Our conversations today are full of fairly moralizing claims about anticipatory obedience or obeying in advance. But almost as much of what is happening is what I would classify as failures of imagination. They may have substantively the same effect, similar actions. But they’re different.
For instance, today FEMA rejected a request from Washington state for disaster relief funds for a cyclone that hit the state last fall. As these things go the sums are relatively small, $34 million. But the flat rejection is almost unheard of, from my experience. Unheard of, given the players, totally predictable. At a minimum it’s immediately understandable. You know exactly why they rejected it. I’m not saying these rejections never happen. The governmental mores have changed in recent decades. Assenting to these requests is generally a matter of course and I suspect when there are disagreements it’s handled informally in a de facto negotiation. When it’s a major disaster and it’s a matter of billions it’s a different story. But from what I can tell here, FEMA just said: No. That disaster doesn’t count.
We’re already seeing signs of this across the federal government. With things that are at all discretionary, Blue states are just out of luck. Washington Governor Bob Ferguson said, “This is another troubling example of the federal government withholding funding.”
That’s it?
