I am so very happy my son and I drove down to the City to save the baby! The hurricane tidal surge went beyond even the highest prediction of 11 feet to devastate the entire coastline of Long Island, Manhattan Island and the entire shore of New Jersey from top to bottom not to mention all the way from Canada to Georgia. This has to be one of the most brutal category 1 storm in history.
We stayed up much of the night communicating with friends and family stranded in dark, windy and wet conditions there. The flooding has been the worst in 100 years, literally. The catastrophe has just begun to be assessed. The Far Rockaways, for example, had a major fire that destroyed nearly 100 houses. All the subway and PATH train systems were flooded as well as all the tunnels to Manhattan from both New Jersey and Brooklyn.
Most of Manhattan is now in the dark as several power stations were too wet or blew up. Wall Street is more like Venice. They want to restart the markets only it can’t be staffed since most of the workers can’t commute and the ones who lived the nearest are the ones who had to either be evacuated or have no electricity.
The financial impact of this storm goes far, far beyond the wind and rain damage. It is the restarting, cleaning and reopening all the major transportation systems feeding into Wall Street and all the main bank corporate headquarters, the damage being done to commerce in general is ferocious. Shipping has been hard hit as the docks were hit by the surge and ships have been rerouted to other ports, etc.
Foolish people who hate ‘liberals’ and ‘NYC’ will laugh at this ruination but it will hammer the entire US economy from top to bottom in the next several years. Already, it has hit my family very hard. My son learned today the State is firing all the workers in his sector and farming it out to a corporation run by hedge funds that pay much, much less and bring in foreign workers, claiming, falsely, no Americans want these jobs.
The process of downgrading all jobs has not only not abated, it is ever more ferocious. The fact that a hedge fund corporate raider with offshore accounts might be President is hideous and shows how demented things are today as the ‘I got my own, to hell with everyone else’ culture of ‘greed’ has ended up killing the US Golden Goose.
My cartoon from July, 2006.Goldman Sachs Claims Their Own Computer Program Wrecks Markets! | Culture of Life News
Once upon a time, there was this man who was very poor. He was granted a wish. Naturally, he wished to be very rich. So he was given a goose that laid golden eggs. When the king found out about this magical goose, he demanded it for himself. So, when the poor farmer handed the goose to the king, the king wanted to get to the source of the wealth because he didn’t want to wait every morning for just one egg at a time!
.
So had the goose cut open so he could have infinite wealth all at once. The goose died and the eggs ceased to be manufactured by it, one at a time. I wish to add to this story, which is very old: the real golden goose is not the stock markets. Nor is it the banks. It is the physical labor sector. The goose had to create the eggs every day. That meant, it had to eat. It had to have shelter and it had to be protected from foxes and wolves. The poor farmer did all of this. He fed the goose and protected it and it laid golden eggs.
Back to this disaster: the economic losses are going to be gigantic. One of the biggest taxpaying machines in the US is NYC. This sad state of affairs should frighten every American to the core. The ripple effect of all this will, like the tidal surge, flow dramatically to every community in the US.
The day before the hurricane hit, there was this headline in NYC: Back in business! Statue of Liberty reopens to public Sunday – NYPOST.com. A Federally funded $30 million renovation, it may be a warning from the goddesses of fate, the Furies and the Norns, that as we lose our freedoms, as the GOP apes the Taliban while screaming about Sharia law being imposed here as if there is the slightest difference between that and what they are proposing…the statue is swamped by a storm.
A storm is breaking and the GOP plan is to kill FEMA. This stupid and insane proposal baffles me. Don’t Southerners and Midwesterners, the core base of this lunatic party, ever need to be rescued? Of course! Constantly! And NYC pays a hefty share of the costs for them all. Typical ingratitude from people who should have some shame, like Ryan who went to college on Social Security funds, they think they saved themselves when actually, Wall Street and NY and NJ taxpayers saved them.
But then, Wall Street wants all this killed off so they save no one! And this is the key: even as the jerks running Wall Street plan to loot us all and to provide little to no services and render our educated youth unemployed and put our former working poor into prisons, they need to be rescued by FEMA. Imagine that. They, themselves, are now in desperate need to be rescued by the Federal operation that they, themselves, are spending a lot of money to kill.
Here is their good buddy and fellow offshore banker talking about FEMA: Mitt’s disastrous emergency management plan – Salon.com
At a CNN-sponsored GOP debate last June, moderator John King asked Romney what he would do to keep FEMA solvent. Romney replied that we need to cut government spending and should “send it back to the states … And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” King looked a bit surprised and followed up to make sure Romney was saying what he appeared to be saying. “Including disaster relief, though?” King asked. Romney answered affirmatively: “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.”
Whose kids is this hedge fund raider talking about? Why, his own darling spawn. One son of his just bought the voting machine corporation for part of Ohio…and you can bet, this was done so they can steal the election there just like Diebold did for Bush Jr. This guy wants more money for wars but none for hurricanes.
