Dear New Jersey, Staten Island, and Long Island:
We know you are some of the biggest net donor regions in the country, with NJ getting back only 55 cents on every dollar you send to Washington. Drop dead.
Mark of New Jersey
Mark is a Founding Editor of The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, the predecessor of Ordinary Times.
Devcat is watching over, but if you notice any problems contact the editors and Devcat will be notified and deployed immediately.
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But Mark, how else will the Paragould PD be able to pay for their AR-15s?Report
Given the geographically and geologically precarious placement of red states, this is really not a good issue for Republicans to go to the mat on.Report
Aye. I think one of things that irks me the most about this is that they’re complaining about lack of documentation for the Administration’s request (which, by the way, is significantly less than what the governors of the region are seeking) yet seemingly won’t be bothered to actually survey the damage themselves. Full documentation just isn’t possible at this point, and probably won’t be for awhile.
Presumably, a good chunk of the “prevention” infrastructure that they’re hung up on and want to wait on is beach restoration, though I’m not certain about that. If my assumption is correct, then that’s a huge problem – if the beaches don’t get meaningfully restored, then a bad Nor’easter could easily destroy a good chunk of what actually survived Sandy or undo a lot of the recovery efforts.Report
Well like the debt ceiling stuff, they know that the Democrats aren’t sufficiently sociopathic to actually hold up funding on things like disaster relief or willfully plunge the country into another recession, so they figure they can get away with it.Report
Because if we don’t pay for every single thing on a wish list, rather than just immediate aid relief, the
terroristshurricanes win.The move would mark a significant shift from Congress’ actions following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the last storm to wreak destruction on a similar scale as Sandy. Within two weeks after Katrina’s storm surge flooded New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities, Congress had appropriated $62.3 billion, and storm costs eventually topped $100 billion.
Because the one thing Katrina recovery was known for was effective and efficient use of reconstruction funds. So we should definitely give a blank check again.Report
No one’s asking for a blank check, though – keep in mind that the Administration’s request is already substantially less than what the governors requested. In Katrina, the money was appropriated within two weeks. We’re now at two months. And the lesson of Katrina is to make sure the money to entities that can be trusted, not to refuse allocating the money entirely.
I’d also feel a lot less angry about this if a significant number of these Senators had personally surveyed the damage involved here. So far as I’ve been able to tell, not a single GOP Senator or out-of-state congressman has made a trip to survey the damage at this point. Vitter was supposed to come, but backed out at the last minute, and that’s the closest I can find.Report
Having been on the business end of CODELs in a war zone, a touring Senator ain’t that great a use of resources.Report
Sure, but the point is that you’ve got a bunch of people who have no clue what’s going on – and apparently little interest in finding out – effectively insisting that they know best how bad things are (or aren’t). The message sent is “we don’t care enough about your part of the country to see how bad things are ourselves, we don’t trust people in your area of the country, even from our own party, to believe their assessment of how bad things are (or aren’t), and we aren’t interested in what people who have seen how bad things are (or aren’t), such as the President and FEMA, assess the damage.”Report
That’ll teach your governor to hug Obama.Report