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If Romney wins, better move to a responsible "safe" state

Posted: Oct 28, 2012

Romney on disaster assistance:

Transcript:

KING: Governor Romney? You’ve been a chief executive of a state. I was just in Joplin, Missouri. I’ve been in Mississippi and Louisiana and Tennessee and other communities dealing with whether it’s the tornadoes, the flooding, and worse. FEMA is about to run out of money, and there are some people who say do it on a case-by-case basis and some people who say, you know, maybe we’re learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role. How do you deal with something like that?

ROMNEY: Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.

Instead of thinking in the federal budget, what we should cut — we should ask ourselves the opposite question. What should we keep? We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, what are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do? And those things we’ve got to stop doing, because we’re borrowing $1.6 trillion more this year than we’re taking in. We cannot…

KING: Including disaster relief, though?

ROMNEY: We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

;

Does anyone know what the Romney budget does with FEMA? - nm

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Romney's FEMA policy is the distribution of "bootstraps" NM. - anon

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nm

What did we do before FEMA? Thousand died, millions homeless - economic shutdowns/diseases

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There are plenty of fires, hurricanes, storms, heat waves, ect to research. So many disasters, so little time.

Gosh...what DID we do before FEMA? I'm surprised we are still living! - Liberty

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thank you

Do you mean before Bush's Katrina? - Sandi

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Your welcome.

I'm sorry, but that's a completely ignorant statement - kat

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I live in an area that was hit by a hurricane several years ago, and FEMA helped us greatly. Maybe you wouldn't be so cavalier if you had to live through something so terrible.

Thank you (not)

Our house burned to the ground one cold winter day... - Liberty

[ In Reply To ..]
after the fire smoldered all night long while we slept. We lost everything, my children's baby books, baby pictures, family pictures, EVERYTHING!!! Don't say you are sorry and then call me cavalier and ignorant. We were left homeless. It was through the Grace of God, and help from family and friends that we are alive today. We didn't need FEMA.

A misunderstanding of FEMA - Fanatical Hypocrite

[ In Reply To ..]
I'm sorry to hear about your house. It's every family's nightmare to lose their home and possessions. However, there's a very simple reason why you didn't need and did not receive aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It's not a Federal Emergency. It's a personal emergency and tragedy certainly, but unless your house fire spread to most of the other houses in your city, it doesn't equate. It's a case of apples and oranges.

I'm glad you didn't need FEMA. I'm glad I've never needed FEMA. But should a tsunami, hurricane, tornado, earthquake or similar disaster befall my area or anyone else's I am glad that the government comes to help.

While they failed to show up in time for Katrina in many areas and definitely need improvement, FEMA has a record decades long of saving lives and helping to rebuild devastated areas. With more and more extreme weather coming our way, this is likely to only increase the demand on them.

I think it is egotistical and short-sighted to say that because you didn't need FEMA that you never will and that no one else would either.

But you had insurance, right? - That's what FEMA is.

[ In Reply To ..]
Or are you Amish?

That's a shame about your house... - kat

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...and all well and good that the Grace of God and your deep-pocketed friends and family could help you out. You must be truly blessed. Perhaps those of us who have been affected by a natural disaster have not been so favored by God. We DID need FEMA--lord knows my family and friends couldn't have footed the bill for the flooding and hurricane damage to our home. I'm in the direct path of this storm and hoping we don't have to evacuate. Maybe if I pray a little harder, the hurricane will veer to the right?

I really hope Romney's past statements about getting rid of FEMA bite him in the butt in the wake of this hurricane. No way can the states afford the burden of post-natural disaster cleanup by themselves.

Damage to our city streets was $37 million - I did not build that

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Recent flood damages were enormous. There is no way our city could have fixed the highways and bridges without FEMA. This does not even count the County and State highways involved. You could not travel 2 blocks without hitting massive damage. Holes that would swallow a car. A kid fell into a flooded sewer pipe and came out a mile away. Water systems and treatment facilities damaged.