This information that Romney plans to gut FEMA isn’t going over so hot right now as voters are warned that the mania for tax cuts, which mainly benefit the very rich, is going to cost very dearly when disasters hit. So, Etch a Sketch Romney has backtracked and said weakly, that FEMA is sort of OK but not so OK while his GOP strategist is quite blatant that they plan to privatize FEMA to offshore hedge funds:
Romney ‘right on the button’ in knocking FEMA | The Raw StoryPolitico reported Monday that Romney’s campaign said he would not advocate shuttering FEMA…
Bonjean said Monday he didn’t think “anybody cares” about Romney’s debate statements against the agency, instead suggesting that President Barack Obama could be jumping the gun by mobilizing FEMA ahead of Sandy’s arrival.
“I think people care about whether or not their power’s on, whether or not their basement’s going to be flooded,” he said. “And I think that if the president gets too far in front of this and something goes wrong, people are going to remember, hey, my power’s not out, and the president’s talking about FEMA. I’m not a real big fan of FEMA. That could sway their vote.”
So, if anyone in our government is pro-active and before a deadly hurricane or an obvious earthquake or a developing drought ravages everyone, people will hate the President and hate FEMA for being pro-active? HAHAHA. What they want is for disaster to overwhelm us and then we have to beg to be rescued and then, like with Katrina, they will refuse to help for at least a week while people die.
Only then and at great expense, they will come in reluctantly? Yes, that is the plan. And to have the states say how this aid is given is the open door to ethnic cleansing whereby the racist states which plan to install Romney like Bush, will refuse all aid to minorities and people in the cities. THAT is their goofy plan. To literally kill us all off, one by one, disaster by disaster.
Finally, Ann Romney is hard at work, poor dear, pretending she is a lower class housewife trying to make ends meet on a meager $250 million dollar paycheck: Ann Romney: Intimate images from campaign trail as she reveals how she feeds her 30-plus family for just $4.50 a head which is in the news published by Murdoch, of course, the propaganda machine which has struggled to recast this rich woman as a poor working class housewife. She constantly talks about how she shops at Costco. Never any other store, it is always ‘Costco’ because she probably wasn’t fed the name of any other underclass store where the rest of the 99% of us have to shop.
She never mentions shopping at Walmart and perhaps the Waltons will stop funding the GOP to punish her…no, they love this system even if Romney disses them.
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Remember “a thousand points of light”?
One thing to say about the Repubs … they will bring down civilization much more quickly than the Dems, who keep trying to save it.
Did you know:The Social Justice ie (distribution of wealth) you speak of, is the 9th plank of the Communist Manifesto.The goal is to eliminate social class structure.The result is a tyrannical govt.If you want Social Justice,why not move to Communist Russia…
If Romney is elected this country is toast. It probably is anyway, but he’d do it so quickly we wouldn’t have time to sort things out.
IMO, Obama did a fantastic job of directing FEMA in advance of the destruction. That’s what governments are supposed to do.
What really amazed me was the NYCers on chat rooms that said “this will be nothing.” I don’t like to see anyone suffer, but I do enjoy it when people learn from their mistakes. That’s what life is; life is difficult. Nobody is immune.
I wish there was less [none] talk about the policies wrongney vs bam-ney and instead talk about the policies of Isreal and the investment banks or perhaps just the faceless who run things.
These people no longer think of themselves as citizens of a nation. They are nations unto themselves. They wander from country to country looking for the best “deals” and in the process destroy every place they nest.
I can’t wait until China steals every bit of the companies they use to pirate the world. They’ll soon see how far being country-less will get them.
z.house, I agree, and I try to steer clear of who vs. who in politics, but sometimes I can’t resist. Banking in particular, and the families that control it are IMO the #1 issue in this country (and the world). The inter-locking structure of our corporate media, banking, investment firms, and campaign finance will be difficult to overcome, but we must prevail for the sake of our children and grand-children.
If we were to succeed, it would be bad medicine indeed, but that’s what it will take to survive.
I agree totally with Mel’s statement above. I would also like to add that if I were president of this country, I would demand to see Bono’s or Gate’s or Buffet’s passport from the “Country of International” before I let them in or out of the US. If they cannot show it, then they are illegal aliens and they would go to a deportation holding center where they would remain until the Country of International comes to claim them.
That right there would put an end to all claims of being a “global citizen”, as the Country of International does not protect anyone.
FEMA waste plenty of money. I live in Florida, in 04 FEMA came in to help. It did help a lot of people, but a lot of people scammed it too. I know several people who were given $3000-$4000 who didn’t need it. The FEMA workers were encouraging this scam, telling them to get all they could.
ANY system can be scammed. Any. There is always corruption and the way to fix that is to…hold people accountable. Letting everyone die isn’t a solution, it is a death penalty.
I wonder if the plan is to kill off the White people. Seriously.
911,
I wonder if you’re an idiot.
