This is the guy who suggested it is "immoral" for the federal government to spend money in times of national disasters, and that individual states could handle catastrophes without a big gummint FEMA:
"The city of Peabody Massachusetts is a quiet borough north of Boston, neighboring Salem in Essex County. Historically tied to the tanning industry and agriculture, it was an early hotspot in the automobile industry. Through the town runs the Ipswich River, which is where the problems for Mitt Romney originate.
In 2004, severe rain caused the river to overflow, causing widespread flooding. In response, the state developed a flood prevention plan. With that plan in place, flooding would no longer be an issue should severe rain return to the area. The total cost would have been a paltry $5.7 million, a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions in damages caused by flooding.
The measure, prepared, detailed, and ready to go, hit the governors desk for signature. And Governor Romney promptly vetoed it.
In response to the veto, the Boston Globe ran a scathing editorial on the Governor:
Peabody officials yesterday lashed out at Governor Mitt Romney’s decision to block $5.7 million to pay for a flood control project in downtown Peabody. Romney blocked the money as part of $76 million in election-year spending he vetoed last week.
At a State House press conference Friday, Romney said he had tried to contact Peabody officials to obtain more information about the funding, but was unable to reach anyone. Yesterday, state Senator Frederick E. Berry said, 'We hand-delivered all kinds of information. They had all the information they needed … I don’t want to use the word ‘lie,’ but … how he could say he didn’t get the information? That’s not true.'
Yesterday, Romney’s communications director, Eric Ferhnstrom, said the governor stands by his statement. 'Governor Romney is not a rubber stamp for the expenditure of taxpayer funds. If there is no information to support a particular expenditure, our inclination is to be cautious and to wait until a rationale is put forward,' Ferhnstrom said. 'In this case, we endeavored to get answers to our questions but none were forthcoming. We would be happy to take another look and if it appears to be a necessary and worthwhile expense we will include it in the next spending bill the administration proposes.' --Addicting Info
Yeah. Let's leave disaster planning and relief to the individual states. We can see how well that worked in Massachusetts when Mittens was governor. Why would anyone believe it would be different if he were *shudder* elected to the presidency?
That would be a real natural disaster.
HARRY REID WAS RIGHT!
NO WONDER MITTENS WOULDN'T RELEASE HIS TAX RETURNS!
IN ADDITION TO STASHING HIS MONEY IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES--THE ONLY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN U.S. HISTORY TO DO SO--HE USED HIS RELIGION TO AVOID PAYING TAXES.
30 comments:
You proceed from a flawed premise, that if the federal government doesn't do it, it won't get done.
Where does FEMA's money come from? From the people and the states.
"You proceed from a flawed premise, that if the federal government doesn't do it, it won't get done."
Exactly what happened when Romney was governor and Peabody, Mass. needed money for flood prevention that would SAVE millions if it were flooded again. Mitt saw to it that it didn't get done--even when Massachusetts Democrats AND Republicans agreed it should.
SF: "Where does FEMA's money come from? From the people and the states."
The money comes from hundreds of millions of US citizens in order to help other US citizens in dire circumstances--circumstances like vicious weather events that have become all too frequent. No state alone could handle this sort of catastrophe.
We're all in this together. I am my sister's keeper.
Silver, you proceed from a flawed premise, that if the federal government does not do it, state governments and private citizens will step up to plate and solve this.
There simply is no substitute for the power of a large federal government to address situations such as this.
Need the military to loan you some helicopters to evacuate people? Looks like a federal action to me.
If the state needs a loan to cover costs where do they go? The feds.
Need to coordinate across a broad spectrum of agencies cutting government red tape? Again, the Feds.
Time and time again we have seen that the Feds preform well in these types of situations.
How would the individual states here coordinate their efforts were it not for prompt federal action?
Even Chris Christie, not a fan of the Fed recognizes this. I can't believe he is coming across as a bastion of sanity compared to Mitt who just seems clueless as he gathers "goods" for the people of the area.
Finally, maybe you can explain this... how come the worst responses of FEMA of late, are GOP related, while the Admins that have generally been praised for efficiency and effectiveness have been dems?
Shaw, I love the fact that former Bush FEMA Director Mike "heck of a job Brownee" Brown is being critical of the Obama Admin for acting too quick to get aid to the states and cut red tape.
