Texas Governor Asks for Over 150 Billion in Aid

Discussion in 'Politics' started by garrison68, Sep 6, 2017.

  1. #1 garrison68, Sep 6, 2017
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2017
    The title says it all. Where is it going to come from? The answer is our taxes. I have no problem in helping them, but as the author of the opinion article below explains, Texas should be the last place in the country to ask for this kind of help, with the record the Texas politicians have regarding helping others, such as aid for the East Coast after Superstorm Sandy. When something happens to them, though, it's a totally different story. Where's their "individual responsibility", as Texas Senator Ted Cruz, calls it, now?
    Disclaimer: I am not Garrison Keillor. :)

    When a red state gets the blues
    By Garrison Keillor, Sept. 5, 2017
    Washington Post - Opinions

    The Republic of Texas believes in self-reliance and is suspicious of Washington sticking its big nose in your business. “Government is not the answer. You are not doing anyone a favor by creating dependency, destroying individual responsibility.” So said Sen. Ted Cruz (R), though not last week. Sunday on Fox News, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Texas would need upward of $150 billion in federal aid for damage inflicted by Harvey. The stories out of Houston have all been about neighborliness and helping hands and people donating to relief funds, but you don’t raise $150 billion by holding bake sales. This is almost as much as the annual budget of the U.S. Army. I’m just saying.

    I’m all in favor of pouring money into Texas, but I am a bleeding-heart liberal who favors single-payer health care. How is being struck by a hurricane so different from being hit by cancer? I’m only asking.


    Houstonians chose to settle on a swampy flood plain barely 50 feet above sea level. The risks of doing so are fairly clear. If you chose to live in a tree and the branch your hammock was attached to fell down, you wouldn’t ask for a government subsidy to hang your hammock in a different tree.

    President Ronald Reagan said that government isn’t the answer, it is the problem, and conservatives have found that line very resonant over the years. In Cruz’s run for president last year, he called for the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service. He did not mention this last week. It would be hard to raise an extra $150 billion without the progressive income tax unless you could persuade Mexico to foot the bill.

    Similarly, if a desert state such as Arizona expects the feds to solve its water shortage, as Sen. Jeff Flake (R) suggested recently, by guaranteeing Arizona first dibs on Lake Mead, this strikes me as a departure from conservative principles. Lake Mead, and Boulder Dam, which created it, were not built by Lake Mead Inc., but by the federal government. The residents of Phoenix decided freely to settle in an arid valley, and they have used federal water supplies to keep their lawns green. Why should we Minnesotans, who chose to live near water, subsidize golf courses on the desert? You like sunshine? Fine. Take responsibility for your decision and work out a deal with Perrier to keep yourselves hydrated.

    Arizona is populated by folks who dread winter and hate having to shovel snow. In Minnesota, we recognize that snow is a form of water and that it’s snowmelt that replenishes the aquifers. So we make a rational decision to live here. A warm, dry winter is a sort of disaster for us, but we don’t apply to Washington for hankies. If we made a decision to live underwater on a coral reef off Hawaii, we wouldn’t expect the feds to provide us with Aqua-Lungs. If we chose to fly to the moon and play among the stars and spend spring on Jupiter and Mars and we got lost out there, we wouldn’t expect NASA to come rescue us. Get my drift here?

    I was brought up by fundamentalists who believed it was dead wrong to get tangled up in politics. They never voted. Our preachers had no time for that. They knew that we were pilgrims and wayfarers in this world and that we shouldn’t expect favors from the powerful. We were redeemed by unfathomable grace and preserved by God’s mercy, and our citizenship was in heaven. We looked to the Lord to supply our needs.

    This has changed, and godly Republicans now believe in the power of the government to change the world in their favor, of the Education Department to channel public money freely to religious schools, of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and prohibit Joshua from marrying Jehoshaphat.

    Conservatives blanch at spending additional billions to subsidize health care for the needy, but a truckload of cash for Texas? No problem. It makes me think we Minnesotans should get a few billion in federal aid for recovery from the upcoming winter. It is going to be cold. This will cause damage to homes. Drive-in movie theaters and golf courses and marinas will suffer loss of revenue. We must salt the highways to prevent accidents, and the salt corrodes our cars. And then there is the mental anguish.

    If Minnesota gets billions of dollars for winter recovery, then I am going to seriously consider becoming a conservative. As a philosophy of governing, conservatism is rather sketchy, but if it helps Minnesota, I am all in favor. I have my principles, but I can be bought, same as the rest of you.

    Opinion | When a red state gets the blues
     
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  2. Many politicians especially on the right wing side seem to lack empathy. It's not important issue wise until it happens to them. It's why when drugs ravaged black/inner city communities the politicians took a hardline tough on drug stance. Once the drugs actually made its way into their cushy suburban communities suddenly they cared about the issue and called for drug rehabilitation.
     
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  3. I think states should have to put up their own money first and then rely on federal funds as a last resort. This is why I don't like the whole "State of Emergency" thing. It can be activated for almost any reason and that opens the door to federal funds (aka taxpayer dollars) to use for whatever reason, and has a high potential for abuse.

    No doubt these storms absolutely destroy whatever city/state is in their path, but I think people on both sides are too quick to pull federal funds. I'm not too well versed in how exactly everything works with it, so take my opinions with a grain of salt, but states should have to put up a certain percentage based on their gdp before they're allowed to ask for federal money. Our states are meant to be sovereign entities that are part of a union. I would prefer the states to act as they were originally meant to and attempt to handle these emergencies themselves until they are unable to. By being part of said union, said states are entitled to federal funds that they help accumulate. No state is "wrong" for requesting that money, I just think it should be an absolute last resort and not the first choice as it always seems to be.