No, haha, just kidding.
I don’t wonder about that at all.
Verlander, that is choice. i almost spewed a swallow of beer all over my laptop.
z.house, thassright! ELAINY you are slippin old gal. You didnt draw the HUGE HOOK NOSE on the Goldman Sachs guy with the devil ears right. And you didnbt put a STAR OF DAVID TATTOO on his friggin forehead. WE WANTS OUR BIGOTRY and we want it in SPADES (lol). Shape up honey. A fan
@White Punk on Dope
Why do you talk like an 1800’s colonial house slave?
The leader of the Green Party was arrested in Texas for trying to help protestors. She and her running mate were also arrested for trying to join the presidential debate, which only features two parties now.
http://rt.com/usa/news/jill-stein-arrested-texas-694/
This is the Soviet Union — with lots of gadgets.
Now that New York City lies in ruins, our president, Bibi, has decided to postpone his attack on Iran by 8-10 months. (Can’t have a war without bankers).
I don´t know If you are aware of this or not, but take a look at this:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-politicians-demand-to-see-gold-in-us-federal-reserve-a-864068.html
Mike M:
In UK, muslim immigrants go to the front of the line for cheap / free new houses.
One gal [and her 6? kids] wrecked the house and sued!
meanwhile:
At least 2,700 a year die in freezing homes – Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk › Earth › Energy
Oct 20, 2011 – At least 2,700 people are dying in Britain every year because they are … The number of deaths outstrips ……
so spew yr beer all ya want! you and Archie Bunker.
Hi Elaine,
I still love you, but please don’t be another statist. You are propogating a lie, neither the centralized state nor FEMA can either prevent or ameliorate natural disasters. Your homework is to read this rebuttal seven times until you get it:
http://silverbearcafe.com/private/10.12/fallacies.html
Sincerely,
Dave
Don’t bother to read the article, Elaine. It starts off on a false premise: that we need the government to protect us from natural disasters.
FEMA does not do that. It helps afterwards, like all other agencies.
Use your time more wisely. That’s my advice.
FEMA really started out (and still is AFAIK) the agency that keeps the shadow-government going in case of WWIII. Back when I lived in Denton, TX, there was this enormous mound of dirt on one side of a main road — fence all the way around it. The real estate agent told us what it was.
Later, there was this nice story in the local paper showing the local employees of FEMA typing up checks to send to victims of some-hurricane-or-other. This was in the 1980s. Also, couldn’t help but notice all the odd radio antennas and satellite dishes on this dirt mound. The other side of town, there was a road named “Missile Base Road” that led to another fenced area. We eventually learned that it was one of the fake missile bases they built during the cold war. Denton was supposed to take the hit for Russian missiles to save Dallas.
Fuck FEMA.
As for New York City, it is also the home of Goldman Sachs and the other financial wizards that are systematically stripping everyone’s pension and 401K. And I’m not supporting Republicans here either; they are even more in bed with the kleptocrats than the Democrats are.
So fuck New York City, too.
nice tone to your screed there, Dave. too bad it’s word salad nonsense.
NYC is home to millions of working Americans, babies (my grandson), mommies, grandparents, disabled people, poor people, middle class people, rich people, gays, minorities, women, etc, etc.
Why do people who profess to want to have a better world wish to kill these people? This death wish garbage is exactly what ails us all. The entire GOP wants to kill FEMA not because it is a shadow government (how silly is that?) but because they want minorities, women, babies, gays, poor people etc…TO DIE.
End of story. How horrible is that? Why the hatred? Americans hating each other is a serious problem! Meanwhile, we are at war with many millions of people overseas and our leaders want us to hate the billion Chinese, another very stupid thing to do.
The GOP wants to kill FEMA because they don’t need it and it spends a lot of money. They don’t need it because they have the FED. “Jeeves, send the brinks truck around and fetch another hundred billion, thanks”…
I don’t care for NYC because it is the very center of this maelstrom of CORRUPTION. This year, they have abandoned Obama and are funneling a lot of money to the Romney campaign.
As for upstate, a lot of the people I *like* live in upstate NY in one place or another.
As for FEMA and the shadow government thing, it’s pretty much real. They really do have office buildings under enormous mounds of dirt. They have the variety of facilities for rounding up and detaining people … which people, one might wonder? They do the contingency planning for WWIII. Issuing checks to people in disaster areas is, in my opinion, a public relations ploy.
If you are in NYC and a disaster strikes, you are much better off if you have friends and family upstate, that way you get the help you need right away, and not a possible check in the mail weeks later.
And all that hating China will get you is empty shelves at WalMart. So that’s a stupid thing indeed.
Oh, and, remember when FEMA ‘did’ New Orleans?
and a couple of links:
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/30/heckuva-job-brownierdq.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/10/31/ny-national-guard-decides-sand.html
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ELAINE: All Katrina proved was the entire GOP is incapable of providing basic human services.
