Disaster Relief- Immoral!

Here are a couple of images, the first one almost unbelievable, of Hurricane Sandy striking Cuba.  Sandy is now officially the biggest Atlantic hurricane ever seen:


That first picture looks like something out of a disaster film, but it is apparently real.  And we're next.

Well, needless to say, Green Eagle doesn't bring something like this up without having it in mind to take a hit at Republicans.  In this case, I think it is a good idea to review some of what Mitt Romney has had to say about Federal disaster relief. Here's Mitt, in the primaries:

"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..."

Immoral.  Immoral to come together to help each other when some of us are in dire need.  And what is Romney's answer?  Well, his first thought is to slough off the Federal responsibility onto the individual States, most all of which are in such financial trouble that they could never muster the resources to deal with something like this; i.e. to just let the unlucky victims suffer.  But his real answer is a very predictable one: to privatize FEMA.

And what does that mean?  Is the private sector going to cough up the money to repair this sort of damage, out of the goodness of its heart?  Of course not.  In fact, what Romney is talking about is having taxpayers cough up the money for disaster relief, and then passing it along to private companies to take whatever profit they can, and then pass the dead minimum left on to disaster victims.  Because disaster relief is not a matter of our responsibility to our fellow Americans; no, like medical care, education, infrastructure and everything else these days, it is just one more opportunity for the rich people who own these companies to thieve whatever they can from the rest of us.

Comments

I think they already thieve some of it off the Fema contracts, but to give it all to the states direct means you have 50 Fema programs, meaning more of it goes to gov. wages and managers, then you have local politicians right in the middle of giving contracts out on the spot, no time for bidding process in a disaster. States are not going to warehouse food and water and tents like the feds do. It would be third world graft and efficiency, to say nothing of descrimination by neighborhoods and regions. One more example of the GOP not caring about this nations well being.
Anonymous said…
Romney will see the victims of this storm as losers and thus consider them to be morally inferior and unworthy of aid.
Green Eagle said…
Instead of asking people in Ohio to donate useless canned goods, how about if Romney coughs up a million or so of his own plentiful wealth to show that he really cares?

No, forget it. Fat chance.

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