    Hypothetical question; what would the federal government do if multiple storm systems, or any other kind of distruptive events, hit multiple regions simultaneously? I'm cool with federal funds going where they're needed (emergency wise), but I'm just skeptical of the whole blank check shit. Who decides how much money is needed for specific events and how do we know all of this money will be totally accounted for and will be put to proper use?

    Again, I'm not saying I don't want this money to go to helping people who could truly benefit from it, I just think there are better options that we need to utilize before everyone starts asking for federal funds off the rip.
     
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  4. I think a big part of all of this that is so far under the radar:
    The government underwriting flood insurance? Wow. Basically encouraging people to move into low lying areas for cheap because they knew the government would pay for it if something happened. Over 100,000 homes destroyed due to flooding...all on the governments dime. And now we got a major one barreling right for florida...wonder if the government backs the flood plains there too....I'll give you a hint. They do.
     
  5. well we lost our home to harvey.
    got the flood insuance. hopefully they wont stall like they always do
    applied for fema, havnet heard from them, meanwhiles other people are staying in hotels for up to a month, paid for by fema
    i rather earn everything i got, but the way i see it...fuck em... billions are being poured out, everyone is taking it, i want a piece of the pie.

    anyways, i always thought of texas as an independent state, we believe in a small, limited government. our legislative meets once every two years to pass new laws. and i dont think they are that great answering to a central/federal goverment, so abbet asking for 150 b's is kind of odd, and against some principals

    but hey, everyone one has to get on that gravy train
     
  6. Thats horrible man I'm so sorry to hear that about your house. Stay strong man. For real. Those programs are there for a reason and if you lost your home then I would say you are absolutely entitled to them. I wasn't disparaging anyone for using the programs at all, I was just wondering out loud why the hell the government underwrites the flood insurance.
    Godspeed man, for real. Very sorry to hear about your home. Hope all your loved ones were safe at least!
     
  7. its cool. idk. i dont want to be like one of those people on tv, katrina victims lol
    in a way, we didnt have much b4 anyways, so wasnt much to loose. we got all the dogs with us so we will be fine
    just more upset because we finally got a oven and i only got to use it twice haha lol

    but yea, in a way i dont think the goverment should be underwriting anything. that whole underwriting thing is risky, and why does the goverment have to get involved in all that?????

    its like, they want to hemorrhage money and as quick as possible....why would they?

    but the town i live/lived in flooded before, and then fema came in, but before they gave anyone any money, the town had to agree to certain "guidelines" that make construction in the area more difficult
     
  8. and because of those guidelines, the land might be cheaper, but with extra permits, inspection fee's, required insurance it adds to the total cost and makes things even more expensive then they were before fema came in
     
  9. I agree with you to a degree. I think that fema, especially this time around is proving their worth and why we have them. Just someone to coordinate the efforts and it certainly appears at least from what I've read and seen that they have had their shit together pretty well.
    As far as the government underwriting flood insurance, its a fucking scam, for many of the reasons you listed above. Its just like the government including however many hundreds of billions in health care bills to underwrite the insurance companies. So the insurance companies assume zero risk and just make money hand over fist.
     
  10. Dosnt it make you wonder who/what the whole health care thing was really about?
    who benefited? insurance companies......did anyone really gain anything from it? sure they got insurance, but they still had to pay

    ...hemorrhaging money......
     
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  11. it doesn't make me wonder I already know. barry o admitted it and so have several democratic senators. ACA was designed to make the insurance markets collapse and pave the way to socialized healthcare. See, instead of overtly shitting on the constitution like he did other times, he just passed a bill to do it and painted that pig up all sorts of pretty colors and called it a special name, "affordable care act" when in actuality its the exact opposite. And again, it was purposely designed this way.
     
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  12. wow thank you, b4 i just saw the bailing out the insurance companies, but when i read that, i saw the rest, after they bail out the insurance companies they will require the companies to follow specific guidelines and thats how the federal government gets its foot in the door.....
     
  13. yup, and then "we have no choice, government must save us...."
    check out senator Rand Paul, if you haven't already. He is a pretty smart guy and stays mostly on the libertarian line.
     
  14. Social Welfare On The Cheap: Why Obamacare Was Built To Fail
     
  15. i have been, i remember his dad, im glad he is around to continue his legacy...
     
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  16. Everyone including @jman42028 check out this doc from frontline on hurricanes. Explores the history behind why the govenrment was involved in flood insurance. Also analyzed the shortcomings of the current system. The documentary highlights a really solid investigation done by propublica into the flood insurance industry

    Business of Disaster
     
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  17. Amazing all the Minnesota RVs we get snowbirding in AZ every winter
     
  18. man...I don't even know where to start. Thanks for sharing that dude. So much money...gone. Just disappeared...I would love to see a follow up at some point especially after what has happened in texas and florida.
    Insurance companies making so much profit while the rest of the money is pissed away...I think she was too nice to some of those people she interviewed especially the HUD bitch.

    I just hope that this new administration has been able to clean some of this shit up....drain some of that swamp if you will. So far the initial response was great on all accounts, but this wasn't about the initial response, this was about the clean-up. That will tell the real tale and I hope for all those affected that this is handled the right way.
     
  19. I don't believe you...
     
  20. I'm a bit liberal about a lot of things, but not a bleeding heart liberal. The author of the article wrote that, as I said is NOT me.

    I still like the article, 95%, though.
     
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