Who could have predicted that a bunch of koolade swilling, willfully ignorant lovers of rightwing billionaires who view democratically elected government with acidic contempt … would act in such a heartless manner. And just in ase there was any doubt, the same assclowns killed the Violence Against Women Act for the first time since it was enacted in1994.
The Zingularity
Just another Freethought Blogs site
Christie strikes me as what I call old-school Republican. I would probably disagree on almost any position he takes, but I’ve always had the impression that he was honestly trying to do the best for everybody, not just for the richest people. So his goals are fine, we would just disagree on how to achieve them.
There are very few Republicans I can say that about these days. His behavior since that storm hit has been interesting. He seems to have gotten the idea that his job is to make the recovery as easy on his constituents as possible and was genuinely grateful for the attention that Obama paid to the situation and is genuine shocked and enraged by the behavior of the new-school Republicans.
Christie, hon, your party got taken over by some very bad people. That strange smell is the coffee. You need to wake up now.
There are many in Christie’s party who would shrink the government to the point where it would not be able to deal with disasters. They believe that people should make their own arrangements privately to recover from disasters by having sufficient private insurance. The fact that such insurance may not be available or affordable is not government’s problem.
I do have a problem with people who can insure themselves not doing so because they can depend on help from taxpayer funded relief. Those near water who can afford flood insurance but do not should take responsibility for their losses. Unfortunately the way the insurance industry works this is a very small number of people in a major disaster.
Why should the government get involved in disaster relief? The best reason is that the costs to the economy of not doing so are far greater. Republicans too often look at government spending in “moral” terms rather than bothering to understand the underlying economics.
I’m loving this. Right on the heels of the fiscal cliff fiasco — in which the Republicans didn’t come off as badly as they could have, to be sure, but it still doesn’t leave them smelling rosy — now we have this infighting over the Hurricane Sandy aid. It’s too perfect.
@Davidct
In Australia, we have a way of dealing with that for health care. Everyone is covered by medicare, but if you earn more than a certain amount and don’t purchase additional private health insurance, you get slugged with an extra medicare levy on top of your taxes. This encourages those that can afford it to pay a premium for better care, and then they don’t take up space in the public hospitals that poorer people rely on. Simple, neh?
Disaster relief is different, I’ll grant, especially in a big country where different communities are prone/not subject to different disasters, but there should be options on the table for ensuring taxpayer funded relief goes to those who need it most.