The very fortunate East Coasters who still have electricity and/or newspaper delivery today - myself included - have probably seen the NYT article "A Big Storm Requires Big Government." The article condemns Romney for his dislike of FEMA. It even goes so far as to paint Republicans as being on the side of destruction. The article is smug, to put it nicely.
I'm not smug, because I know what it's like to live in a place that gets devastated by hurricanes. My family has had a house on the Gulf Coast for most of my life now. I have evacuated, I have duck-and-covered, I have driven away from my house thinking that's the last time I'd ever see it standing. Luckily, we have been far enough inland that the house has only ever had minor damage. In one particularly memorable hurricane a few years ago, the beaches - on which the local economy depends - were sheared off, boardwalks and all. Fortunately, the sand that was washed out has returned. So have the tourists.
That's why I find it supremely arrogant that the NYT editorial board has peered down from its Ivory Tower and deemed Big Government the answer to our problems. Government doesn't make recovery happen. Want proof? Just look at the Obama economy! You know who makes recovery happen? People on the ground with trucks and hammers. Let's trust them to make decisions.
But the NYT article doesn't care about solutions. It cares about making the Right Wing seem hateful. Here's what it had to say about FEMA:
"The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast."
First of all, we do NOT hate free aid for poor people. We acknowledge that a safety net needs to exist. We just want to make sure that you're drug-free, looking for work, and truly in need before you tap into the welfare system - so that you don't take those resources away from people who really do need them.
Second, disaster assistance is NOT free aid to poor people. It is aid to people affected by disaster. Sandy didn't choose where to strike based on how poor or wealthy her victims would be. It is a fallacy to drum up class warfare where none exists.
Third, the Right does NOT think that people harmed by natural disasters somehow "deserve it." Do we think everyone should face consequences - good and bad - of their actions? Sure! This hurricane was not anyone's action or decision. And no matter what NYT tells you, we're not dumb enough to think that human choice had anything to do with it. Well, one of us is dumb enough to think that. But the rest of us? Not so much.
The article mentions a "war room" where FEMA officials make decisions about how to rebuild. The folks in the war room don't know these places like the locals do. And yet, we are supposed to accept that whatever happens in this secretive "war room" is best for us? Keep in mind, these are the same folks who will put a tarp on the wrong roof and then threaten your arrest if you want to put that same tarp on the correct roof. What if we returned decisionmaking power to the states, and let them decide? That's Romney's idea.
It is unlikely that Romney will close FEMA, but he does want to return decisionmaking power to the states. And even if he DID shut down the agency, states won't have to pay to fund FEMA and can instead use the money in their own disaster-relief efforts.
The NYT editors think that without federal funding, we are all lost sheep who can't decide where to allocate resources: >"Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages."
They claim that states are too "financially strapped" to manage their own disaster relief funds. They conveniently ignore, however, that FEMA is perhaps even more cash-strapped. Its disaster relief fund has run out no less than six times in the past nine years.
It is ignorant to say that government is the answer, when the Federal Government here in DC announced - before a single raindrop had fallen - that it would close on Monday. Meanwhile, the Red Cross, out there in the private sector, never stopped working.
I know people on the Gulf Coast who fight through storms like this fairly often. I know people from NJ and NY who are going through it now. These people are smart and strong and they will rebuild. To claim that they don't know what's best for themselves and should leave it up to strangers in a "war room" is absolutely ridiculous.
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