Republicans sound eager to deny fire aid to Los Angeles
(Mods: that auto-suggested title is different from the one on on the page itself, but it's honestly a better headline in terms of the article's contents. Let me know if i need to change it.)
On Thursday, Rep. Andy Harris told Newsmax that money for wildfire aid isn’t a priority for Republicans because “we just put more money into FEMA before we left for the Christmas holidays,” and the Maryland Republican claimed that Los Angeles “mishandled the fire department so egregiously that they ought to bear some of the burden for that rebuilding.”
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/los-angeles-wildfires-trump-charlie-kirk-misinformation-federal-aid-rcna187173Open linkView original on lemmy.world
81 replies
It's a sad state of affairs that this kind of news is so unsurprising, but if Democrats said screw the people in Florida who got flattened by a hurricane it'd be the story of the month...
Wasn't that the narrative being pushed after that bug hurricane this past fall? That FEMA wasn't passing resources to right wing counties?
Edit: "Trump also claimed without providing evidence on his social media platform, Truth Social, that the federal government and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper were "going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas"" --Hurricane Helene Wikipedia Article
Persecution complex always at the ready. I did see one story where some segment of them had been told to avoid places with lots of Trump signs, but the reason was for the worker safety because of the hostility by the right wing. So basically in that case they created a self fulfilling prophecy.
Notably, local conservatives out firing guns at FEMA who showed up to try and save their lives.
If I'm helping save your life and you send a bullet whizzing past my head then yeah, I'm going to leave you where you are as well.
This, of course, was reported as "FEMA is refusing to help Republicans!" and not "Local Conservatives perform war crime, fire deadly weapons at humanitarian aid"
Minor details, the FEMA folks just need to toughen up and bring kevlar next time /s
Not just that, but some representatives were pissed because the broader Republican party seemed to want to undermine recovery efforts to make it look worse for Biden.. Then after the election asserting a bill was in the name of helping them while that bill still did nothing at all for those afflicted.
Used to be they didn’t want FEMAs help because FEMA was going to put everyone in camps and steal their houses. Now FEMA is purposely ignoring them?
WHICH IS IT??? I can’t get my conspiracy theories to agree.
It's whatever you need to believe to rationalize saying screw you to West Coast democrats and giving a tax break to your buddy or privatizing the fire department or something, obviously.
They did go out of their way to not help them. And by they I mean Republicans
The lies never stop and nothing is to low. Get ready for another round of "crisis actors" when the next major school shooting happens.
Story of the month? They'd be crucified...
They were crucified. Some people freaking believed it with Helene.
California should just secede. I’m not joking, what’s the point of funneling money to other states that don’t care about human rights, don’t come to our aid when we need it, and happily siphon all our tax dollars but fight any reciprocation? California could absolutely succeed as a sovereign nation.
It would be nice, but unless California has a militia on the same level as the US military, it wouldn't end well
While I agree it would go poorly, the way this would happen in theory is that the state would take their contributions to the federal military with them, and for California that would be a pretty sizeable chunk. So it's not just local police and national guard.
This is very interesting. It's my understanding that a lot of grunts in the military are big fans of Trump, so wouldn't that throw a wrench in the gear? Even if that isn't the case, the military falls under the executive branch, the president is their commander in chief. What does that mean when a state seceeds?
I think another complicating factor is that military folks are moved around so much that they wouldn't have the same loyalty to wherever they happen to be. So it's likely to be quite bad, just staying that generally the military itself would split.
As to technically reporting to the president, well all bets would be off, since the act of secession is already a rejection of the current government and rule of law. There wasn't any legal framework for the revolutionary war nor the civil war to happen, and yet they did.
Despite all this technicality, I'd really not want to see the nightmare of how this would play out in practice. Of course I could not see it happening until the GOP got too greedy and fully shut down elections or go too far away from free and fair elections. Ultimately confidence in elections serves as a release valve for anger with the government, and messing with that invites disaster.
We shit on Texas everytime they talk about seceding. Don't be as dumb as those people.
California has the fifth largest economy in the world, Texas has half the GDP of California and still manages to post a net loss.
There's a reason we clown on Texas about it and that reason is because Texas quite literally cannot survive on its own but screeches constantly about threatening secession. California on the other hand would survive just fine without a single one of the entire rest of the States but they don't constantly remind everyone of that fact.
Texas gets made fun of for it because the answer to "Well what would you do without Texas, huh????" is.... I'd pay less taxes because Texas wouldn't be sucking down a bunch of surplus anymore.
