Romney and Ryan announce 'storm relief' efforts for Tuesday

[pejaluver]

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan scheduled "storm relief" events Tuesday after previously canceling planned campaign rallies.

Romney will attend an event in Kettering, Ohio, Tuesday morning with race car driver Richard Petty and country music artist Randy Owen. He had previously scheduled a campaign

Comments

[carmy_w]

Twits.

Like donations are going to even begin to cover the cost of the damages.

Not that donations are a bad thing, especially for emergency relief aid.

But the cost of rebuilding? One house, yeah. No problem. A whole city - county - state - region of the country? Not even possible.

[roseofjuly]

Every donation helps, but the problem is that Romney is encouraging unsolicited volunteers and donations of items, which the American Red Cross has already stated is not as welcome as money. They have to sort through the items and they have to direct those unsolicited volunteers to either leave or do useful things, which diverts resources from the actual disaster relief.

[carmy_w]

I agree entirely; donations for immediate relief are very important! And yeah, leave it to Mittens to decide that he knows best, no matter who else is telling him no, huh?

But trying to get donations, instead of the FEMA system, for rehousing, rebuilding, etc.? There is just no way it would work. No private program comes even close to having enough boots on the ground. And just because Mitt's church has a great track record of doing this for their own members doesn't mean it will work across the rest of the nation and for everyone who ISN'T a member.

(I've actually had this little niggling suspicion in the back of my mind, wondering if a lot of Mitt's campaign rhetoric is based on the LDS church beliefs - the belief that private help is better than federal, the public school stuff that Ann R. was talking about a few days ago, which could be easily turned towards vouchers for any education, and thus public funding for parochial schools. I apparently have a conspiracy theory driven mindset.)

[roseofjuly]

I misunderstood you - I thought you meant donations to large relief organizations like the American Red Cross and such, but the idea of donations taking over from established federal agencies.

I think that's not only plausible but true - he's said it more than once on the campaign trail, most recently in saying that he believes that disaster relief should be privatized. Didn't he read the historical reports of private fire companies standing by watching fires burn down because those houses hadn't paid their fees - or even worse, deliberately starting fires to induce people to pay fire insurance?

It's not even conspiracy theorist stuff - it's pretty blatant that conservatives are using this voucher/school choice rhetoric to funnel public funds towards private and parochial schools, so they have control over who attends and what's taught but don't have to reach into their own pockets to pay. And at the same time, rejecting any proposals to actually improve the education system.

[sio]

didn't the Red Cross already say yesterday that collecting STUFF is not a good idea? because it has to be reinspected by disaster relief people and therefore wastes time in getting people aid?

[bnmc2005]

But how else are they going to stick their R/R logo on anything ???

[alicephilippa]

You don't seriously expect mittens to GAF as to what others advise?

[moonshaz]

Lol! That would be a big change, for sure!

[ceilidh]

Hasn't the Red Cross already said "stop donating STUFF, it costs us more time and manpower to collect/sort/repackage/distribute THINGS rather than MONEY"?

[hinoema]

They did, yes. Like Romney cares.

[aviv_b]

Instead of canned goods, why doesn't Romney just tithe 10% of the income he's hiding offshore to the Red Cross?

[ennifer_jay]

lol mte

[pennylane101]

he's gonna give some of his skiing equipment

[celandine]

Omg this is all over the local news tonight... smug bastards that showed up with cans of goddamn meatballs and were totally proud of their awesome humanitarian efforts. Ugh.