What happens when a natural disaster hits? Do the States have the capacity within their own budget to just deal with it on their own? How many times has the state of Virginia requested Emergency status from the Feds? Hmmm, I believe we are in a State of Emergency right now! What does that mean exactly to have emergency status? Well, it a nutshell it means you can qualify for money, cold hard cash. Now, as a Virginian, I would prefer to dip into the big pot of resources as opposed to the small state pot. Republican governors don’t mind asking for federal assistance, certainly Governor McDonnell has done so on more than one occasion.
If Romney were President, what WOULD happen to FEMA. Well, let’s listen, shall we.
During a CNN debate at the height of the GOP primary, Mitt Romney was asked, in the context of the Joplin disaster and FEMA’s cash crunch, whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster 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?”
We will depend on the private sector in an emergency? What does that mean? A state in financial crisis, possibly dealing with millions, possibly billions of dollars in crippling infrastructure damage needs to appropriate the money before it can helps its people? Does this sound like a good idea to anyone?
So for states that are the most impacted by any one natural disaster, there is no shared sense of responsibility as a nation, everyone is on their own! Great, sounds like good plan for economic success…….NOT. Can you imagine the state of Louisiana attempting to recover from Katrina with no Federal help?
I hope Republicans understand exactly what they voting for when they cast their ballot for Romney. Those pesky unintended consequences and all.
I realize that to liberals, truth is like poison, but where was the part where he mentioned disaster assistance going to the states?
Can you ever have a discussion without labels? I don’t feel it necessary to throw liberal or conservative into my conversations most of the time.
Labels are distasteful.
It’s like showing the cross to a vampire. Alternatively, one could use a bible, a copy of the Constitution, the American Flag, or a gift certificate to Chik-Fil-A.
You can accuse him of not answering the specific question, no doubt about that, but he takes a specific question and gives a super-general answer to it. And of course the way it cuts off, you just know he wasn’t finished with his point, so God only knows what was edited out.
yeah – that is the way it goes. King asked if disaster relief should be moved to the states – and Romney answered ‘Absolutely’. On the extended version, King even interjects ‘including disaster relief’ and Romney continues with the same response line. What I do not understand is where ‘Private Industry’ comes into play – How does one possibly think we can rely on the Private Sector for natural disasters? We can all see how well the emergency plans worked out with the BP spill (ie, the private company was defunct). Funny, many people were calling on the Fed’s to address a man made private sector disaster (even Jindal), yet with a natural disaster, there are many calling for the ending and defunding of the agency responsible for disaster relief. Just a few months ago, Jindal was chastising the administration for not enacting disaster relief before the storm even hit Louisiana – you cannot have it both ways.
But, no fear – Romney will continue to fund those tanks that are not being requested, and those extra planes and ships that are not being requested.
Romney said he agreed with closing down FEMA. If I am wrong, refute me with evidence, not blather.
My point exactly Pat! Do we allow states to go bankrupt and become sesspools because they can’t fix their infrastructure damage? Who thinks that is reasonable.
Cato/Slow,
Don’t accuse liberal blah blah blah as sound reason to a discussion. Where will Virginia, if we didn’t have access to federal money, get the funds to deal with what could be bank busting damage after Sandy?
Look, if you want to give more tax money to fix our own state problems, I can understand that as a solution, but something tells me you probably would not see that as a viable solution.
@Elena, the mindless answers seem to be all we are getting out of the “conservatives.” The mindless answers are no answers at all and are pretty much a waste of eye time.
It’s so bizarre to me. The TEA party repubicans, including many conservatives, are running on a platform of cutting spending AND cutting taxes. Well, WHAT get’s cut? Do people only believe it is the poor and general moochers of society that get left hangin’ in the wind? Cutting government has real consequences and FEMA was, and remains, on the chopping block for many, including romney/ryan.
I am asking relevant questions and getting ridiculous meaningless responses.
@Elena
You will enjoy this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TiXUF9xbTo
Romney wins the Joss Whedon enforsement!
“Am I ready? Am I ready for the purity and courage of Mitt Romney’s apocalyptic vision?’ Mitt’s ready. He’s not afraid to face a ravening, rasping hoard of sub-humans, because that’s how he sees poor people already.”