DeVaul, I must express my disappointment with your prior post. You’re obviously a very intelligent at well thought out person. Nobody can prevent natural disasters, but unlike during Katrina, this time around electrical crews from as far away as the mid-west were on their way before the storm even hit. I think they did a damn good job of warning people beforehand also, but people are people.
That is what governments are supposed to do…provide support AFTER the disaster takes place.
We can complain about the system all we want, but unless you’ve been inside the bureaucracy, (I have) it’s difficult to explain how slowly they usually move, and how much paperwork is involved.
I maintain my position that the Obama administration did as good a job as was possible, considering the limitations I’ve just described briefly.
If you knew the nightmare I’m going through with the VA health care system right now, you might think differently about how the federal government operates. Putting that remark into further perspective, I gave my best friend (an employee at the VA here in Roseburg) full medical power of attorney for me, and it’s still a problem. Few things happen fast with the federal government, unless it involves warfare.
@Mike
I am not sure of the source of your disappointment. Are you refering to my advice to Elaine not to read the Silver Bear anti-FEMA article?
I believe I am correct in pointing out that the article begins with a false premise: that people expect FEMA and other agencies to stop natural disasters. This is a false premise, and an article that begins with a false premise should not be read any further.
If you can show me that this statement is believed by a majority of Americans or even the MSM, then I will read the entire article.
“We need government to protect us from natural disasters.”
So far, I have never heard anyone say that, but I have heard people say that the government should save them afterwards, rebuild their homes right on the beach, and replace everything they lost.
I don’t believe in the above either. I only believe the government can rescue, and should, those who were deliberately left behind because they were considered “not worth saving” (disabled people, elderly, children).
Oh, and one more thing for the conspiracy lovers: there is no federal agency that the CIA cannot infiltrate and use for its own purposes, including commandeering most cargo jets from the Forest Service to fly drugs in and out of Mexico, leaving firefighters with just one plane to dump water on forest fires out west.
Rather than end social services, why don’t we end the CIA instead?
Let me pose a question here. what do people here think drives Mitt Romney’s hatred of the non-wealthy? Has he been raised in such a distorted environment that his sense of values and reality has been thoroughly corrupted, or does he consciously KNOW what his policies are doing (or going to do) to the less fortunate and his attitude is “F#ck Y#u, poor people. You can die of starvation in the streets for all I care.” Mitt Romney it seems to me has at least some of the traits of a sociopath: no sense of morality and ethics, but that’s just my personal opinion. Romney, in my view, is also a pathiological liar. In many instances the Mittster would have a hard time telling the truth even if he wanted to.
The smile on his face gives him away immediately as a sociopath. I have seen it before. The lack of any sincerity in it and the devilish grin just beneath the laugh lines are enough for me. The fact the he refers to half of Americans in secret as not being worth a moment of his thoughts should send shivers down the spine of any normal person. I suppose it would be pointless to point out that a president must represent the entire nation, not just a chosen few at the top, thus immediately disqualifying him for that job.
What really amazes me is how most Americans do not react to his sociopathic remarks in any rational way at all. What does that say about the majority of Americans?
Ahhh… yes. Just watched the evening news.
As I guessed, the real problems are now surfacing. I knew they would after the initial shock of the storm wore off. People are out screaming: where’s the power? where’s the fuel? where’s the water? where’s the food?
Well, FEMA just dragooned the US military into its service to bring in utility trucks from California on military cargo planes and two military fuel barges just entered New York harbor — military fuel — not donations from BP or Exxon or any private company. All federal government aid.
Not one FEMA agent has been chased away by people whose homes have disappeared entirely. Instead, they are surrounded by homeless people (white middle-class people) asking for instant aid. Right now!
Hahaha! All this talk about the federal government being too big suddenly disappears right after the storm. I don’t think Americans are even adults anymore. I notice that Romney has not gone on air to scream for the end of FEMA and the other agencies that are trying to help the poor states who cannot deal with this problem on their own. Jeez, I wonder why?
I don’t think people understand what life will be like when the federal government suddenly disappears. It may happen, and I am preparing for it, but I know those who sit in their lazy-boys and yell at the TV about too much spending on social programs will not be prepared for that day.
They will be wandering around in the toxic waste water of their former beach resort and there will be no agents for them to talk to, nor will anyone else care much what happens to them, as “charity always starts at home”.
@ Devaul, I misunderstood you, I couldn’t buy that article either.
I can personally attest to one area of the gooberment that is really messing up, and that’s the VA. I’ve taken nearly a grand tour of VA facilities here in the PacNW over the last year. I revisited Roseburg’s yesterday for the first time in a year, and it’s all ripped up.
I had heard that the VA’s budget had been doubled about a year or so ago, and have finally concluded that it was a measure to pump money into the local economies through contracting, not money spent on patient care.
I expressed that opinion to my best friend who works at the VA here. Quoting him “the patients come last.”
At least the basket cases who have done 4-5 tours in the Middle East will have brand new parking lots to admire, and such.