Maybe he would have preferred waiting for more bodies to be floating first and then admit that we have a disaster on hand.
He did prove one thing though... his slow response to Katrina was not because he hated black people, it really was because he is an idiot.
These guys are amazing...
What states with the size and populations of California and Texas might be able to handle on their own is one thing. Deleware and Rhode Island? Not so much. I don't think a president Romney would ever be able to view America, or Americans as anything other than numbers to be manipulated.
ORAXX
Don't expect an answer from SF, he's just here to troll his lies, and get a forum to do it
After watching the aftermath of the
giant storm, certain words that came out in the GOP debates keep
running through my head,
" ..turn it over to the states,
or better yet, send it BACK TO THE PRIVATE SECTOR. ..get your fresh
water here, only $35 a bottle....
BB... it's like the group that thinks the oil companies, unregulated, will somehow get a conscious and decide not to try and get the highest price possible for their oil.
Isn't that part of their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, to always seek the highest profits possible?
The days of the benevolent company, owned for years by a family or individual who wanted to be a part of the community are gone.
Business doesn't, and cannot legally think that way anymore because of pubic ownership.
I'd be surprised to see water at only $35.00 a bottle. How can any "true conservative" like Les or Silver argue otherwise? It would take government intervention in the markets to restrain prices and shield people from gouging, a very real possibility in a free wheeling unrestrained capitalistic economic system.
are you going to get a new topic after the election or does a new 4 year campaign begin? as a foreigner i see obama as being the candidate for conservative voters and romney as being the high risk candidate for people willing to roll the dice.
my main fear about the coming elections is linda mcmahon becoming a senator.
billy,
the pundits have already begun to talk about 2016--Hillary or Chris Christie for preznit!
Bleh!
The Connecticut Senate race is close.
But the one here in Massachusetts isn't. Elizabeth Warren is still leading Scott Brown.
Meanwhile the conservatives are all trying to pretend there's no such thing as climate change.
Didn't you hear the GOP candidates tell everyone that Global warming is a hoax?
We just had a very heavy rain storm kick the crap out of the east coast.
BB and Dave,
Romney's idea of making catastrophes profit centers for private businesses or, worse, leaving it to states--how would the poor southern states fare in overwhelming disasters is utter foolishness? The poor southern states already depend on the federal redistribution of tax money to survive.
The conservative mantra of small government, low taxes, and each state deciding on civil rights for US citizens makes no sense for the third most populous country in the world.
We are no longer Jefferson's agrarian society, Scarlett O'Hara's dreamy antebellum south, Wyatt Earp's wild west, or Ward Cleaver's 1950s.
Certain elements of our population look at our country as how they imagine it is instead of how it actually is.
That's why we see them as incredibly out of touch with reality.
Bloomberg News reported Oct. 22 that Chrysler’s majority owner Fiat SpA (F) planned to resume Jeep output in China and may eventually make all of the brand’s models there. The report stated that potential production in China would be in addition to output at plants in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio.
"For the third time in a week, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the auto industry are at loggerheads, this time over a Romney radio ad implying that GM and Chrysler are expanding production in China at the cost of American jobs.
The ad claimed that "Under President Obama, GM cut 15,000 American jobs, but they are planning to double the number of cars built in China, which means 15,000 more jobs for China."
The accusation drew a dismissive response from a GM spokesman, who explained, "We've clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country."
The ad further claimed that "Chrysler plans to start making Jeeps in, you guessed it, China."
Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne refuted Romney's comments in an email sent yesterday to Chrysler employees: "Jeep production will not be moved from the United States to China," Marchionne wrote, touting Chrysler's recent production expansions in America.
It was not the first time Romney claimed that Chrysler was shifting production to China, nor was it the first time Chrysler rebuked Romney's charge.
When Romney told an Ohio audience last week that "Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China," Chrysler colorfully waved away the charge.
"It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats," wrote Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri in a blog post. "Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China."
Chrysler's wry dismissal did not stop Romney from repeating the claim in an ad warning that "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."
FactCheck.org called Romney's claims "flat wrong," explaining, "It's misleading to suggest that Chrysler's decision to expand into China will cost U.S. jobs -- especially after the company has said it would have no impact on its U.S. operations."
The fact-checking website cited a report from Bloomberg that Chrysler was mulling "adding Jeep production sites rather than shifting output from North America to China."
