Here’s What I Don’t Get
Texas Republican Congressvarmint Jeb Hensarling is a very rich man, so he’s sort of clueless when it comes to life in general.
What, Me Worry Hensarling
That’s why he’s baffled by people who don’t just up and move when their house floods.
Some homeowners with property near flood-prone areas should make their homes more resilient or relocate out of the flood zone, Hensarling suggested.
“At some point, God is telling you to move,” Hensarling added in an interview on “Squawk Box.”
Okay, so I’m wondering this: if you say stoopid stuff over and over again and people point and laugh at you, at some point isn’t God telling you to shuddup?
There are families in my county who have lived on their property for 35 years and never flooded. However, they have flooded twice in the past two years. Their homes are basically worthless on the free market, you know – the free market Jeb loves. These are people of modest means and their $100,000 house is all they have.
They are flooding because of over-development allowed, hell, even encouraged, by a Republican dominated county commissioner’s court. Maybe Jeb can help them “relocate” to a nice little spot under the freeway.
Jeb, you’re already taking away their healthcare. You want their houses, too?
Thanks to Jann for the heads up.
Maybe Jeb doesn’t realize that we don’t all benefit from the largess of the banking and securities and investment sectors.
1Of course to Hensarling, it’s their own fault that their houses were flooded. Nothing to do with climate change or increasingly powerful weather patterns due to it. Monkey no see, Monkey no do.
2My little bride and I just finished reading the Dallas Morning News story.
Wow. I had no idea Jeb Henserling was an IGMSFY conservative.
Thousands of homes were destroyed but old Jeb pulled two out of his a$$ as examples of residences which had flooded multiple times and which the National Flood Insurance folks had paid to rebuild multiple times. So Jeb doesn’t understand how homeowner’s insurance works and he doesn’t want that NFIP to have to pay to rebuild or repair a flooded home more than what? twice? Like it’s the homeowner in Baton Rouge or Houston that Harvey brought 4 or 5 feet of RAIN.
What IS someone who worships at the deity of indifference, over previously professed religious faith and tradition, reason, and life experience?
3God to Jeb
“I’ve been telling you for years about global warming, why don’t you listen to THAT?”
4FOR IMMEDIATE SALE
Ranch style; 3 bdrms/2.5 baths
3/4 acre; lots of trees; river view
Prone to flooding
Hmmm… doesn’t quite work does it?
5“You can build your rambler on my estate, there’s plenty of room.”
6Amen. You said it well.
7It’s not so much whether a homeowner bought in a area that flooded, a homeowner was too busy trying to get a mortgage to have time to study rainfall patterns and runoff maps.
The question is, as JJ pointed out, did a government entity allow a home to be built on that parcel? Did a government entity collect taxes on the property? If so, they are complicit in the homeowners loss. They need to figure out HOW to assist the homeowner in getting out of the flood plane, not just spout meaningless, idiotic, impossible, obvious drivel.
8@Rick
I have limited agreement with government’s role here except this…
If a government entity, a MUD, a city, a town, or the County allowed development of any kind in a previously known flood plain, then …. something, I’m not sure what. The easiest answer is to not allow the development. But there is always pressure on elected officials to allow development and thus enlarge the tax base. snacilbupeR compound this error by reducing effective tax rate, to prove their superior fiscal responsibility. (Vector here: investigative reporters in Dallas county are reporting that Dallas County is 10-15% over-valued. Government benefits from property being over-valued because that too jacks up the entity’s tax revenue. If the entity has cut taxes within the past 5 years, once that real estate value hallucination bursts, every such entity will face an automatic tax roll-back election. Vector ends.)
Because these snacilbupeR elected officials are arithmetic challenged we are doomed.
9Jeb probably thinks they should just move to one of their other houses.
On the other hand, a recent article said that a small percentage of flood-insured houses account for a good chunk of the money paid out because they’ve flooded multiple times– some have been rebuilt ten times. As a taxpayer, I can’t see that that’s right. After a certain number of floods or amount of damage paid out, the program should say, Look, we’ll pay, but you have to use the money to move out of the flood zone. (It’s not like a lifetime cap on health insurance, because you do have some choice about where you live, especially if they’re funding your move this time.)
10Add this guy to the very long list of Texas goofy politicians.
11Oooo, holy flying moon pies! Jeb is having a high old time of it lately. This is the second time in a very short while that he has made a fool of himself – but then, everybody has to have a hobby.
12If it were not for the economics of the situation, he’d be onto something.
13I spent a number of years in the Illinois River valley not far from where it enters the Mississippi at Grafton. On more than 1 occasion we built sandbag levees to protect some of the more important buildings (like one of the 2 bars in town). There were several buildings that had been flooded multiple times and rebuilt with flood insurance money. A few years after I moved back East, someone had the bright idea of asking the flood insurance people to buy out the flooded properties and not allow rebuilding in those areas. It worked. People got money that they could use to buy property above the high water marks and the flood insurance people didn’t have to keep paying out on the same property over and over. But without the buyout money, the people would have continued to be bound to floodplain lands. Several towns in Illinois moved to the uplands after being devastated in the great floods of 1993.