Lessons from Joplin

    I listened to an interview this morning on a radio show with someone who was actively involved with the recovery efforts after the Joplin tornado.  I do not pretend to know much about Joplin.  I have not been there.  However, this gentleman had what I would consider some valuable insights.
   Joplin actually has been rather successful in their efforts to rebuild.  As I listened, I heard some important ingredients in making Joplin generally more successful than other disaster areas in recent years.  One of the reasons for their success is the amount of volunteer help they received from religious and charitable organizations.  These people just showed up and Joplin was willing to let them help.  When FEMA finally showed up on the scene, they were amazed and asked the folks of Joplin where they got all the chainsaws to get all that work done.  They were impressed.
    A more important factor in their success was that the local officials pretty much got out of the way.  They refrained from putting all kinds of restrictions on the volunteers.  They kept their supervision to a minimum.  They relaxed their usual regulations and allowed workers from out of town to come in to be employed.  They ignored the regulations which were there to protect local businesses from competition.  They relaxed normal guidelines required for new construction.  The local government did not try to take advantage of the situation and try to change their city by making zoning changes.  They basically took the attitude that they were going to trust their people to rebuild the city they loved and get the city and their homes and businesses back to the way it once was.  The people of Joplin did not approach the problem they faced by waiting for the Federal government to come in there to fix it and pay for it.  They put on their gloves and got to work.  And they accepted the help of others.  The folks of Joplin are going to end up with a rebuilt town that they can take pride in because it will be their sweat and toil which made it happen.
    There is a valuable lesson to be learned from Joplin.  The American people need a government to provide for an orderly society and provide for its defense, but they do not need a government to solve all their problems.  In many cases, government IS the problem.  A good government is one that recognizes the times when the best thing for it to do is to get out of the way.
    Just a side note.  If I have heard correctly, President Obama has named himself as the graduation speaker for the high school in Joplin this spring.  I predict that he will use that speech to proclaim how instrumental the Federal Government was in the rebuilding of their city.  This thought appalls me.  I hope the President makes the right choice and praises the residents of Joplin for their outstanding successes without taking any credit for himself.  However, based on his past performance, my guess is that he will once again try to spike the football.  In this case, he wasn't even involved in scoring the touchdown.