That's all very interesting but let's not lose sight of what's important.

Jennifer Aston likes to relax on Sundays. Did you know that?

Aniston, not Aston, dang it, and as far as I can tell Travel & Leisure magazine does NOT care what she does on Sundays.

One of the problems is that the program uses out-of-date maps. A co-worker was telling me yesterday that her property is categorized as being in a 100-year flood zone, while neighboring properties that are at a lower elevation are categorized as not being in any flood zone. They're working off of a map that is probably 50 years old and doesn't take into account grading and drainage changes that have taken place in the neighborhood since then. I understand this is a common problem -- some people are getting generously low rates on flood-prone properties, while others on lower-risk properties, who might have bought insurance for peace of mind, are turning it down because they are quoted rates that are unreasonably high due to old maps.

Out of curiosity, what metric is being used here to measure the size of the government?

Is it overall budget?... is it budget as a percentage of GDP?... is it something else?

How is it that we are measuring here whether or not the government is growing or shrinking? How is this being quantified in an objective way as opposed to just a subjective feeling or sense?

This is an inherent issue with any government program. You may as well note politics is political. And yes Cousin Dave is right. The maps are outdated and irrelevant. But even when they were first drawn they weren't scientific per say. It was more of an educated opinion. So changing them is very political since things never were based on objective fact.

The problem is, even the people who talk small government aren't really for it.

This ought to be needleworked into a two-story sampler and hung in the halls of Congress.

Out of curiosity, what metric is being used here to measure the size of the government?

How about this one http://amzn.to/2wly5BX

The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague.

Ease off on the Democrats Ms Alkon. In 2003, a Democrat introduced a bill to do *exactly* what you and others (myself included) want to see. It passed the House, and was killed in the Senate by southern senators who were, no doubt, looking after their developer benefactors.

The bill was called “Two Floods and You Are Out of the Taxpayer’s Pocket”. So lets place blame were it belongs.

https://blumenauer.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/blumenauer-flood-insurance-reform-bill-advances-committee

When I lived in California, the Russian River would overflow its banks on a damned regular basis and flood the surrounding residential areas. During one such flood, a local reporter interviewed a couple who said this was their 10th flood evacuation and rebuild in almost 20 years of living there.

Tenth!? In 20 years? Move!! Why are you still there? Why do we allow people to rebuild (not just build, but rebuild) in areas that are regular flood zones? This is why flood insurance is so expensive and why the federal government should get out of it.

With a high price for flood insurance, mortgage bankers would not lend on houses in those areas, and people would not want to live there. The invisible hand of the market would take care of the situation by making it too expensive to live in areas that regularly flood.

People who build in those areas without insurance would risk losing everything. But with the federal government mitigating the expense and removing the risk, people think nothing of building in areas that regularly flood.

Since politics, and not actuarial reality, drive the flood insurance program, the government will never close it down. And we will continue to build in flood zones and pay millions to rebuild every time it floods.

They're both parties of big government. It's just a matter of what they want to micromanage.

It's just a matter of what they want to micromanage.

And what science they want to ignore

One of the weather folk noted that Houston, like much of east Texas, is built on clayey soils. So the runoff wouldn't be much less than if it were a matter of pavement.
This was a matter of a run of the mill tropical storm which, this time, was blocked by a high pressure area north and west. So it remained where its rotation could continually refresh itself over the Gulf with a fresh load of moisture.
My sister's house in Spring, a western suburb, had a foot and a half in it. The funny thing is, you note, for that area of Texas, some actual grade up going to her place.
It would be interesting to find out how much damage was done to homes in areas nobody ever thought would flood.

I R A Darth Aggie,

The metric you are choosing is too vague and poorly defined to be particularly useful.

The number of laws metric almost by necessity needs to grow as a function of societal advancement.

For example, there was no need for traffic laws before the invention of the automobile and the construction of the interstate highway system.

Similarly, there was no need for air traffic control before the invention of commercial airplanes.

Again similarly, there was no need for cyber crime and hacking laws before the proliferation of the internet.

If you use the number of laws to measure the size of government then you are always going to assume the government is growing whenever we create new systems of travel and communication.

We need a metric that properly accounts for what we are trying to capture here and this doesn't seem like a good one.