Romney's incentive to tarnish the credibility of President Obama's auto bailout is clear - his electoral fortunes largely depend on his showing in midwestern manufacturing states like Ohio and Michigan with a large auto industry presence. If he can convince voters there that the auto bailout did more harm than good, he will stand to benefit.
But that doesn't mean the automakers have to play along."
CBS News
Romney is an unconscionable liar.
And his fake photo-op for aid to Sandy victims is being shown for the crass political theater it was.
Just like the fake soup kitchen stunt his running mate fashioned to make himself look like a compassionate conservative.
At least the Christie has shown some class during this disaster.
Chrysler is not a US owned automaker so they. They are now in the same league as all the other foreign auto companies. GM has made huge investments in China and South America.
Chrysler did make jeeps in China and has plans to do so again but for the China market.
OMG skud got something correct!
Dave: Federal government cut red tape? You're joking, right?
We'd be better off if government contracted the whole thing out to Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart, Fedex and UPS.
GM is still about $30 billion short in "repatriating profits" back to the treasury.
It's easy to be profitable when the King robs the people and stuffs your pockets with their money.
There is no reason to believe Romney was telling the truth about not getting information from Peabody officials in 2004. The man has absolutely no concept of truthfulness.
We've seen sociopaths with no conscience whatsoever — Ted Bundy, Charles Manson and Timothy McVeigh, to name three. To lack a conscience is to be pathologically defective.
I'm at the point of believing Mitt Romney has a very stunted, very compartmentalized conscience, if he has one at all — and no connection between what little, if any, conscience he has and any sense of duty or responsibility to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.
I've been following presidential campaigns and candidates with particular interest for more than a half century. I've never seen a candidate who didn't get things wrong here and there, and engage in spin and shading the truth. Most have told what had to be lies once or twice during an election year. Those things seem to be the norm for the highly ambitious and competitive people who run for president.
What Mitt Romney has done over his political career, and especially over the past year, goes way, way beyond normal. I'm not talking about a behavior, a bad habit, here. To be pathological is to be utterly immune from concern about the potential consequences of being caught out in lies and of being written off by others as someone whose word can't be trusted.
I really believe Romney is no more capable of stopping himself from lying than Bundy was capable of stopping himself from raping and killing.
Nixon was an accomplished, calculating liar. But for all he did lie about a number of things, I don't think Nixon's lying was pathological. I think he rationalized his lies, but in some corner of his mind knew he could be in deep trouble if he went too far too often or got caught in an especially egregious lie. I don't think Romney gets any of that.
There is reason beyond whatever Romney's political beliefs and intentions really are to be scared about him being president. Someone who'd lie about receiving information about a bill he vetoed and lie insistently and repeatedly about things like where Chrysler will produce Jeeps — even after the president of the company has released an emphatic, widely publicized contradictory statement — is not normal.
Silverfiddle wrote: "You proceed from a flawed premise, that if the federal government doesn't do it, it won't get done."
You proceed from a flawed premise that facts and common sense are no match for the dictates of a bass-ackwards ideology.
FEMA is an insurance plan with more than 100 million customers. A pool of insureds that big means comparatively low rates and very big resources with which to "pay claims" in the form of disaster preparedness and responses.
Turn it over to the states, and each state has a much smaller pool of insureds and much smaller response capability. But even at that, each state will have to charge each customer much more to deliver anywhere near the same potential benefit. Many states won't be able or wiling to do that. What then, if those states get hit with a megadisaster?
Given the scale and severity of the current disaster, New Jersey alone, even if it had charged state residents much higher taxes for disaster preparedness and response than the federal government taxes them, would go broke long before Sandy's damage is resolved. New Jersey can't run a deficit, so what then, if it were to go broke?
I'll tell you what then. Either federal taxpayers would have to step in and make up the difference or a lot of Jerseyites would be told, "Too bad, but you're on your own. The state is out of money for disaster relief and reconstruction."
S.W. Insurance, like banking, is not a function of Government.
You say government must insure people because companies won't?
Why won't they?
So you and I pay to insure the uninsurable. A losing proposition.
Our government pays people to live in flood planes (this is a separate issue than the hurricane), insuring them and the bailing them out when the inevitable flooding happens. How smart is that?
