Austerity kills.
Recently, flooding in Kerr County, Texas, caused over 100 deaths. Officials say there were no flood warning sirens in place because Tea Party groups had pressured the county into not installing them. If there had been warning systems, these deaths could have been avoided.
Congress passed a law to provide a rescue package for communities all over the country afflicted by the COVID pandemic. This made Kerr County eligible for over $10 million in federal money, which it could have used for a flood warning system. But the county rejected a big chunk of this money because of hounding by the few Tea Party diehards who hadn't abandoned the movement by the 2020s.
But we have long memories, and we know this isn't the first time something like this has happened.
Something similar took place just before the deadly floods in northern Kentucky in 1997 (which were quickly forgotten by the media). A flood gauge had been deactivated by a right-wing Congress using the same excuses the Tea Party later used. If it hadn't been deactivated, a lot of lives could have been saved. We shouldn't have to bring it up now, but nothing was done about it when we talked about it back then, and we're not sure if anything ever was done later. Sadly, this isn't surprising, because nothing has ever been done about anything like this in the past 40 years. We offered fair warning about what would happen if this lazy attitude continued, but we were brushed off.
The entire philosophy of austerity is a fatal one. There is blood on the hands of the Republican Congress of the '90s. Those who refused to install flood sirens more recently are no better.
Also, the Koch network - which helped bankroll the Tea Party - supported the failed lockdowns during COVID. It published a bogus pro-lockdown report through a heavily politicized institute at the University of Kentucky. So they can't say they opposed the flood warning systems on the grounds of "limited government" - which would have been a ridiculous argument anyway.