I’m going to scream this until my last breath: only We The People can resolve this situation we are in. Our electoral system has been co-opted, our electeds consider themselves leaders and not servants. Most of them should be horse-whipped through Times Square. Those responsible for co-opting the process (like Carl Rove) should be burned at the stake, literally.
So should the families that have controlling interest in the NY Federal Reserve branch, but that’s different issue.
I wonder when I’m going to get a knock on my front door for saying these things publicly.
No arguments here. By the way, if the Nazis do come to your door, I would advise doing something they don’t expect. Let’s leave it at that.
Regarding the VA hospital system, I learned a few years ago how wretched it was and it made me sick. I am not even a veteran, and yet I felt intense anger, especially because my state (Kentucky) is rule by a demented troglydite named Mitch McConnel who prides himself on being the champion of American veterans. He never fails to show them in his political ads (they find out later that their words were misused and so forth — i.e. too late). He also does not vote to improve the VA system for the patients. He is too busy handing out contracts to his business buddies.
I would dearly love to see American veterans burn this man at the stake so that they can at least feel some sense of justice for the abuse they suffered. Perhaps someday it will happen. One can only hope.
A general comment here…I can’t cease to be amazed at the people who live in the NYC/NJ area.
First they think they are bullet-proof. Then they don’t turn on the Weather Channel and heed advice, still thinking they are bullet-proof.
Now they complain about things not being back to normal after 48 hours, without thinking about the more widespread problems.
People fail to understand that even if the entire US military came in to assist, they would have to be logistically supported just to sustain themselves, not even mentioning those they would be there to help.
This stuff doesn’t happen overnight. I understand their frustration, as they aren’t used to what mother nature can dish out, but the lack of understanding of reality, and how to prepare for the worst beforehand just amazes me.
If I lived on Staten Island, I would have taken vacation, packed up the valuables, photos and family, and gone to visit my sister near St Louis. Of course I’d be anxious, but I’d know that important things are safe. Then again, I already know what Mother Nature can do.
I haven’t had my TV on anything but the Weather Channel for days. They aren’t sure right now themselves, but there’s a possibility another storm might be coming by next week (nothing like Sandy, but a complication).
Oh, and I have another FEMA story … remember a year ago when all those wildfires were burning in Texas? Yeah, the drought. Global Warming if you will. Actually it’s not Global Warming, it’s Weather. Texas has droughts.
So Texas had broken out in wildfires because the droughts had gone on so long that the tiniest spark would start a patch of grass on fire, and those few beleaguered patches of Trees that still survive would catch and burn. It’s a lot like Southern California that way … people build these fancy mansions out in the exurbs and then complain because coyotes come around and eat their pet’s food, and sometimes their pets. Bunch of hi-dollar houses burned up.
Well, anyhow, all the volunteer fire departments were working on the problem. There wasn’t much water, mind you, but they were cutting fire breaks and spreading flame retardant and stuff. Then there was all this hubbub about needing more help. So the governor, or president, or somebody dispatched FEMA. The fires were almost under control by this time.
First thing we heard from FEMA was they wanted the Texas Forest Service and all the VFD people to stand down. Just stop working on it, we got it now. Several more days passed. Local firefighters offered their services to FEMA but were flatly denied. The fires started getting big again. Finally they showed up with a tanker plane and started scooping water out of Lake Travis and dumping it on the hotspots. By that time, the fires had mostly finished with any available fuel and died down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_texas_wildfires
By the way, I just read a report that con artists are knocking on people’s doors in the NYC area claiming to be from FEMA, and robbing them. … another facet of this thing. Another day or two and the looting will commence.
@ DeVaual, it’s a sad fact that I’ve already contemplated that. I call them Nazis also. I’ve been a radical online regarding banking, market manipulation, our political process, the Federal Reserve System, and our growing police state for so many years I’m quite sure some fusion center somewhere run by DHS has a pretty long file on me, but I don’t care, I’m almost dead anyway.
Right now my number one goal in life is to take my last breath without having killed anyone. Maybe they’ll leave me alone because of my condition, but I know they hate my opinions that I readily express all over the internet.
Weird thing…I took a nap this afternoon and had a dream that involved a .50 S&W semi-auto pistol.
The cool thing about where I live, the local cops are on the side of We The People. It’s the Feds that concern me.
Amazing. OK: a hurricane comes and you take a VACATION? Has it occurred to anyone that if the hurricane doesn’t wreck things, one must go back to work immediately???
The hatred of cities is interesting. Cities are the core engines of any civilization. PERIOD. There is NO time in history ever, that cities didn’t work as the center, the nexus of civilization, the very word, ‘civilization’ means city life!
When the Saxons invaded England and destroyed every single Roman city leaving all in ruins, civilization died in England and it became a violent place of petty warlords that attacked each other nonstop and thus, were invaded by foreign raiders finally leading to the Norman invasion which imposed a dictatorship on the Saxons.