S.W. I understand your reasoning, and while I disagree philosophically, I will say that it makes sense.
Or rather, would make sense if the Federal Government were operating in the black, but it is not.
Please tell us professor SF why the government is not running in the black?
This Ive got to hear.
Silverfiddle wrote: "Our government pays people to live in flood planes . . . insuring them and the bailing them out when the inevitable flooding happens. How smart is that?"
Careful, 1 percenters are disproportionately represented among that segment of the population.
Silverfiddle wrote: "So you and I pay to insure the uninsurable. A losing proposition."
No, it's not. We live in communities, counties and states. When disasters wreck and ruin homes, neighborhoods and businesses, are we all to be left to live amid the wreckage and blight because we're too selfish to chip in and help those who can't restore their homes, neighborhoods and businesses on their own?
Are we all to pay higher taxes for necessary services in the aftermath because so many people have been ruined financially they're no longer part of the tax base?
Go live in a wilderness area, where you can be responsible for your own well-being and never be bothered to help anyone else, no matter the circumstances behind their being in need of help. You'll be happier and so will the rest of us who accept that part of the cost and responsibility of living in a decent, civilized society is helping one another out in situations like the aftermath of a natural disaster, recognizing that a well-run agency like FEMA is the most efficient and effective way to do that.
It's simple. It spends more than it takes in.
Either cut spending, or raise taxes. Simple as that.
Unless of course the Gods forbid we revamp the tax code.
Steve, since SF seems to have moved on to other things, let me answer why our government is not running in the black.
1. We've had 30 years in which many of the wealthiest people and corporations have used their wealth buy politicians and elections for the purpose of reducing their own taxes.
2. At the same time, as investors, business owners and corporate decision makers, many of those same very wealthy people have done one thing after another to destroy and export jobs, and to weaken and destroy unions. The result is a prolonged employers' market in which fewer and fewer job seekers and employees have any bargaining clout or market power. Indeed, most are obliged to take what they can get, featuring lower pay, fewer if any benefits, meager raises if any, extremely limited advancement opportunities and zero job security.
The result of all that plus the chicanery of Wall St. banksters and the greater financial industry, including health insurers, plus rising fuel prices, have combined to largely take the mass-market consumer out of consuming at a growth-producing and growth-sustaining rate for several years.
All of the above has sharply reduced the revenues of government at all levels.
3. The Bush administration squandered a $650 billion budget surplus and through willful mismanagement of historical proportions ran up more debt than all previous administrations combined — more debt in less time than any previous administration. At the same time, the Bush administration added to the already excessive tilt of the tax burden shifting more of it away from the wealthy and corporations and on to the backs of middle- and working-class Americans who were already feeling more heavily every year the effects of wage stagnation, benefits reductions, rising energy and other costs. Then came the the big bust of 2007-2008, and with it a drastic reduction in consumer spending, which in normal times is 70 percent of GDP. That reduced aggregate demand so greatly that the economy has been weak and struggling ever since.
Again, remember, all the above have served to run up debt and reduce government revenues at all levels. If anyone now tries to tax middle- and working-class people more to reduce the deficit and debt, the result will be even weaker consumer demand, and for a longer time. And, because of that, government revenues will suffer even more as unemployment rises.
The bottom line: this country's economy will be weak and sickly unless and until the top few percent, the wealthiest individuals and businesses, are obliged to pay a bigger, fairer share of the cost of running this country.
Anything else is ideologically based claptrap and self-serving political BS.
Now, many Republican elected officials are asking Obama to get gas and other necessities to their districts.
Funny to watch them beg Obama for aid they would eliminate if they were in the White House.
A good lesson for Americans who support Romney and the Republiscums.
S.W. As I've already said, you point is well taken.
I think the amount of charity Americans give each year speaks to our generosity towards our fellow man.
What many object to is the that channeling this money (mandatory via taxes) through bloated bureaucracies that rake vast amounts into their pockets is not the most efficient way to do it.
And government is not running in the black because it spends more than it takes in.
since Republicans have refused to cut spending since 1980, then it's way past time to take in more money
"Conservatives call Gov. Christie traitor for working with Pres. Obama to help New Jersey victims of Hurricane Sandy"
Wrong. Real conservatives don't. Extreme right wackos do.
A generalization Shaw that simply does not cut it.
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