Takes a village, in many ways.

To Kat and others...sm - Liberty

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First of all, Kat, your statement to me is dripping with sincerity. Your statement about my deep-pocket friends is typical of people like you. You have NO idea.

My question - what did we do before FEMA - still stands. There were national emergencies before FEMA; there were national emergencies before ANY government assistance programs were established. The GREATEST GENERATION made it through those tough times.

So, you were the recipient of the bus loads of people from my state that went to assist you during your national emergency? The government didn't have anything to do with these people going to help you.

So, you were the recipient of the millions of dollars in aid sent by people in my state to assist you with your national emergency? This money came from my deep pockets and my deep-pocket friends.

So, you are the recipient of my insurance premiums being raised to cover national emergencies.

AND, YOU find it in your heart to insult me about my intelligence with your condescending attitude.

So, it is people like you that are the recipients of our humanitarian aid...I will have to remember that the next time I am asked to donate.

I really don't understand - RC

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It baffles to me that you would want to take away FEMA. Yes, it sucks and has issues, yes all government programs do. They are all limping around on one leg and never get there fast enough, never do enough.

But how exactly is it better to have nothing at all? Or do you think we should take FEMA away and start over with another program? I'm trying to understand, because there are federal emergencies that just ruin whole cities. Do you think those cities should flounder and pick up their own pieces? What do you think that does to the economy? And what about all those poor people?

The only one I see with a condescending attitude is Liberty. - anon2

[ In Reply To ..]
!

Our Greatest Generation was a Progressive Generation! - Go check my list of progressive achievements. Thos

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were all Greatest Generation achievements. They did it because they learned from grim past experiences that no person, no family, no town, no state even is strong enough on its own against very predictable disasters that we can count on striking us again and again.

They also knew from sad experience that it's much cheaper and better for everyone if we're all as prosperous and healthy as possible and that a broken family or town will take decades to come back on its own, if ever. Often never.

This smacks of arrogance and willful ignorance. - sm

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It's not even worth trying to explain to people like you, Liberty, because you don't WANT to get it. Yours is the most infuriating kind of ignorance.

What did people do before FEMA? - Fanatical Hypocrite

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Die. In droves. That's generally what people stranded on the roof of their house did. They were left homeless and destitute, broken and destroyed. If they survived at all. Whole cities used to disappear off the planet without anyone even caring.

FEMA not only responds to disasters, saves lives and helps in the rebuilding process, but when the response system was first created a similar social mandate spawned out of it.

Before FEMA people depended upon their community and their family. That's all well and good, but what about people who's families were destroyed in that disaster or previous tragedies? What about people of a different religion or race that your community would consider outsiders and not help. While racism is implied to have occurred in Katrina (I think GWB wasn't racist, he just didn't care about poor people - nobody does except other poor people), in every disaster before the New Deal it was not implied, it was fact.

So, when disaster strikes, do you want an impartial judge deciding whether you get the chance to rebuild or would you like to depend on me for money? Because right now, your chances of getting an emergency loan from the Bank of Fanatical Hypocrite isn't looking so good.

A problem with FEMA = definitely not an angel-What ifs? - Truthhurts

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Speaking of Katrina or any natural disaster.

When people lose their homes, even those that had insurance, FEMA gives camper trailers to live in for how long - 18 months.

When you lose your home and everything else plus your car, etc. What do you replace first? You need a car to go to work if there's not public transportation. You need to repair your home if you have some part of it left.

What do people do when insurance doesn't cover, or refuses to cover, damage to the homes? They have to pay for repairs out of their own pocket.

What if the home is a total loss or what if they lose their job at the same time because of no transportation and/or the company decides to move out of the area because they also had damages they can't repair? What do you do then?

What if you still do have that job but can only work on repairing your home during weekends but the damages are too extensive to get done in 18 months, what do you do then? (You have no family to help. You can't afford to hire anyone because their labor costs are outrageous.

