter what happens, people are going to be irrationally (or I guess maybe rationally to an extent) angry.
The people complaining about the $640 million would still be complaining if it was $200M. Or $1M. Or one dollar.
> It feels like this money should be coming out of the ICE budget or some other agency
FEMA is the agency that's built-up processes and procedures for helping people get housing and other aid, because that is one of its main focuses. That's not what ICE does, they enforce immigration and customs. We're complaining about waste in government but you're wanting lots of agencies specializing in the same thing.
Also it's not as if this is the -only- money spent on these endeavors. This is one agency in one year, doing something which was unprecedented until they could manage it via Covid 'emergency' measures.
You can stick your fingers in your ears if you want, but people are going to be pissed and have every right to be -- just like you have the right to handwave it away if you so choose.
I just said ICE off the cuff, but it could just as easily have been Border Patrol or some other agency. At the end of the day, I doubt if you asked many people "Do you want your countries emergency management fund setup so they blow their budget flying in people from other countries and putting them in hotels that you can no longer utilize, more cash benefits than disaster victims that grew up paying taxes here - or would you prefer that money be spent on national emergencies?"
I think you would have a hard time finding people who say "oh please, spend that on hotels and shelters and migrant flights! Their wants come before my family and friends needs."
And before you give me some spiel about how that's a 'false dichotomy', I'll remind you that FEMA is currently saying they can't afford another storm and are being raked through the coals in how badly they are handling the current one. So it is not a hypothetical situation - they literally said that American citizens are going to have to donate their personal already-been-taxed money to make it through this.
That's 640 million that could have not been taken on TOP of the taxes from Americans, because of course people are going to pony up to save their communities.
On top of taking at least 1/4-1/3 of every paycheck, they are TELLING us that we have to fund our own rescue.
Honest question - what number IS worth quibbling about in your mind? What dollar value legitimizes scrutinizing government spending? I didn't know there was a threshold we had to meet for the concerns to be valid. By that logic if an agencies budget grows large enough, there is simply no valid criticism that can be leveled, and the budget must always go up just like the stocks!
I haven't even heard of a single account of someone successfully getting the $750 'immediate need' funded, but I have seen dozens of videos of people crying or angry that they got denied immediately without any reason. Admittedly that's selection bias, but I actively looked for people who did.
I also have yet to see a single person who things this is being handled well... and I see a lot of active duty service/reserve members very angry they can't help their friends and family while they are standby to go die for another middle east war we have no business in.
Things I learned from this thread: 1) Elon Musk bad, despite using what resources he has to help -- any help is an automatic bait and switch to monopolize the internet (lol) 2) Government spending criticism irrelevant, you have to meet a hazy threshold for the concern to be worth 'quibbling about' 3) HN Users are largely in a very bubbled social circle (online and off), and are going to be shocked when reality penetrates that bubble.
You'll probably also complain the government isn't helping communities affected by immigration crisises while also complaining about the help being disbursed.
Got it. So we mustn't criticize policies and spending vel0city agrees with. I'll add that to the rulebook to make sure no one else wonders aloud if perhaps that money could be of use right now (or used better in general).
That $20 could have been useful. Imagine how much more money the average taxpayer would have if the government didn't spend that 0.001% of it's budget.
You'd be complaining about any amount.
Or do you think they wouldn't have complained if it was only $600M?
Just be honest and state what you really feel: the government shouldn't spend any money assisting communities with migrants other than to get them out.
Can you tell me why I am supposed to answer your questions, but you have successfully dodged all of mine while levying personal attacks however? Seems .... a tad imbalanced, dont you think?
Go ahead vel0city, tell us what number you think the threshold is for questioning governments spending of the money they took directly out of our paychecks? You have to have one in mind at this point. How could you not? How else could you backup your claim?
EDIT: Actually I should ask - are you an American citizen? Do you have a dog in this fight? Is this money even coming out of your check? If not, it would explain why you think these budgets are beyond reproach, given that it would mean it's not your friends, family, or neighbors being effectively sacrificed, nor is it your money being spent in that case.
