Hurricane Dennis

Hurricane Dennis was a big letdown for me. Maybe it would have caused more damage had it been given a slightly more imposing name. Hurricane Vader. Hurricane Manson. Hurricane Hitler. Guaranteed for mass destruction of property. Now we have Hurricane Emily sitting out in the Gulf of Mexico. Sounds terrifying.

I was hoping Dennis would cause damage b/c I would have directly profited from it, financially. My company has a partnership with FEMA, which manages federal response and recovery efforts following any national disaster (in this case, a hurricane). FEMA sends inspectors out to survey the property damage, take photos, fill out forms, etc. We provide the tablet PC software that FEMA inspectors use to collect data/photos when assessing the amount of damage inflicted upon an individual property. We also provide the modem lines to upload this data, as well as data-warehousing services for the uploaded forms and photos. It's a big Oracle database full of 1s and 0s, basically.

So then, the more disaster caused by a hurricane (or any other natural disaster - but most likely a hurricane), the more FEMA inspectors survey damage. The more damage surveyed, the more data we store for FEMA. The more data we store, the more money we make (transaction based). The more my company makes, the more money I receive in the way of quarterly profit sharing. It may sound horrible, heartless, and greedy. But I don't have any family/friends in Alabama, Florida, or Mississippi (the 3 states declared disaster areas by President Bush due to damage caused by Hurricane Dennis). So I don't really care.

No one seems to care that the Bush Administration stormed into Iraq w/out any evidence of WMDs, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process, destroying infrastructure, leaving the country in a state of ruin, families w/out food, shelter, running water, medical aid, or electicity. That doesn't seem to bother > 50% of all Americans. It doesn't bother them that their own government lied to them ("Saddam Hussein HAS weapons of mass destruction." President George W. Bush was quoted as saying before invading Iraq) and people have died as a result, including thousands of American soldiers (not to mention the ones who've suffered serious injuries and/or dismemberment). So why should I care if a relatively minor hurricane causes a bit of damage to a few Gulf Coast States, especially since I profit from the damage?

The war in Iraq is costing me money by way of taxes. Hurricane disasters put money back into my pocket b/c the amount of profit I receive greatly exceeds the cost of taxes I pay to fund the disaster relief effort. So bring on the hurricanes.

Besides, sometimes we get rain in central Texas as an added bonus of a hurricane in the Gulf. It's a win-win situation for me. C'mon Emily...