Biggest mistake with FEMA and funding was the merge in 2003 as part of Homeland Security. FEMA did well before it had to take on “threat of terrorism”….it was one thing to say yes, FEMA should assist with all disasters to include man-made; it was another to create a mission within it that would siphon money away from the core historical mission FEMA did well.
Then FEMA needs to be fixed, not done away with.
Kudo’s to Chris Christie – acknowledging the call from President Obama, and being non partisan about it (at least what I saw) – too bad Jindal could not act the same way. The partisan’s – both sides want to poke holes in everything.
Of course, if the most elegant, persuasive argument was presented, you would not care. Because you already disagree with the basic premise. So why attempt to answer the questions to which you’ve already answered?
SHOW me evidence in the video!
Sorry, I should have just let you libs talk amongst yourselves….that’s the only place you get the 100% agreement you want. Sorry I can’t agree with you, but if I did, we’d both be wrong.
Why on earth did you ASSume I was speaking of you, dearest Slowpoke?
You know, it isn’t the agreement. Its the label and blather element…If I said there was a hurricane outside some folks on this blog would find a way to turn it into a left/right kind of statement. I just don’t think like that.
For instance, local issues, which you never comment on and which very much DO affect you, are often not liberal or conservative. The big fight now is about transparency in government. Now is that left or right? It isn’t either.
Slow, you only need to listen to the video (King – transfer disaster relief to states – Romney Absolutely) – if you google for a longer length, you also hear King interject ‘including disaster relief’ and Romney continues on with his private sector response.
Does FEMA need to be revamped – of course it does, as do other Fed agencies – but Congress continues to meddle and tinker in all areas – requiring nonsense to be funded, as well as pet projects.
Here ya go… support for Romney’s position from someone besides…us.
It’s not a either/or situation. Transfer the money to the states. Decentralize.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/332008/yes-we-should-cut-fema-kevin-d-williamson
Disasters don’t know borders. Call up all the affected governors tomorrow and ask them their opinion of this idea.
Absurd.
I wonder…the press is spending time on something that Romney said back in the primaries. Its so good that there aren’t any OTHER scandalous happenings in the world. Aren’t we happy that the press has gotten all the answers about the Benghazi event that it wants, even as new information comes out.
Elena remembered it for its blantant stupidity and went and got it from archives. Perhaps others had the same reaction.
@Cargo,
Well, considering that Romney changes his position like a chamelion, it was interesting to not that, when asked yesterday about FEMA, he was silent.
I’ll bet Christie is pretty thankful that he has an adminstration that still believes the federal government has a direct responsibility to the states needs in a disaster.
NO nice job, Brownie?
Neiggghhhhhhh. Brownie was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. That really qualifies you for a FEMA job.
Futhermore, looking at the economic disaster facing the state of NJ, you bet your butt Christie is thankful for financial help, putting NJ on the expidited disaster status!
When is the conversaton going to start about the increasing amounts of alarmingly extreme weather and what might be causing it?
How about Romney going AFTER private industry like GM and Chrysler! What a bizarre crazy twist by Republicans! Like Obama controls GM? WTF! Is Romney advocating regulations over private industry?
How about Romney LYING about Jeep–saying that they were closing up American factories and heading to Asia?
@Moon-howler
Increasing amounts? The number of hurricanes has dropped. What increased amounts?
How about the fact that Fiat says that they ARE going to move Jeep building to Italy and also will also build in China? I saw a similar article. It was written to imply that Fiat was MOVING Jeep to China, NOT opening a new line.
http://www.examiner.com/article/so-where-will-jeeps-be-built-china-u-s-italy
But that’s not what the Romney spot said. Over the weekend, Romney had made reference to a news report that was inaccurately interpreted in the blogosphere as claiming that Jeep was being moved entirely to China, but that’s not what the TV spot said.
In any case, Chrysler issued a statement saying it was considering resuming production of Jeeps in China that had been suspended in 2009, pending the outcome of the bailout and sale of the company to Fiat.
“Let’s set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China,” Chrysler said.
“It’s simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world’s largest auto market,” the company said.