What if the damage is so extensive the town/county condemns your home but your insurance is not adequate enough to cover the down payment you need to build or buy another one and/or you've lost your job because of the above problem? You can't sell your property unless you tear your house down and then you can only get the amount that a lot would sell for, but you can't tear your house down because you need that money to move somewhere. Where do you go? What do you do?

The maximum trailer loan from FEMA is 18 months. There are plenty of stories out there where people received a FEMA trailer (30 feet for 4 people?), town or county condemned their homes and they couldn't afford to bring it up to code, couldn't get a personal loan or home equity mortgage because the home was no longer worth anything and your income didn't fit their guidelines, yada, yada.

FEMA very rarely allows extensions of time on those trailers. They send you a letter stating you have to be out by such-and-such a date and that's it. You can appeal but it's a waste of time.

I know 20 families in a town near my town that this happened to because of Hurricane Irene last year. Government isn't helping them because they have jobs and make above the income guidelines for food stamps and/or emergency cash. Believe it or not (and you probably won't), the one family didn't qualify because they were $11 over the income guidelines for food stamps.

So who's helping them? Not your government. The churches and the Salvation Army. The people in the surrounding communities.

Thousands may not die but hundreds or thousands may die and you don't know about it. Government will certainly not tell you they screwed up. It's always someone else's fault - usually the victim.

Seriously??? Churches and the Salvation Army? - anon

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Oooohkay then.

I didn't imply that FEMA was perfect - Fanatical Hypocrite

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More needs to be done, but you want to throw the baby out with the bath water. My only point is FEMA as a concept is good and that they save a lot of people. Could they save more? Always. So let's work out how to do that. This is in the same vein that occasionally 911 has failed to respond properly to a call, but the answer isn't disconnecting the number.

Maybe the states could afford it if the federal government taxes weren't so high - b

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If the states were able to keep more of their money, they wouldn't need so much help from the federal government.

Sure, tell that to all the states who receive far more than they pay. - Without spreading the wealth, ghost towns would

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replace many "heartland" communities, and their populations would have largely migrated to the wealthy, tax-donor states. Which, of course, wouldn't need or want the problem of millions of additional people crowding in, many impoverished. By spreading the wealth, we have a big wide country where people can live a good life almost anywhere.

Yes, some--like us--are donating our new-car payments via taxes for the wellbeing people in other areas, but we're doing okay with our existing vehicles and feel we get a LOT more ultimately than we have had. I.e. we get to live in a FIRST-WORLD nation instead of a THIRD-WORLD nation.

We also save money by not having to build tall walls around our property. We don't even lock the doors most times when we leave.

OUR government programs are HOW we come together - as people to help large numbers in trouble.

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All those thousands of private charitable efforts add up to real help. They're wonderful. But they're too small, not coordinated, hit and miss, temporary, sometimes discriminatory in recipients, far short of funds, and subject to the shifting moods of their donors.

They operate best as adjuncts to our state and national efforts of guaranteed help that provides 3 meals every day for ALL of those without food, shelter for ALL of those left homeless, clothing for ALL of those with nothing but what they're standing in, communication and transport to family for ALL who need it, etc., etc.

And after the disaster's passed and everyone else's forgotten about it, we help individuals and families recover from setbacks so devastating that it simply couldn't be done without this hand back up.

We do this for each other. We do this for ourselves. This is a big part of our national character, and if we stopped working together to help each other we'd be an entirely different sort of nation. A dem.

Romney doesn't know what Romney's budget is. - MTTX

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His solution is to cut federal programs and give them back to the states, and this will help balance the federal budget. But he makes no mention of giving the states the funding to run these programs. Of course it will save the federal government money. At the same time, it will bankrupt the states who are being forced to run programs they can't afford. The constitution says the federal government cannot decree that a state provide a program without providing them the funds to do so.

When people lose everything in an unsustainable area, they move. One way or another, - bills are presented to those who can pay.

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Of course, how those who can react to those in need determines the kind of people and kind of country they are.

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