Biden Administration Worried About Helene Misinformation

Don't worry, they have a solution.......

(Note: This post is too long for some email programs. You know how I get sometimes. Check the webpage to ensure you get the full story!)

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The last few days I’ve been reading and watching videos from the hurricane-stricken areas of the country, trying to determine what’s actually happening on the ground. (I’ve seriously considered going myself — but in every scenario I believe I’m a net negative to the situation. This may change as the crisis develops.) Twitter is flooded with stories of an incompetent (or non-existent) federal response. FEMA and the White House have been quick to label such reports as misinformation — and I readily admit that some people could be ‘faking’ videos in order to gain a quick burst of ‘fame’.

(Late edit — The New York Times gets in the game, too. I wonder what this article looks like in “Trump is still president” land. )

But surely we can agree this video of Department of Transportation head Pete Buttigieg discouraging drone flights isn’t misinformation:

This came at a time (October 2) in which FEMA had little to no presence on the ground to disrupt in the first place, and when private citizens were using drones to gather information on the extent of the damages. The government’s message was so poorly received, the DoT reversed itself the next day.

But you can’t put the cat back in the bag.

And while I’m generally distrustful of the government and think they suck at nearly everything they do, I also understand they don’t have magic wands that can instantly repair roads and restore electricity. These things take time. But the absolute minimum we should expect from the federal response is that it’s actually helping and not hurting — and it’s quite possible that the bureaucratic rot that infests our entire government has overtaken FEMA as well.

This week, Chris Bray wrote an excellent article about how government budgets are ballooning, but government services are being reduced. We’re blowing trillions of dollars on supposedly doing stuff, but the stuff doesn’t actually seem to get done.

Here’s an article I ran into this week describing this phenomenon in real-world terms:

Long story short: In 2021 government mandated ferry workers get the covid vaccine. Many refused. (Just like our nurses!) Services got reduced and became unreliable, so people found alternative modes of transportation. To make up for this decline in passengers, government raises prices….almost certainly leading to a further loss of passengers…….

At a certain point, the government-run industry simply becomes (became?) about sucking the dollars out of the system and doesn’t even care about the passengers — or lack of them.

And this is EVERYWHERE in government. Check out this “local” story about the city of Vancouver (WA) doling out nearly $2 million to “eligible” housing projects:

Sounds sort of nice, right? It costs a lot to live in Vancouver, so the government is giving out ‘free money’ (our money, but let’s ignore that part) to help build houses!

The funds are available only for eligible nonprofit and public organizations, according to a city news release. Private individuals are not eligible for funding awards.

Oh. Well that’s sort of weird. I’d think that housing is housing no matter who puts it up, but let’s actually dive into the application itself and see what’s going on. (After we get through the 44-page application guidelines, of course.)

Well…..that is…..not encouraging.

That is actually insane.

Risk assessors — “Nobody wants to build in this part of town because of the rampant drugs, crime, and homelessness.”

Government — “Sign us up.”

And on top of the Test-and-Trace levels of stupid decision making, it’s like the entire process is designed to be so convoluted that only the ‘connected’ have the ability to actually navigate it in the first place:

You’ll note that the original article was published on October 4th — two days AFTER the mandatory Teams session.

This just seems to be how government runs these days — peek under the hood of any of these huge government contracts and you’ll find similar setups. Millions and millions of dollars doled out to politically connected entities that don’t actually fix the problem they’re “hired” to fix. (Because then no budget next year!)

But at least the federal government stepped up when Americans are desperate for aid after a natural disaster. Kudos to Kamala Harris for this announcement last night:

Just kidding, that aid is actually for Lebanon.

Yes, really.

So while I don’t automatically believe every video-while-I’m-driving story on Twitter, I CERTAINLY don’t automatically believe something just because Pete Buttigieg says it. (Neither does Elon Musk.)

But there are FAR too many “I’m obviously standing in a devastated zone and here’s my story” videos to be dismissed out of hand. At the very least the issue deserves a deeper look. Ryan Tyre made a very interesting post about his past disaster response efforts, and FEMA’s unwillingness to take certain donations:

This……….sounds exactly like what a government agency would do, right? After all, some people DEPEND on those sweet government contracts — we can’t have just anybody rolling through here giving those supplies away!

“Oh, Sim,” I can hear you say now, “Government wouldn’t align incentives so the American people are actually harmed!”

But halfway through the sentence, you’d remember the hospital-only-gets-more-money-if-they-follow-it covid protocol of Remdesivir and ventilators, and your words would fail to materialize.

And so while I EXPECT a less-than-stellar (but still ultimately positive) response from the federal government, what I didn’t expect was the government’s “weird” focus on misinformation (and more precisely, misinformation as actual harm).

FEMA admin Deanne Criswell explains how criticizing FEMA makes their workers feel bad — and won’t somebody please think of the government workers banking serious overtime pay?

You’ll note how the entire issue is framed with……questionable premises. “One user” suggested something stupid and it “got more than half a million views” — as if either of those things are relevant in the slightest. For one thing, FEMA employees probably aren’t scrolling through Twitter. (That’s a job for DIFFERENT government employees.) For another, “views” are not agreements. I’m sure many of us pass around things we completely DISAGREE with — just like this video that you have now “viewed”.

(Fun fact: The post featuring the August interview in which Biden repeats the “very fine people” hoax has 3.2 million views. Media remains silent)

And isn’t it weird how ultimately, this problem has the exact same solution as a bunch of our other problems — government control of speech!

Once again, the censors lean into the “real harm” of speech (so much for “sticks and stones”) because that gives them a “better” excuse to crack down on inconvenient speech. For example, anti covid vaccine ‘misinformation’ that may cause vaccine hesitancy.

On a totally unrelated note, happy fourth birthday to this Newsweek article:

Reading these articles is like a narrative time machine:

Click to enlarge

Weird how nobody was getting threatened for this ‘misinformation’ back then, right? I wonder what happened.

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Before I go, I want to take a couple seconds to once again recognize all the people on the ground putting in the work to help the victims of Hurricane Helene. The videos of people leading packs of mules through the forest or tracking down survivors via helicopter are reminders that human cooperation is the most powerful force on the planet. More than anything, the last few days I’ve been reminded that Americans are far, far better than their government — and when push comes to shove, there’s little we can’t do together.

Maybe that’s why they want us at each other’s throats.

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Re-reading this article, I feel like it’s sort of a downer - so here’s a video featuring the start of Trump’s speech yesterday in Butler:

The dude knows his way around an audience, that’s for sure.