mountain out of a mole hill

One place where I live is in the State of Oregon. A one-acre farm with a 1915 farmhouse. One of my first duties in the morning is to do my “morning patrol” to pickup pinecones in the driveway and look for new mole hills in the yard. I can generally find one new molehill every day. Aggravating for sure, but not the end of the world.

Another type of “mole hill” or “tempest in a teapot” comes from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staff being told by one supervisor to not ring the doorbell or knock on doors of houses with a Trump sign in the yard. This was during the aftermath of Hurricane Helen. Was this inappropriate and wrong—you bet! Everyone deserves the opportunity to be contacted after a disaster to ensure they get the benefits provided via disaster recovery programs. The “tempest in a teapot” aspect is that it involved 11 (eleven) homes that were bypassed.

You can read this Washington Post article on the investigation into the incident, FEMA crew broke law by skipping homes with Trump signs, federal watchdog says

If you saw any reporting on this event in the popular press or websites, you would think that civilization had ended and that these actions were the type that comes from the need to defund FEMA and disband the agency.

Staff reported the issue to leadership and the supervisor who directed the actions were terminated. Sounds like good government to me!

As for those molehills in Oregon, they seem like mountains to me!