That's generally because it's ridiculous and often right in the heels of some big illustration of how Texas benefits from the other states.
If the federal government did withhold aid, then that would perhaps be part of a scenario where California is tossing money at a government that will not reciprocate.
Now it may be premature, as this might just be posturing and even if they made it rough, there is every reason to hope that in 2 years than shift . But if this was a real and durable situation, I could see it being their only path to get some more negotiating power.
I do agree with the sentiment and all of the points are valid. I think talking about it as secession detracts from those points. Highlighting that California pays in way more than it takes is important especially in the context of not receiving aid for malicious reasons.
Honestly I don’t care if Texas secedes too. Fuck em.
Hasn't Texas changed hands several times. It was it's own country at one point. It was part of Mexico now part of the US. Texas is a clown show for many reasons.
I'm not an American, but I heard that if California was a separate country it would be one of the top wealthiest countries in the world. The rest of the US is a tick on your butt. NY excepted.
I may be wrong.
I don't think the government would allow that
Can't they just not recognize the federal government? Should just make their own (maybe other states would participate as well). It wouldn't be seceding, but they would de facto work as a separate political entity. That is unless they get raided of course.
You should see how many icbm's are parked along the coast of California...
It would be 10x worse than brexit for California to secede.
We're Republicans, we don't help ppl!!
Republicans are me/I people and if it doesn't happen to me, then I don't care. Think of all GOP that vote down any disaster aide til it hits their constituents.
Another one version of this I hear is "I don't need (ealcare/student loan forgiveness/ basic human decency) I alreadyhavr that. What do I get if I do that?"
A functioning society is not appealing to them at all. It's a party of selfishness.
Hell, they were hiding from disaster aid calls in Florida while there's a hurricane coming through just so they could try to stick it to Biden.
That was a great one. My inlaws don't believe a social safety net is nessesary bc they have never needed it, so why would someone else need it
They help rich people.
They don't even help rich people at this point:
Well unfortunately he lives in a blue state in a blue county so... sol
Well of course he does: He's not one of the poors.
Destroying a rich person's planet while giving them more of something they don't have a use for isn't helping them.
California should just withhold the money they pay the federal government to subsidize those lazy ass red southern states. Problem solved.
Democrats should have treated Republicans like a foreign power interested only in the destruction of the country.
Because that's what they are
I mean the repubs are russian puppets... so yeah you're last sentence :)
What was Ronald Reagan's famous line about “most terrifying words"? Something like "I’m the republican government, and if you need help you can go fuck yourself".
But Reagan sold it. Reagan could sell anything. It’s easy to look back and be offended by what he sold, but he succeeded at the tine
Anyone appearing on Newsmax should be disregarded. And Andy Harris is a great example as to why. The man practically goes out of his was to avoid finding himself on the decent side of an issue. He’s a clown and an embarrassment to the state of Maryland.
I don’t know about any of you, but I will never trust or respect a doctor that spent the pandemic pushing plague rat bullshit.
They hate America, so this makes perfect sense.
They also hate people that aren’t really rich.
This should be enough reason for California to secese. Join Canada!
See how well the US.does without the Californian economy (it would end in ruin)
World's fifth largest economy, right? Maybe it could strike out on its own.
Third largest if Canada's included!
For sure. However, you'll want allies, no matter how powerful you are. Maybe a Schengen type situation would be interesting?
A lot of values are similar, make an open trade and travel zone?
Honestly, with the way things are going - Canada could very benefit from the entire Pacific coast seceding, along with New England, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.
Legitimately would flip the global economic status quo on its head, ‘eh!
The rest of the US would have to raise tariffs on exports to California to cover the shortfall
Thats cool, uncle joe has it covered. Link
The only other time FEMA and the federal government have done this was 9/11. Not even hurricane katrina or super-storm sandy got 100% federal relief funding (This policy was enacted in 2021 Link). The truely shameful part of this is that the GOP and 47 can not be trusted to not withhold relief funding because LA didnt vote for him. And if you think there isn't precident for this, Nixon did the exact same thing when he closed the Boston naval yard in the 1970s. Link
Well he better get that aid to California in the next 9 days.
Then 47 will have to intentionally roll it back, and thats really not a good look. He is already operating on the slimmest majority, bad calls are not something he can afford many of. Its really a good political check (in a Chess sense) from Biden. With conservative media calling for 47 to not help, he is sorta damned if he does and damned if he dosent.