Anyone reading history should be scared to death of anti-city eras, we call these ‘Dark Ages’ for a very good reason!
As for NYers yelling for electricity: they actually worked very hard with each other to save each other when the disaster hit but they need to be saved. They have no fuel left, they have spotty electricity, they have many basic needs that MUST come from outside and fast as possible and our military SHOULD provide this PRONTO.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is cruel, demented or just…silly.
@MikeM
You will never achieve this because your government has killed millions in your name (democracy is it not?)
Elaine, first I’d like to apologize for my expression of disdain for New York City. As for FEMA, it is almost certainly less destructive under the current administration than it was under the Rethugs. Romney said that thing about FEMA, but if he wins, you can count on it being a lie. He would fill it and the Supreme Court up with thugs that think like him. He’d probably use FEMA to do evictions.
With all that said, Rome was sacked for pretty much the same reasons people from other countries would *like* to sack Washington and New York today. They were fed up with being looted and pillaged by Roman soldiers and as soon as the empire started to get weak, Rome was a ripe target for what-goes-around-comes-around. And, you can still have cities without New York. Ithaca comes to mind. Looks like a pretty nice place from what I’ve seen of it online.
As for that little weather disturbance, there were some pictures up yesterday showing that some people had their yards messed up. It looked like what Katrina did, only in a neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes. I suppose they’ll be making insurance claims, and later us taxpayers will have to bail out the insurance companies (again). And you can expect the not-so-affluent parts of NYC to start looting the stores in 3, 2, 1..
In other, better news, Occupy Wall Street and some other nonprofits are organizing a relief effort:
http://interoccupy.net/blog/ows-350-org-recovers-org-launch-sandy-relief-important-info-for-aid-needed-and-volunteer-opportunities-please-read/
Elaine, I would make an analogy that you just put your grandchild on vacation. Granted your grandchild can’t work, but neither can anyone else. There’s no fuel, no delivery of foodstuffs, the elements are problematic, and restoration of services are still very much out. I refuse to be criticized for the “would be” scenario of protecting myself and my loved ones.
But back to the disaster, Gov Christie can go F himself. I just read an article that said power crews arriving from Alabama were told they couldn’t work there, because they were non-union.
Elaine, you got my blood pressure up. Not only have I been through a super-typhoon in the Philippines, I went through an EF-5 tornado that went right through the center of town in Charles City, IA in 1968.
Common citizens DO NOT go to work immediately EXCEPT to help their neighbors out of the carnage. The government coordinated restoration of basic services and clearing of transportation routes takes place first.
The best plan of action is to simply stay out of harms way, and that is the end of this story.
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ELAINE: Tell that to many thousands of NY workers! Some cannot go no matter how hard they try and they got dispensation to not go to work like my son in law but many WERE told to go in! I know some who told their bosses this was impossible and still were ordered in!!!!
The day New York City/New York State dies and the high powered tri-states along with it, will be the day America dies. NYC is more than just bankers, even though it seems that Banking is the only industry here, that is not so.
Every person in this city, pays a whole lot of federal taxes. Taxes that support the rest of the country. We in NYC are the funds that make America run.
That some want to deny us Fema help and reconstruction funds have their heads in the sand.
I didn’t say I wanted to deny you FEMA, fer chrissakes. I said FEMA isn’t that much help. They weren’t much help in New Orleans, they weren’t much help in the Texas wildfires, and they won’t be much help for this.
It looks like Occupy Wall Street will be helping more, and sooner, at least until the big shots show up with mercenaries to shoot them.
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ELAINE: That is pure insanity. Tell it to the people getting aid.
And that canard about New Yorkers supporting the whole country with their taxes is pure BS. The city doesn’t grow anything, and it is a net importer and user of energy and other services. The country would probably be much better off without all those banking crooks and their Caymans tax-avoidance accounts.
As a port city, of course, it is a natural. Like London or Hong Kong. Deep water access and a natural transportation hub. It will always be that. Of course, another couple decades of Global Warming will leave parts of it below sea level, like New Orleans.
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ELAINE: You seem to have some very bizarre ideas of how economic systems work and cities operate! So, NYC is mainly ‘transportation’? Sorry to annoy you but manufacturing is a big thing here! Not to mention a host of other services including entertainment hubs, publishing, news, etc. Not to mention research, education and so on!
And this creates REVENUES for the country and all my life it has ticked me off how people who are net receivers of our tax money (the red state voters!!!) whine about how we, the people who pay more than we get, are freeloaders.
“And that canard about New Yorkers supporting the whole country with their taxes is pure BS.”
No it isn’t. New York and its sister states CT, NJ and PA contribute to federal money far and away from the what the rest of the country does. Do you think the southern states could fully support themselves if not for the North? If you do that is laughable. The GOP plays the South for fools and makes fun of them when not on public display.
