Romney Flip Flops on FEMA - now supports it

[maher_tyler]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Romney Refuses to Answer Questions About FEMA 14 Times




Mitt Romney was in Ohio today hosting a “storm relief” event … aka he’s campaigning in a crucial swing state. Romney is simply unwilling to respond to questions by reporters asking him about his position on eliminating FEMA and allowing each state to fend for themselves or possibly even privatizing disaster relief. Also – yesterday … a transcript turned up of Romney saying America can’t afford disaster relief. He was asked FOURTEEN TIMES and he would not answer or respond to his prior statements on record about FEMA; he just wanted a photo-op.

This is incredibly embarrassing that a serious contender for President will not respond to their own record. No matter who wins – I can’t imagine how even 10% of Americans would vote for this guy; he’s just that much of an embarrassment. It’s just disqualifying. You can see some of those interactions on the video above.

During that campaign rally “storm relief” event – he gave a speech which you can see in part HERE wherein the campaign purchased and he asked event participants to send canned goods to the Red Cross for storm victims. One major problem though … someone didn’t tell Governor Romney the Red Cross doesn’t accept canned goods and says the best assistance is CASH (source).
Courtesy of the Huffington Post HERE:

From the Romney pool report:

TV pool asked Romney at least five times whether he would eliminate FEMA as president/what he would do with FEMA. He ignored the qs but they are audible on cam. The music stopped at points and the qs would have been audible to him.

A follow-up report noted the specific questions Romney ignored, as he was collecting hurricane supplies following his event:

“Gov are you going to eliminate FEMA?” a print pooler shouted, receiving no response.Wires reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored.

Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions:

“Gov are you going to see some storm damage?”

“Gov has [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie invited you to come survey storm damage?”

“Gov you’ve been asked 14 times, why are you refusing to answer the question?”

I’m not sure that I can knock Romney for campaigning necessarily as he sees the end of his political career on the horizon as Ohio is set to vote for Obama. But being in public – he wants to give a speech and get his 5 minute photo-op showing him doing some work to help storm victims … that’s all par for the course. But Mitt Romney has yet to face up to his comments that he would eliminate Federal disaster relief by turning that responsibility over to each state and even potentially privatizing it if he could. Or just saying – it’s your problem.

On June 13, 2011 – Romney said America can’t afford disaster relief on the Larry King show HERE; directly from the transcript:

KING: You’ve been a chief executive of a state. I was just in Joplin, Missouri. I’ve been in Mississippi and Louisiana and Tennessee and other communities dealing with whether it’s the tornadoes, the flooding, and worse. FEMA is about to run out of money, and there are some people who say do it on a case-by-case basis and some people who say, you know, maybe we’re learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role. How do you deal with something like that?

ROMNEY: Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.

Instead of thinking in the federal budget, what we should cut — we should ask ourselves the opposite question. What should we keep? We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, what are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do? And those things we’ve got to stop doing, because we’re borrowing $1.6 trillion more this year than we’re taking in. We cannot…

KING: Including disaster relief, though?

ROMNEY: We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all. (emphasis added)

And we’ve shared this

HERE; an excerpt:

Last year, after a major tornado and flood struck the United States, Romney was asked in a debate on June 13, 2011 about whether the agency should be shuttered so that states can individually take over responsibility for disaster response. He was asked specifically about turning FEMA over to the states – here was his response:

Absolutely, every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further, and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better. Instead of thinking, in the federal budget, what we should cut, we should ask the opposite question, what should we keep?

The debate moderator John King asked Romney…
Including disaster relief, though?

In which Romney responded:

We cannot — we cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids. It is simply immoral, in my view, for us to continue to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids, knowing full well that we’ll all be dead and gone before it’s paid off. It makes no sense at all.

I don't like either guy. Having said that...if anyone is worse than Obama, its Romney. I can't comprehend how anyone one could support this guy in anyway. It plain as day to see he will do and say anything to win...it makes you wonder why he would go through all the trouble of even running for president??

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by maher_tyler

I don't like either guy. Having said that...if anyone is worse than Obama, its Romney. I can't comprehend how anyone one could support this guy in anyway. It plain as day to see he will do and say anything to win...it makes you wonder why he would go through all the trouble of even running for president??

Massive tax cuts? Just off the top of my head.

Look at it this way, if he can win the election and eliminate capital gains and estate taxes, he comes out in four years with many, many millions more than he already has. It's a really slick business decision. Plus, he gets other people to pay for his campaign. It's like the quintessential Bain-type deal.

[houghtam]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Massive tax cuts? Just off the top of my head.

Look at it this way, if can win the election and eliminate capital gains and estate taxes, he comes out in four years with many, many millions more than he already has. It's a really slick business decision. Plus, he gets other people to pay for his campaign. It's like the quintessential Bain-type deal.

