Hey, isn’t it great that Occupy Sandy is there on the ground to help out the people still suffering from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. As The Troubadour’s Daily Kos rec list diary progressive activists aren’t waiting for the 1% to jump in and help their fellow human beings. Which makes me ask the question: where is the Tea Party and its “heroes” in this time of national crisis?
Remember Donald Trump and his pledge of $5 MILLION Greenbacks if Obama released his school records? The darling of the birther movement? What has he done for New York and New Jersey? Well …
[T]here were those few New Yorkers who proved themselves small and pitiable creatures. Exhibit A of the species: Donald Trump. […]
[H]e was, crowing:
“Not one Trump building lost power, even those along the Hudson River, lost power.” And, most offensively, declaring of the crane dangling over 57th St.: “I am the best builder, but if that were my building with the crane mishap, I would have been lambasted from coast to coast.”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/small-small-man-article-1.1195738#ixzz2BB05VcKZ
Funny, how a bully and attention whore addict seeker (sorry that wasn’t fair to compare Trump to real sex workers and addicts) has to make the story of the worst disaster to hit the east coast in my lifetime all about HIM. Oh and also to take shots at our President, because after all, what respectable news outlet can resist promoting the opinions of The Donald, the man who actually ran for the Republican nomination (briefly) on one issue: the claim that Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate was fraudulent:
On Twitter.com, Trump accused Pres. Obama of using the tragedy to win votes for the election and also suggested Obama was not a “real president,” reports the Daily Mail.
Trump tweeted:
“Not only giving out money, but Obama will be seen today standing in water and rain like he is a real president – don’t fall for it.”
“Hurricane is good luck for Obama again- he will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars.”
“Don’t let Obama buy the election by handing out unlimited free money to states. Remember this: Obama wants to raise taxes, @MittRomney wants to lower taxes – need I say more.”
Trump all but implies implies Obama used a Kenyan Witch Doctor to cause Sandy the Superstorm just to win election. Well what can you expect from a man known for his bankruptcies, his divorces, his bad hair and the ease with which he utters the words, “You’re fired!” for a television “reality” game show.
Still, the Tea Party isn’t Donald Trump, though they love the blowhard almost as much as they are devoted to their High Priest, Rush Limbaugh. So, in a crisis, what is the “Tea Party” – a movement of real people dedicated to hating President Obama and the Federal Government in equal measure – doing to aid the victims of Sandy?
Well, they are expressing their outrage – at Obama! Some examples:
SANDY – OBAMA’S KATRINA
Obama has had 8 days since Sandy devestated (sic) the East Coast, and he has yet to do ANYTHING TO HELP.
Why are we not OUTRAGED? PEOPLE ARE DYING EVERY DAY!
Do any of you live in the northeast? What have you seen as a result of Obama’s incompetence?
This is Obama’s Katrina. We should be trying to hit him hard on this!
jim7 said on November 1, 2012 Reply
Now is not the time for presidential politics, as Chris Christie said. Way to go Romney for collecting food, but Obama is the one with the power of the pen right now.
Craig Sickler said on November 2, 2012 Reply
FEMA should be eliminated.
Disaster relief and reconstruction were MUCH better in this country before FEMA. FEMA has screwed up everything they’ve been involved in, and there’s no reason to believe they won’t screw up the Aftermath of Sandy too.
Yes, eight days (really? 8 days?) and people are dying! So lets attack Obama, because actually going to volunteer to help is “hard work.” Better to call this Obama’s Katrina. Better to claim he is doing nothing to help while Mittens collected can goods (many of which his campaign staff bought). And of course, lets eliminate FEMA, the agency under Obama that has been praised by local Republican elected officials for their rapid and timely response. By the way, what was Katrina death toll days after the storm versus the Sandy death toll?
Well, six months after Katrina, the confirmed death toll was listed at around 1300 people, but that number would grow. The final number may never be known. Some list the confirmed deaths at roughly 1800 but those numbers were still in dispute five years after Katrina because the states effected stopped counting.
Of an estimated 1,464 victims officially recognized by the state of Louisiana, more than 500 names have not been publicly released. And Louisiana’s once-ambitious efforts to tackle dozens of related cases of missing persons and unidentified bodies ran out of money in 2006 and has never been revived.
“We didn’t complete the mission,” former Acting State Medical Examiner Dr. Lewis Cataldie, a Baton Rouge-based physician who once ran the state’s efforts told the Chronicle this week. “I’m very angry about it.” […]
Yet no state or federal agency today keeps track of those who remain missing from Katrina — or have since been confirmed dead. There is no central place for scattered surviving families to call.
Robert Lindsay places the direct at indirect deaths attributable to Katrina at over 4,000 based in part on testimony by Dr. Kevin Stephens, Sr., Director pf the New Orleans Health Department to Congress on March 13, 2007. The truth of the matter is that we will never know, but 2,000 people is a conservative estimate.