On another side, government budgets are not zero sum. Saying we should spend on X before we spend on Y is also saying you don't think money should go to X. A personal household budget is zero sum, government not so.
Zero sum or not, the attitude you have about budget discussions is why we are about to print ourselves into a depression. If you can't discuss prioritizing spending based on whatever criteria applies to the situation, you simply can't discuss budget concerns.
I do not take the view that the budget our taxes pay for is beyond reproach. I have no problem evaluating it from the perspective of 'money is not infinite, and no specific agencies spending is so inherently special that it can not be discussed under the context of where potential waste or inefficient spending happened, and how it can be adjusted to avoid that in the future."
'X seems like a better use of the money and more representative of what the taxpaying public wants it spent on, to ensure things are prioritized properly while properly representing 'We The People' -- as such it may be worth looking back to determine if this money was allocated in a manner that provides the most benefit to the taxpayers while maintaining consistency with the agencies core responsibilities' -- there is nothing wrong with this type of discussion/analysis, and anyone trying to claim there is has there own agenda they want to impose on you.
Your line of thinking leaves absolutely no room to discuss the budget in a meaningful way, because 'having priorities' is not allowed under that framework.
It's a dialectical trap meant to make people fall in line. I'll pass, thanks.
I'll ignore (beyond pointing it out here) that you are putting words into my mouth and conducting a personal attack.
I did mostly want to draw contrast that government budget is unlike household and not zero sum.
Whether we print ourselves into depression is unclear. Particularly since there are other levers and continues to be economic growth.
I agree spending cannot be 100% for every need.
> I have no problem evaluating it from the perspective of 'money is not infinite, and no specific agencies spending is so inherently special that it can not be discussed under the context of where potential waste or inefficient spending happened, and how it can be adjusted to avoid that in the future."
I agree. Though saying we should not spend anything on X until we spend all on Y is not the same as saying we are spending too much X (in part given that we need to spend on Y)
Sure, and I have a similar view. Show me what we bought for $640M instead of just saying we spent $640M. How many people did we house for that? How many people weren't living on the streets because of it? What kind of conditions were they in? How many nights did we cover? What was average spent per person per night? Is that a reasonable cost? Just complaining about $640M answers none of these things.
You've got an overly simplistic view of government spending if just looking at a dollar amount (which is peanuts in terms of the overall spending of even this one agency) is enough for you to get upset about it.
We're going to need many, many billions from FEMA for this, which comes from a separate budget entirely. If this disaster costs FEMA $50B in relief (probably a way too low estimate), that migrant cost is only 1.3% of the total outlays of just this one storm. But FEMA has already spent over $20B on disaster relief this year so if this storm does end up costing $50B that's really $70B in disaster relief alone along with the several billion in other spending FEMA usually has. So really more like 640M / 75B == <1% of spending.
Arguing that $640M spent on migrant housing efforts is somehow massively impacting FEMA's responses to disasters is just ignoring reality. Its less than 1% of the money FEMA has to spend. Argue you don't think the migrants deserved the housing, but don't act like FEMA's response would have been materially different to any disaster if that money hadn't been spent. Because that's not based in reality at all.
And if you're upset about FEMA's allegedly poor responses to other disasters (not personally claiming either way here to any specific response), what makes you think just throwing more money at those responses would have solved whatever problems were there? I thought we were wanting to argue for the government to give us more bang for our buck not just throw more money at problems without going into deeper analysis of supposed failures. Maybe those issues were underbudgeting, maybe they were management issues, maybe they were issues outside of FEMA entirely.
Having a really big focus on <0.01% of the spending while seemingly ignoring the 99% of the rest of the spending really makes it seem like it's not the amount that troubles you. Arguing <0.01% of spend is going to spend us into a depression really shows how divorced from actually understanding the numbers one is, if the amount is what truly troubles you.
Any amount of government waste is worth talking about to me. But just throwing out an amount and saying it was spent on migrants isn't telling me its waste. Pointing out that half that was spent at a Ritz-Carlton for a dozen migrants would be, but that's probably not the reality of the spend.