Class Dismissed

Students: which of the two presidential candidates would best serve the people of the mid-Atlantic states today, tomorrow and for days to come with the approach and passing of one humongous hurricane, Hurricane Sandy?

 

 

But wait, before you make your call, consider the following facts. Hurricane Sandy stretches over a total diameter of 900 miles and its eyewall is making landfall in southern New Jersey as I type this.

 

 

Hurricane Ike was similarly large, and came to shore in Houston about this time in 2008.

 

 

At that time, President Bush was still in charge of FEMA and it was literally weeks before power was fully restored to the hardest hit areas of the city.

 

 

Here is what former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has said about funding disaster relief in the federal government were he to become president.

 

"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."

 

Doesn’t that just give you goose bumps? Mitt Romney is really really concerned about the federal debt to the extent that he thinks it is immoral and makes no sense to put forth a federal effort to save lives and restore order. Local authorities and, get this, private industry, are in a far better position to do this important work.

 

 

Ask the people of New Orleans how reliance on the state and local authorities - and private industry – worked for them when the levees failed.

 

 

This is what President Obama did about federal disaster relief for Louisiana in response to Tropical Storm Isaac when he signed an emergency disaster relief order earlier this year:

 

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says the authorization will coordinate relief efforts and provide federal funds for local emergency and relief efforts. FEMA says the measure authorizes the use of ‘equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.’”

 

And so students, choose who you would want to be at the helm when the gods wreak their destruction on our country. Mitt Romney, the big picture guy who doesn’t want to sell our children’s future for stuff like saving lives and property in the here and now, or Barack Obama, who is looking out for the here and the now, looking out for our safety security and public order.

 

 

Yeah, I thought so…

 

 

Class dismissed.