NOW Is The Time For The Hard Questions - Always!

Amid the ongoing tragedy of the devastating floods in Texas, some reporters and others are asking hard questions of officials and politicians. Those questions are being met with the claim that "Now is not the time to politicize this tragedy".

The implication is that asking those hard questions in insensitive and insulting to the families of the victims of the tragedy.  That is wrong! The insensitive and insulting position is that taken by the politicians who don't want to answer the questions. Those families deserve to know the truth about why their loved ones died. 

Was it preventable?

Could lives have been saved if the state had funded an early warning system?

Did budget cuts at the National Weather Service make the tragedy worse?

Could the disaster have been mitigated if our government had properly addressed global climate change?

Are cuts to FEMA going to make recovery harder?

The truth is that the politicians don't want to have to answer the hard questions - the questions that might point out their own failures. They know that when the tragedy is over and some time passes, the public will move on to other problems (which the politicians will also avoid answering).

This is not a new tactic. We have seen it in action every time a tragedy occurs. It is especially used when there are mass shootings. Then the politicians offer "thoughts and prayers" (which help no one and solves nothing), but want you to believe the time for questions is some time in the future. It's not!

NOW is always the time!