Sandy effected a much an area much more heavily populated than Katrina. New York City has roughly 9 million people alone. Add another 9 million people in New Jersey, Connecticut another 3.5 million, and by adding areas of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, etc. into the mix, and the population at risk of harm from Sandy was well over 25 million people. So what is the current death total? The latest figures I can find list 109 deaths as of this morning.
Besides New York City, the deaths NBC News has confirmed are:
- New Jersey: 22
- Pennsylvania: 12
- Maryland: 11
- Rest of New York state: 8
- West Virginia: 6
- Connecticut: 4
- Virginia: 2
- North Carolina: 2
- Puerto Rico: 1
Yes, the death total is so similar to what occurred under Bush with Katrina I’m stunned. Incredibly, however, none of thee deaths resulted from local law enforcement shooting people trying to escape the ravaged area. Also, none of the deaths resulted from the failure of FEMA to have food, water, shelter, medical supplies and rescue workers in place before the storm hit, as was the case under Bush’s FEMA.
Many failures of FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — have been reported in recent days: People stranded for days on New Orleans’ rooftops without food or water. Patients dying for lack of medical supplies. The agency couldn’t even get supplies to thousands marooned at the Morial Convention Center — though reporters and even singer Harry Connick Jr. managed to reach the scene.
But a deeper review of the agency’s history, the records of its top managers and internal memoranda reveal far deeper problems than a momentary burst of poor decisions. Over the past four years, the Bush administration has replaced competent leaders with people long on political connections but short on disaster management expertise. At the same time, the war on terrorism has drained the agency’s resources and reduced its effectiveness. […]
Since Katrina, blame for FEMA’s blundering has zeroed in on the agency’s director, Michael Brown. His failure should not have been a surprise. He had almost no experience in disaster work before he was appointed in 2003 by President Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, to lead the agency. Before joining FEMA as its counsel in 2001, Brown, a friend of the FEMA director who hired him, worked for nine years as a commissioner at an Arabian horse association.
Compare that to Obama’s FEMA and it’s response to Sandy:
For Staten Island resident Deb Smith, whose house was flooded by the storm surge from Sandy, FEMA has been a savior.
“What a hell of an organization. I got on the phone with them yesterday, I got my claim number in already, the guy said he’s going to call me in a couple of days,” she says. “He’s going to come out and estimate, and they said, listen, whatever doesn’t work, they’re going to help us put stuff in storage.”
The reviews are almost as glowing from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and other local officials in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. They’ve praised FEMA for being prepared before the storm and responsive immediately afterwards — two things the agency was not when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2005. […]
“[FEMA] was proactive, and it didn’t used to be. It doesn’t wait for the storm to hit; it pre-positions personnel, equipment, food supplies, water, etc.,” [Lieberman] says.
FEMA had hundreds of thousands of liters of bottled water, along with millions of meals, cots and blankets stockpiled, which were moved into the region ahead of Sandy.
The agency also had President Obama sign disaster declarations before the details of those disasters were fully known. Lieberman says that was important, too, to start the money flowing immediately to local governments and survivors.
FEMA is also led by Craig Fugate, a professional disaster relief manager who previously headed up Florida’s Emergency Management operations, not someone utterly lacking in experience with responding to emergencies (i.e., Michael “Heckuva job, Brownie” Brown). If you don’t think that makes a difference you must be a delusional Tea Party moron. And to bitch and moan about FEMA doing a lousy job, that it should be eliminated, and that Sandy is Obama’s Katrina, you have to either be living in an alternate universe, or so filled with hate and disinformation from your right wing media bubble that the terms “deranged” and “insane” come to mind.
Still, if you honestly feel, as so many Tea Partiers do, that government is the problem and not the solution, you should be doing what the good people of Occupy Sandy are doing: organizing your own extra-governmental relief efforts, rather than sitting on your couch with your laptop posting to Tea Party forums about how awful Obama’s performance has been during this crisis. What’s that I hear? The sound of millions of bitter Tea Party crickets? Apparently so, unless you count statements like this by prominent Tea Party Caucus members as helpful:
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), the tea party darling with a history of anti-minority rhetoric, responded to a question about disaster relief for the estimated 10 million victims of Hurricane Sandy by suggesting that any federal money be carefully disbursed to ensure none of it is spent on “Gucci bags and massage parlors.”
Meanwhile, if like me, you want to help the Occupy Sandy relief efforts but live nowhere near the effected areas, or are unable to help due to other reasons, such as your home is flooded and your power is out, you’re sick or disabled, or your Romney supporting boss would fire you for taking time off to help your fellow Americans, then please donate generously at this link:
And, don’t forget the Red Cross either, if you are so inclined. Their donation link can be found HERE