Nah, they know what’s up. The Federal Flood Insurance Program will keep raising my rates 5% to 15% a year, so those houses can be rebuilt on my dime. They just move into their winter homes until the new place is built.
Remember Chris Christie hugging Barack Obama after Sandy? That’s the image you want, right there, that’s exactly how it works. When the rich have a little problem, there’s a bipartisan bailout. But when a bunch of poors in Louisiana or Puerto Rico are underwater, that’s completely different…
Business owners with waterfront property probably went for whatever led to lower premiums (like the scenario below, which was repeated in multiple states).
So they might go for federal relief and write-offs instead of insurance payouts.
Legislating weather is a show of weakness before the Gods.
Caligula, now, he knew how to impress the Gods, more specifically Neptune. Several authors tell the story; here is Cassius Dio:
And when [Caligula] reached the ocean, as if he were going to conduct a campaign in Britain, and had drawn up all the soldiers on the beach, he embarked on a trireme, and then, after putting out a little from the land, sailed back again. Next he took his seat on a lofty platform and gave the soldiers the signal as if for battle, bidding the trumpeters urge them on; then of a sudden he ordered them to gather up the shells. Having secured these spoils (for he needed booty, of course, for his triumphal procession), he became greatly elated, as if he had enslaved the very ocean; and he gave his soldiers many presents. The shells he took back to Rome for the purpose of exhibiting the booty to the people there as well.
In fairness, they didn’t actually pass a law that the seas were not rising, only that the responsible officials could not recognize the obvious fact that they are rising. This is very much an ostrich law, in that if we don’t acknowledge an inconvenient fact, that it will go away. Never has worked, never will work. But that pretty much summarizes the right wing right now.