“Molinaro complained the American Red Cross “is nowhere to be found” — and some residents questioned what they called the lack of a response by government disaster relief agencies.”
See?
My point is made. The rich and middle-class want social services cut to the poor, but when their homes are in shambles and they have nothing to eat or drink, they demand government help.
This quote comes from a news story that loves to print the misery of others. In this case, a woman whose two sons were swept away from her in the flood waters. Later, they mention that she and others did not evacaute Staten Island (she had an SUV, which she tried to drive through the storm surge at the last moment — her children died because of her stupidity) for reasons not explained, but I would not be surprised if she and her neighbors painted those damn signs that said: “we ain’t afraid of no stinkin’ hurricane!”
Badabing badaboom!
There is no access in or out of Staten Island NOW. There was BEFORE the hurricane arrived, but not NOW.
The military has diverted several helicopter carriers to New York to rescue these people, but it is not fast enough for New Yorkers, whose lives revolve around instant everything and no personal responsibility whatsoever.
The problem with large cities is that the residents become so detached from the real world that they expect the impossible to happen overnight. They expect the Laws of Nature to be suspended. The rest of the country cannot suddenly drop what it is doing and rush to New York to rebuild it within 48 hours. Yet, that is what New Yorkers are demanding.
If they act stupid, then we cannot help them.
“but it is not fast enough for New Yorkers, whose lives revolve around instant everything and no personal responsibility whatsoever.”
Obviously, because we are all waiting in 3 to 4 to 5 hour transportation lines to get into our jobs in order to insure the economy doesn’t collapse. That is a sure sign that we in NYC are all over-entitled divas.
In every disaster in human history there are people who think they have providence on their side and be supermen/women. But that doesn’t mean we should deny them aid. That is just inhuman. Compassion makes no demands.
As far as Red Cross goes, I don’t trust them. But that is due to the influence of my WWII Grandfather, a veteran of D-Day, who always railed that the RC was a shakedown racket. Maybe he was right. Every time I see the Red Cross rush into disaster areas and then they disappear with no major record of aid. Interesting, no?
melponeme_k, you are full of shit. If that tri-state area fell off into the ocean the rest of the country would be fine. I’m not talking about taxpayers here, I’m talking about productive society, most of which is found in the Midwest and the west, and even down south.
You know, like the kind of stuff that actually builds capital, like growing things, manufacturing things harvesting the earth’s natural resources. If the tri-state area fell into the ocean, we’d simply find a different place for people to shuffle paperwork, and then they too would become all full of themselves, as you exemplify.
Another thing:
All this talk about tax revenues from NYC is a bit moot, as Congress will exempt NYC from taxes until it is rebuilt, just like they did with New Orleans. And you can bet your bottom dollar that every wingtip will be in line for a 5 year suspension of taxes due to Hurricane Sandy, so New York will not be supporting anyone in the near future, which makes all this hysteria around “getting back to work” nothing more than a conversation topic about the mentality of New Yorkers.
The people in New Orleans were intelligent enough to know that “getting back to work” was not going to produce much in a city that had been distroyed. They had already moved to the topic of “where will we live?”
Again, it’s BS. An exaggerated sense of entitlement does not make New Yorkers any more useful nor productive than anyone else.
.. “If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.”
No Mike, you are the one full of it.
All those manufacturing jobs you tout were from the Northern states. The companies used the South as the first step in their free trade out of the country.
One only needs to see Detroit to measure how much the Midwest treasures its manufacturing industries. They voted themselves out of it and only now are realizing how much they lost when we gave our automotive industry to Asia.
Worldwide economies depend on NYC and its fellow sister states to keep things running. Most of everything goes through NYC. Fact over fiction. The South and much of the midwest could disappear and no one would notice.
LOL, Right Jim R. That is why every major company in the world has a US outpost in NYC. Because they know they that they have dependable and knowledgeable labor pool here.
China came to NY and Elaine when they wanted to suss out the US economy. They didn’t go anywhere else.
@Devaul
The companies in NYC pay as little in taxes as is possible right now.
The federal monies depend on the little people in NYC for their funds. As of right now, my paycheck isn’t going to be tax free now or ever. That goes the same for the millions of others who work and live here.
melponeme_k you have failed to disprove my point. Detroit does not represent the rest of the manufacturing that is still left after being gutted by NAFTA and GATT. And the one and only reason many companies are represented in NYC is because of the financial district, which produces nothing, but siphons off wealth of productive states.
The profound misunderstanding how any civilization operates is clear in the debate here. History is CLEAR as a bell: great cities that thrive are ‘good times’ and when these are destroyed or abandoned or rendered impossible to live, then it is Dark Ages with a great reduction in population, a collapse in education, more warfare and evil events and misery all around.
Cities are the heart of any civilization. The US has abused its civic heritage and people are taught that cities are dirty and stupid, etc. Anyone who knows NYC knows it is active, alive, vital and full of energy.
