How Long Can You Tread Water?

While a stupidly large section of the media is still focused on the sexual proclivities of a Congressman, while another stupidly large section is focused on the e-mails of Sarah Palin from three years ago, a large chunk of the American people seem to be thankfully doing what they do best - ignoring the majority of the media hoopla, and focusing on what's important.

For those Americans living near near the Missouri River, that means being prepared for what appears to be a once in a millennium flood.

This isn't the only time in history that the Missouri has flooded, as our friend Jim McKee pointed out over the weekend. There have been more worrying concerns with this flood - as we mentioned last week, the nuclear power plant north of Omaha among them. Still, as natural disasters go, so far this has been a very tame one.

We don't mean to play this off as a minor event. Some of our friends have been affected, including our photographer/cartoonist friend Scott, down in Watson, Missouri. But because of the planning and infrastructure investment that was made during the 1960s, those who live along the "Mighty Mo" have had weeks, not hours, to plan and and enact their escapes, and flood preparations.

Unlike so many of the disasters Americans have faced in recent memory, because Americans worked TOGETHER, planned, prepared, and invested in the future success of their fellow citizens, a flood that might be a once-in-a-thousand year phenomenon, may end up being mostly an event that discomforts more than than it destroys.

The sad thing to note is that if the proposal to invest in the kinds of flood preparation the United States enacted during the 1960s was made today, it would never pass.

While those Midwesterners affected by the floods soldier through these next few weeks, and the cleanup continues into Husker football season and beyond (which it will), we hope that one key fact about the floods of 2011 continues to float to the top of your brains.

We were told during the 1960s we couldn't afford to spend so much government money on projects like those involved in Missouri River flood control. We had just gotten out of the Korean War when planning for these projects began. By the time these projects were primarily finished, we were involved in Vietnam, another costly venture. We also added the costs of Medicare and Medicaid to our expenses during the 1960s. Yet we Americans decided that we needed to invest in America anyway, through projects just like the flood control efforts along the Missouri.

Some state governments spent more than they had planned during those investments, and some government programs ran into cost overruns too. In short, we spent more than the immediate direct benefits we got from these projects.

Yet, as those Americans back then knew, the benefit wasn't for just them. It was for their children, their grandchildren, and people they didn't even know.

People like our friends and neighbors now.

If only Americans had that kind of vision today.