AND, once something becomes the law, it makes it extremely difficult to get off the books. He knows that, which is why he knows he's wrong about repealing the Affordable Care Act.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by houghtam

AND, once something becomes the law, it makes it extremely difficult to get off the books. He knows that, which is why he knows he's wrong about repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Frankly, I don't think he gives a damn about the ACA. After all, he's one of the founders and first implementers of the damned thing. It's just red meat for the dummies. If he gets elected, I doubt we hear another word about it. The Right Wing has been pulling this since Reagan; Get the rubes all fired up about some red meat issue and then, after you win the election, never mention it again.

Until the next election, that is.

And can you imagine what a hero Romney would be among the one percenters (you know, his base) if he was able to kill capital gains and the estate tax? Not to mention another 20% across the board? They be showering him with rose petals.

[razorwire77]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Frankly, I don't think he gives a damn about the ACA. After all, he's one of the founders and first implementers of the damned thing. It's just red meat for the dummies. If he gets elected, I doubt we hear another word about it. The Right Wing has been pulling this since Reagan; Get the rubes all fired up about some red meat issue and then, after you win the election, never mention it again.

Until the next election, that is.

And can you imagine what a hero Romney would be among the one percenters (you know, his base) if he was able to kill capital gains and the estate tax? Not to mention another 20% across the board? They be showering him with rose petals.

Bingo. "Rable, rable, rable. . . Abortion, rable, rable, rable gun control, rable, rable, rable big bad Government, rable, rable, rable Freedom."

Once you win the election, the rhetoric rarely becomes any sort of actionable policy initiatives. You leave the state legislators to fight the social issues in the trenches, while you steal the silverware through manipulating taxation and supporting regressive tax policy. In the process, you make your super super duper rich circle of friends, super, super, super, duper wealthy.

And the rubes are none the wiser. It's worked off and on for 40 + years now. Quite the long con.

[gunns]

Originally Posted by pricejj

Father of Slain Benghazi SEAL to Obama: “It’s Better to Die a Hero Than Live a Coward”

“To have known what he had available, to have known that Americans were under fire, and to have done nothing, is dereliction of duty that I have never seen in a Commander in Chief from a president of any party. Outrageous.”

First off what does this have to do with FEMA? Second, wondering if that dad had anything to say about a potential Presidential candidate that got 5 deferrments. I believe coward is spelled the same way

Signed,

Mother of Deployed Soldier

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by gunns

First off what does this have to do with FEMA? Second, wondering if that dad had anything to say about a potential Presidential candidate that got 5 deferrments. I believe coward is spelled the same way

Signed,

Mother of Deployed Soldier

FTW!

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Romney’s ‘Storm Relief Event’ Was As Phony As The Rest Of His Campaign



Mitt Romney’s campaign team will go down in history as singularly incompetent. In a move that shadowed the ridiculous Paul Ryan photo op in which he showed up at a soup kitchen for the homeless after it was closed and pretended to clean dishes that were already clean, the Romney campaign has staged a photo op of its own. Via Buzzfeed:

… the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal-Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it “did donate supplies to the relief effort,” but would not specify how much it spent.)

This is not necessarily a bad thing if they hadn’t put it on display but they did, and that’s really all it was to them: a display. Concern for the millions of affected Americans was secondary to making sure the cameras had something to take a picture of. How do we know this?

But even as Romney, clad in blue jeans and rolled-up sleeves, hustled around his area of the gym, shaking hands, thanking supporters, and stacking cases of bottled water on top of each other, signs of stagecraft remained.

As supporters lined up to greet the candidate, a young volunteer in a Romney/Ryan T-shirt stood near the tables, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, “You need a donation to get in line!”

Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, “What if we dropped off our donations up front?”

The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. “Just grab something,” he said.

Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their “donations” to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest “Thank you.”

That’s how we know.

A real leader leads. A real leader does what they have to do regardless of the personal cost. Obama has lost some of the most precious and valuable campaign time imaginable, but that didn’t stop him from dropping every extraneous activity and going back to D.C. to do the job he was elected for. Romney “suspended” his campaign but continued to campaign anyway. The artificial nature of his “compassionate gesture” displays a lack of respect for the lives lost and the massive damage wrought. A real leader wouldn’t have cared about getting the picture; they would have cared about getting the right kind of supplies and delivering them to where they were most needed. Romney did neither.

Romney wants the power of the presidency but could care less about the people he wants to rule.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/10...-his-campaign/

[DenverBrit]

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by gunns

First off what does this have to do with FEMA? Second, wondering if that dad had anything to say about a potential Presidential candidate that got 5 deferrments. I believe coward is spelled the same way

Signed,

Mother of Deployed Soldier

Ooops!

To the Republicans, Kerry was a coward for serving his country in combat and getting a bronze star, a silver star, and three Purple Hearts, and Romney is a hero for getting five deferments.

It's Wonderland logic. In the bubble.