In fact there is yet another wrinkle to the Jeep story because, according to Autoblog, Fiat plans to begin building Jeeps in Italy on the same assembly line on which it builds Alfa Romeos, the storied marque it acquired years ago.
The Italian-built Jeeps will mostly be exported to the U.S. for sale here, whereas the Jeeps to be built in China will almost certainly all be sold in Asia.
The number of huge, devastating megastorms has increased over the years.
Don’t leave out tornadoes and derechos.
Really? Please, point me at your source. My information says that we have had much fewer hurricanes. As for tornadoes….the information is conflicting.
Per http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/24/tornadoes-more-common-climate-change
Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University, told AFP: “If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it’s agreed upon by the tornado community that it’s not a real increase. It’s having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we’re seeing them more often.”
Writing on the Climate Central website, the policy analyst Andrew Freedman said climate change was already changing the environment in which severe thunderstorms and their associated tornadoes form, and that it was bound to have some influence on tornado frequency or strength. “But as of now, no discernible trend has been detected in the observational data, and studies of how tornadoes will fare in a warmer world show somewhat conflicting results.”
So, the numbers are not there to support that premise. However, the damages have increased even with smaller storms, making them look worse, due to build up in the target areas. Also, in the same article they mention that there would be increased water vapor in a warmer world…but I’ve seen that there would be increased drought because of a drier world. When they can become consistent, then I’ll consider their premise. We may very well be warming. Or not….latest info has the warming stopped.
There is climate change. Get over it.
i can always count on Cargo to go dig out some horse’s ass to quote. There will always be people who deny.
Meanwhile the rest of the world believes that things have changed. They base it on what they see, hear and read.
Most meteorologists, scientists, climatologist believe we are going through climate change. It should be a topic of conversation in the government and between governments.
Oh horse pucky again. Cargo, do you really believe the horsesheist you shovel?
My great grandfather prided himself on being a contrarian also. He refused to pronounce Chevrolet correctly because he said he wasn’t in France.
🙄
Save yourself the trouble of postint resources. Anyone named Grady Dixon from MSU is suspect already.
Actually young Grady seems sort of like a fun fellow. I wonder if he will do something on Big Foot vs climate change?
http://geosciences.msstate.edu/people/dixon/
If no one saw it and no one recorded it, then it is pretty difficult to compare isn’t it? (the before and after)
Here’s more on tornadoes. http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extreme.asp
This is a Pro-warming site, so you should be happy.
excerpt:
However, this increase may be entirely caused by factors unrelated to climate change:
Population growth has resulted in more tornadoes being reported.
Advances in weather radar, particularly the deployment of about 100 Doppler radars across the U.S. in the mid-1990s, has resulted in a much higher tornado detection rate.
Tornado damage surveys have grown more sophisticated over the years. For example, we now commonly classify multiple tornadoes along a damage path that might have been attributed to just one twister in the past.
Given these uncertainties in the tornado data base, it is unknown how the frequency of tornadoes might be changing over time. The “official word” on climate science, the 2007 United Nations IPCC report, stated it thusly: “There is insufficient evidence to determine whether trends exist in small scale phenomena such as tornadoes, hail, lighting, and dust storms.”
Did you miss the extended growing seasons also? How about those pictures from space of the polar regions?
I do my part everyday to help Global Warming. I heat my home to 82 and make sure I buy all Chinese products so I can both say screw you to American unions AND contribute to the cost of bringing those goods across the planet for my cheap consumption.
@Marin,
Well, here’s to the Red, White, and Blue.
I hope you get fungus from keeping your heat turned up so high.
@Moon-howler
Extended growing seasons are a bad thing? And I thought we were talking about storms. I didn’t say anything about anything else…just that the meteorologists have said that there have been fewer storms and that tornadoes may or may not be more frequent. They can’t tell because they think that better reporting is the reason we see more.
How much denial can a person be in? Think frequency.
Extended growing seasons are great if they are where they should be. It is further evidence around here that things are heating up. I dindt say it was good or bad. I just said it was.
“Extended growing seasons are great if they are where they should be.”
What do you mean?
If maine had the same growing season all of a sudden, as Florida, you might start looking for a problem.
Well, during the viking era, there were grapes growing in New England or Canada….
So.. It was pretty warm. That’s where the term Vinland came from.