Go elsewhere it it seems sleepy and slow and people move literally slower and less is done, creativity falls bit by bit. I lived deep inside NYC for many years and the energy level is astonishing.
And…we paid for the Federal Government. Drained of funds for years and years and years while the GOP dominated states whined about us nonstop and attacked our city at every turn.
Now is pay back: we won’t be supporting anyone for a while, we need YOUR support for once. If we get back 1% of what we invested in taxes to the rest of the US, I would be surprised.
Damn Elaine, you’re forcing me to take issue with you again. It’s not that I have no sympathy for those who are suffering. I assuredly do.
My point would be more along the line that taxes are no longer relevant. With 1$ Trillion deficits/yr how can it not be more obvious that Bernanke would simply get on his laptop and make up the difference?
To be proud of paying taxes is idiotic. To be proud to donate to worthy causes is called humanity, and my preferred methodology.
On a tangent point of this argument, I would point out that for most of my life London has been the financial hub of our planet, with NYC running a close second.
Both are losing ground fast to Beijing, which fits perfectly with how history rhymes.
The USA isn’t like Japan, where there is nowhere to run and hide. That’s why over the millenia they have become like worker bees. They had no alternative, and it is instinctive to their culture.
The Weather Channel is growing more confident that a nor’easter is coming by next week, which will cause further misery. I don’t know what else to say, except that in my hypothetical Staten Island post I would have made the right choice.
If I made an error in that post, it would be that I used the word vacation. Time off would have put into better perspective.
Elaine, you have your causal arrow pointing in the wrong direction. Rebuilding Detroit will not bring back the auto industry. $20 crude oil might do that, but it isn’t going to happen.
Of course, all the empty cities in China may make interesting ruins some day.
Melponeme K:
I found this online, I dont know if its true…
‘The American Red Cross President and CEO Marsha J. Evans’ salary for 2011 was $951,957 plus expenses’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In a similar note, I hear NPRs Chief in DC makes about half a million a year.
Red Cross is the RICHEST organization in America. Romney doesn’t want to kill off FEMA but if you look, many people in the N.E. would love to right now since they aren’t doing anything to help as people are without power, cold, no water and FEMA tells them to go on line to get details…ONLINE? Pure Democrat lunacy.
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ELAINE: Time to grow up. People want to be rescued. And will privatizing FEMA bring rescue? In a rat’s ass! And what did Romney tell people some months ago when they complained about not being instantly rescued from huge natural disasters?
He said, call 211 for FEMA.
Everything is a rip-off scheme now. I have been waiting for Vocational Rehablitation to provide me with a new scooter after I wore out the first one, using it way past its normal life span until it just died on the way home from work. I had to push it to my mother’s house. That was back in June.
I know see why VR has stonewalled me for over 4 months. Their “vendor” charges 2 grand more for the same brand and model that is available online at other stores. Unbelievable. I am sick of being used as bait for government rip-off schemes. I will buy the econo model myself with a loan from the bank tommorrow and make payments on it next year. It does not have the instant stop brake, so I will still be vulnerable to red light runners.
I turned down the new glasses and hearing aid for the same reasons. (They want to sell me a hearing aid when I cannot hear. Last time I agreed just so I could get the scooter, which was what I really needed to get to work.) Non-cooperation is a no-no with VR.
I only give to the Salvation Army because I have actually seen them do things with my own eyes. I used to give to Greenpeace, but their insistance on eliminating the burning of all coal while replacing it with (silence) caused me to cancel my membership.
Anything based in DC becomes totally corrupt over time. It is like ancient Rome.
And this is fixed by REFORMS not killing services. The GOP wants to destroy all social services. Not fix them.
All ideologues want to kill things. We saw the global warming movement die due to no solutions to living in cold places when fuel is restricted due to CO2 cuts. Basically, people blind themselves when they become ideologues which is why so many people hate me.
I am an ideologue when it comes to civil rights. I support the protection of all civil rights all the time for anyone and everyone to the nth degree.
On all other issues, I look at it carefully and then LOOK AT HISTORY. This prevents fantasy thinking which is why people get mad at me all the time.
History is our guide. Virtually nothing we do hasn’t been done in the past by someone, somewhere. And history says, a society that screws up protecting its major cities DIES. And the people in the countryside are put to the sword and burned, too.
Yes, history is our guide, and it shows clearly that many systems become impervious to reforms. Those that insist that they can be reformed or tinkered with are swept aside by the unstoppable course of events that rise up as a result of revolutionary thinking and the simultaneous failure of systems that cannot be reformed to meet the needs of the people.
@59
Privatizing FEMA will only attach parasites to the mother body, leaving it a dried out husk.
The cannibalization of the US is not a long term survival strategy. But of course, the fallacy, as Elaine points out, is that the deluded people think they will be the parasites getting fat off the suffering of others, when in fact they will be the prey themselves.
So many GOP voters are (figuratively speaking) Palestinians voting themselves into ghettos, when they believe themselves going to the promised land.