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Romney would shut down federal disaster agency (FEMA)

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  • Schmidt
    2012-10-29 10:21:32 AM
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    During the GOP debates, Mitt Romney was asked if he would shut down FEMA so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response. Romney's response:

    "Absolutely," he said. "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 the opposite question, what should we keep?"

    "Including disaster relief, though?" debate moderator John King asked Romney.

    "We cannot -- we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids," Romney replied. "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."

    Those clips of the Republican debate should be shown all over the east coast. Of course I'm sure Romney would deny he ever said it. But he's on tape.
  • michaels39301
    2012-10-29 12:04:23 PM
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    Right you are Schmidt, BUT even though he's on tape saying this, he is bold enough to still deny that. Just look how he denied things in that video that was aired about the 47%.

    If Romney says that it is IMMORAL for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts, then ask the loser why he wants to add trillions to the Federal deficit by giving tax breaks to the wealthy, huge increases in spending for the military including dramatically enlarging our naval forces, and the creation of new and better war “toys”, with no plan to reduce this deficit that he would dramatically grow.
  • michaels39301
    2012-10-29 05:35:53 PM
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    About the elimination of FEMA and sending it to each state, consider this:

    SCENARIO 1

    Let's say a hurricane is approaching the Gulf Coast and the forecasted landfall is right on the Mississippi/Alabama border.


    SCENARIO 2

    Let's say a front with severe thunderstorms is approaching the midwest, and is crossing the Kansas/Nebraska/Missouri/Iowa/ borders with multiple tornado warnings.



    In both these scenarios, which state EMA would have jurisdiction. Would a response team have to stop at one state's border when the destruction/damage does not? And what if one state's response was the anathema to the others? There would be no one central command center. Mitt Romney has no idea what he is suggesting. He obviously has not thought it through at all. He gets an idea in his head and IMMEDIATELY speaks, thinking "I have to be the first one to present this idea in order to get the credit for it". This would be his "way" if he got elected and would the U.S. be able to stay out of more wars in the future? NO WAY. Obama 2012!
  • DemNow
    2012-10-29 06:47:40 PM
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    Katrina

    Remember this??? I remember seeing the bodies floating and them sawing open
    attics to get bodies out. I remember Austr., Cuba and third world countries
    offering help, States can't be in charge of stuff like this and Romney
    thinks all money should go to the states or better yet to churches and
    private agencies.
    Bush & Katrina
    ------------------------
    On 5 September 2005, Mrs. Bush and her husband, former president George
    Bush, toured the Astrodome complex in Houston that is being used as
    temporary lodging for thousands of displaced citizens from New Orleans and
    visited with evacuees being housed there. On this walk-thru of the
    make-shift quarters that amount to little more than a sea of cots in a wide
    open room, they were accompanied by former president Bill Clinton and his
    wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. The visit was intended as a bipartisan
    show of support for victims and a as forum for announcing the creation of
    the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, a charitable endeavor aimed at facilitating
    short and long term relief efforts in the afflicted Gulf Coast states.

    Later that day, Mrs. Bush was a guest on Marketplace, a show on public
    radio. During that interview she made these remarks about her interactions
    with the people quartered in the Astrodome:
    Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're going to move to Houston.' What
    I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas.
    Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

    And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged
    anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.
    New Orleans residents housed in the various post-Katrina evacuation camps
    (such as the Astrodome) lost to the hurricane and the subsequent flood their
    loved ones, homes, jobs, pets, and their possessions. Their city sustained a
    tremendous amount of damage that may take years to repair, and they may
    never live there again. That they now have cots to sleep on, food, water,
    medical care, and the protection of law and order probably isn't what most
    of them would consider the book definition of events' "working very well for
    them."

    --------------------------------
    Let's look at some facts. New Orleans was declared a disaster area on the
    Saturday before the hurricane hit. The mayor of New Orleans messed up big
    time by not seeing to the evacuation, the governor of the state of Louisiana
    is totally to blame for not doing his job. Monday everyone thought they had
    dodged the bullet until the levee broke and a major US city was under water.
    Now no matter how much Bush and his cronies want to dismiss it is when the
    federal government steps in. No state agencies or government is capable of
    handling a disaster of this magnitude. Within hours every nearby state's
    national
    guard should have been on its way and every team of seals and on and on.
    Yet, on Friday the federal government is still dithering. Meanwhile people
    in nursing homes and hospitals and attics are dying. Many are not drowning
    they are dying of heat stroke, and starvation and dehydration. Ten days
    after the this catastrophe they are deciding to begin retreiving the bodies.
    Please help me follow the reasoning of this author. Since New Orleans and
    the state of Louisiana are noted for their corruption from the governor's
    chair straight down to the New Orleans police department, therefore those
    who are too poor or disabled or aged to leave the city under their own steam
    deserved to die. Nice bit or reasonig there (compassionate conservatism, I
    guess) Let's send our teflon coated prez a sign for his desk "the buck stops
    here", unlike Prez H. S. Truman he can't seem to get a grip on that idea.

    I never thought I could be embarrassed by our countries' actions toward it's
    own but I am.

    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
    And Romney wants to do away with FEMA
    Less govt.
  • Schmidt
    2012-10-30 09:37:51 AM
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    "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." -- Grover Norquist, May 25, 2001, NPR

    Grover Norquist's statement to NPR 11 years ago still resonates with Republicans today. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan along with 238 of 242 House Republicans and 41 out of 47 Senate Republicans have all signed Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", in which they promise to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."

    You will recall that Paul Ryan was true to that pledge, refusing to approve funds for disaster relief in affected communities across America unless they are offset by spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

    "What Ryan proposes is that when disaster strikes, lawmakers scour the rest of the budget for savings to pay for rebuilding homes, roads and schools and helping small businesses. Put another way, instead of being an excuse to increase spending, disasters would offer an opportunity to make further cuts elsewhere in the government."

    Ryan this year "tried to gut it [disaster relief fund] and eliminate $10 billion a year in disaster costs when putting together the House GOP budget."

    "Republican leaders still had to turn to procedural maneuvers to orchestrate passage of $8.8 billion in disaster money over the opposition of tea party lawmakers to keep the agreement. Ryan, the House Budget Committee's chairman, was among 66 Republicans opposing the measure."

    Tea Party Republicans have an obsession with anything the federal government does. Their view is that the federal government, especially the Obama government, is evil and must be reined in. Whatever the government does, the free market and private entities can do better...the are on a crusade to privatize America and drown the federal government in a bathtub.

    Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan subscribe to that Tea Party utopian view.



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