Romney Says Disaster Relief Is Immoral

October 29, 2012 //

A year ago, Mitt Romney said that the federal government should not provide en
Emergency relief to victims of tornadoes and floods. He recommended that FEMA be privatized. Remember that when he talks about his concern for victims of the hurricane,

Categories Romney, Mitt

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zeno says:

October 29, 2012 at 12:46 pm

he’s an idiot.

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wgersen says:

October 29, 2012 at 12:52 pm

Tsk, tsk…. there you go again quoting him on a statement he made a while ago and believing that what he said THEN is true NOW… he’s a moderate NOW… have you forgotten? Evidently too many people HAVE forgotten his assertion that he was a SEVERE conservative…

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- Duane Swacker says:
  
  October 29, 2012 at 6:43 pm
  
  Yes, he took Tricky Dick’s words about campaigning to heart: “In the primaries go as far right as possible, then for the general election stick to the center”. But then again far right back then was what is the left now.
  
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chemtchr says:

October 29, 2012 at 1:35 pm

Wow. Romney wants privatized disaster vultures, just like we got in New Orleans.

Too bad he had to cancel his appearance in Virginia, he could have clarified that statement. The mid-Atlantic has about a week to think this through.

Joplin wasn’t NYC, of course. Maybe we should tell Wall Street to get its own power grid back up?

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llori8565 says:

October 29, 2012 at 2:11 pm

I have thought hard about this! When do people need to take responsibility for themselves and prepare for such disasters? We all live with the risk of natural disasters happening and should take personal responsibility to prepare for them. How much longer can we afford to fund these disasters with our national being what it is. There will always be people that need additional help and if we were a moral people that help would come from publicly supported agents such as Red Cross. I have to pay for insurance in the event I loose my private property to theft, tornado, fire, etc. To allow people to grow comfortable with the idea that FEMA will always be there to take care of them is to encourage them not to prepare for the unexpected!

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JoJoFox says:

October 29, 2012 at 3:35 pm

His own campaign staff reversed that position today…surprise, surprise…not.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/83001.html

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ReTiredbutMisstheKids says:

October 29, 2012 at 3:47 pm

Should he win, I would bet, then, that he would GLADLY retain Arne Duncan, if not just for Duncan’s statement that Katrina was the best thing ever to have happened to the New Orleans school system!

Perhaps he’d recommend rehiring “Brownie,” as well.

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Teacher111 says:

October 29, 2012 at 5:50 pm

I think what happened in New Orleans and potentially what could happen in the Northeast is more indicative of a lack of experience with storms than some political conspiracy as was claimed after Katrina. What happened in New Orleans would never happen in Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Panama City, etc. Florida is used to this, and the state has a huge head start on things compared to other states. Nearly everything here (at least on the coast) is built with hurricanes in mind. It’s like California and earthquakes. An aftermath of an earthquake in Orlando is going to be extremely different than the aftermath of an earthquake in San Jose.

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Eric says:

October 29, 2012 at 7:08 pm

“… we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids …”

What are “those things?” From earlier in Romney’s response we read:
“things we’re doing that we don’t have to do”

Maybe it will take more than the ELA Common Core for American schoolchildren to learn to “read like a detective and write like a journalist.”

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Annie says:

October 29, 2012 at 9:12 pm

That’s why you have insurance. You do not need the federal government to come in and save you.

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- Eric says:
  
  October 30, 2012 at 1:16 pm
  
  My neighbors evacuated Katrina victims using the same planes that flew (over the decades) to Hanoi and Baghdad. Federal taxes (not insurance) pays for the USAF 445th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron. Thank you for your support.
  
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falstaff35 says:

October 30, 2012 at 1:33 am

You mischaracterize what Romney actually said to the extent that you come close to falsifying his position. He did not say that there should be no relief, but that whatever federal money goes toward it should go to the states, and that relief could best be, in addition, contracted out to private suppliers. What was “immoral” was NOT the relief per se but the high level of borrowing by the federal government to implement all of its various programs. I happen to think the federal government has an essential role in disaster relief, but FEMA’s record of waste in Katrina is notorious. Relief is moral, even if handled by the federal government, which is able to marshal the resources of the entire 50 states to help out some of them during disasters. What is, however, immoral is to continue to borrow and to increase the debt. The ultimate danger to the country is the debt. If interest rates go up, the US will devote more and more of its revenue to debt service (e.g. to China, which it uses already to fund its military development so it won’t have to tax it’s own people to build a modern technologically capable military), and that will mean less and less money for all the other things the Federal government does, or in the worst case, bankruptcy, as in Greece, and bond repudiation as in Argentina. THAT was what Romney was saying was immoral.

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- Duane Swacker says:
  
  October 30, 2012 at 8:04 am
  
  Why is it “immoral to continue to borrow and increase the debt”?
  
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Urbanlad (@urbanlad) says:

October 30, 2012 at 2:20 pm

And this and being an economic terrorist isn’t…something’s wrong here.

Greg Palast: “Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza: How He Made Millions from the Rescue of Detroit”

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/10/18/greg_palast_mitt_romneys_bailout_bonanza

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knittogetherinlove says:

October 31, 2012 at 6:42 pm

Why are you scraping up everything you can to discredit Romney, when it’s Obama’s educational policies that you don’t like? You don’t make sense, Ms. Ravitch.

This obviously has taken Mitt Romney out of context. His main message (Hey, aren’t teachers supposed to teach students how to find the main idea in literature and essays? Why can’t teachers do it themselves?) Romney’s main idea from that quote is about how bureacracies can slow disaster relief. From Romney’s experience, the private sector does it best. He’s speaking from his observations.

He is not against disaster relief. He does not say disaster relief is evil. In fact. the church that Romney belongs to is wll known for disaster relief and humanitarian aid around the world. They are well known and well trusted as first responders.

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