Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

https://youtu.be/DcUEyXn28hI

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John Rennie Short (UMBC): Stress Testing the USA

UMBC Life

Stress testing is a long established procedure that is used to show how a system responds to pressure and, if carried far enough, a system's weak spots. Stress Testing the USA applies this original approach to four major disasters that befell the United States in the first decade of the twenty first century: the invasion of Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the financial meltdown, and the BP oil spill. John Rennie Short, professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), provides a compelling narrative of each event that summarizes the main findings but also reveals the connections between them, and ultimately, the deep stresses that fracture the nation today. Illuminating and relevant, Stress Testing the USA is a guide to what ails the United States and what needs to be done to fix it that proves essential to any scholar of public policy, current affairs, or disaster management.

Text adapted from publisher, Palgrave MacMillan: http://us.macmillan.com/stresstesting... Category Education License Standard YouTube License Transcript English (Automatic Captions) 0:15my name's John really short 0:169 professor of public policy here at the University of Maryland Baltimore County 0:21in this in new book stress testing the USA where I do is to look at four major 0:26stresses that occurred in the United States in the 0:29first decade of the 21st century these were 0:33the war on terror and particularly the invasion of Iraq 0:36be flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina 0:40the financial meltdown in 2008 0:43and then more recently that goal 0:46oil spill and these pieces case studies ur interesting 0:50known because they're so large at the providers with a very good picture 0:55of and main stress being applied to the United States 0:58if things are going well and the economy's humming along and people are 1:02happy 1:02we tend to think everything is get weekend to look at the system 1:06we can go to look for underlying structural flaws 1:10but in times of great pressured these are revealed 1:13a very easy and all BS tendency 1:17is to find a someone to blame 1:20it was george bush it was Dick Cheney 1:23it weighs up Michael brand it was BP CEO all 1:29in other words there's one Pearson a bad person to blame 1:32we've identified that the in so let's move on 1:36the banking crisis is often blamed on greedy bankers 1:39well we always have greedy bankers simply being a greedy bankers a 1:43a fact of life I think it doesn't explain 1:47at the event in in much-needed e.t.a so the point of the book was to move beyond 1:52the surface appearances 1:54move beyond the a easy points so 1:57of criticism and to look for much deeper and more profound structural concerns 2:02for every event there was a small group of people who knew exactly what was 2:06happening 2:06we just didn't listen to them the all tended to 2:10dissident views are sidelined the people who 2:13argued that the invasion of Iraq was wrong the people who said that there was 2:17a housing bubble 2:19the people who said that the ladies were inadequate the people who said that the 2:23oiled drilling was becoming more dangerous 2:26we should be more open to those dissident voices so 2:30in other words we should not allow powerful institutions and agencies 2:35to undertake cognitive capture 2:38to explain reality is if there's no other way than this