Or he will make up some new distraction like how were going to take ohio back from the yogurt or something crazy.
Dictators don't need to care about congressional majorities. Or not looking good.
There's a distinct difference from what they say and what they do.
Wasn’t it so people stepped up to help Texas for example, when things got bad in the winter? Pretty sure that’s a republican state so, huh. I thought Religious conservatives would be all ‘love thy neighbor’.
That only applies to the ones they look directly in the eyes and learn the names of. If they don't personally know you, especially if you're from a blue state, lol get rekt
Mexican Firefighters came up to help California. I saw on another Lemmy post. So amazing!! The irony that Mexicans are better upstanding people than the Texans, and the Texans act like they’re gods gift to religion.
you know a lot of Texans are Mexicans, right? edit - it drives me nuts to see entire populations painted with such a broad brush.
Haha I've never seen Republicans spousing actual Christian values in my lifetime. They will fuck you given the chance.
Cascadia.
Be careful some people not from the area are convinced its a racist agenda...got down voted and told how shit I was for agreeing with a ethnowhite racist agenda...what's weird is that's the first time in my life I'd heard that.
Yah, that's news to me. If figure if there's racists involved, Idaho would have to be in the mix.
Oregon was founded by members of the KKK, if i recall. It's demographics are like 95% white.
I spent a few years living in Oregon and I remember not being able to help having a double take the first time I saw a black person in my town. I had already lived there for years and never seen one.
It doesn't get much whiter than Oregon.
It was basically the same as the first time I saw a black person when I lived in Sendai, Japan. They just aren't there.
Edit: For reference, I grew up in New Jersey, where there were plenty of black people. And Latinos. We were pretty diverse. Japan is not diverse. Oregon is not diverse outside of the Portland area, maybe Eugene or Salem.
That's probably part of why Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon largely want to join Idaho.
Some people from the area do in fact have a racist agenda about it. I'm from the area. I was so disappointed when I encountered those types because I liked the Cascadia idea, but I don't want to be lumped in with them. You can see it on reddits Cascadia sub.
While I would love to see it, I thought only Northern California was included. LA would not be part of Cascadia.
Destroyed how?
Oh, I know it does. I would be very happy to have a Cascadian nation state. But the racists really do exist, especially in Oregon and to a slightly lesser extent in Washington. Oregon didn't even allow black people to settle there after the Civil War. There are still remnants of that present in the culture and ethnic makeup.
Aren't Red states essentially on welfare from the Blue states? Sounds like lashing out and projection
Who knows, maybe they really do believe in those principles of theirs and the problem will take care of itself as they die off one by one to natural disasters and never help eachother until they're all gone.
Unfortunately, they're not the ones dying.
Hey now calous disregard of anything to do with LA is reserved for us Inland Imperials. Stop stealing our patents.
That’s why said thank for this happened before the 20th.
I was all for the fire when it was taking the homes of people that have never lost everything, and had regularly taken everything from others(palisades), but there's poor people that barely have living situations having that taken from them, and people that genuinely earned everything they have(Mel Gibson, hate him or love him he started poor), it's unfortunate to see people losing everything they had picked out to make themselves at home. Even tho it's actually pretty cool to say "relieved of my physical belongings", and irresponsible to say an animal dewormed definitively cured cancer when it truly could have created a genuine placebo effect and their body curied cancer. Bodies cure cancer all the time. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume a placebo effect stirred a persons own immune system to cure a nasty bout if it wasn't already weakened by radiation treatment. Not out of the realm of possibility, but unfortunately not very reproducible... But I digress, the people that are working, and or earned already everything they have is a definitive tragedy. I understand not caring about the Hollywood 1%, but the poor, once it reaches their door step it's everybody's problem. Cuz if they let it happen to them, they will let it happen to you, an me.
Even when it was taking homes of rich people, it was also filling the L.A. basin and the San Fernando Valley with choking smoke. I lived there over a decade ago and there were far less intense fires, but still big ones, and you could not be outside for more than a few minutes without feeling your lungs burning... and that doesn't go into people with respiratory problems.
These fires kill people who are nowhere near close enough to feel the heat or even be blinded by the smoke.
I lived in Van Nuys during the Sepulveda fire, a fire which was really minor, and it snowed ashes for days. I can't imagine what's it's like there right now. Escape from LA vibes for sure.
I seem to have lost almost all of my L.A. fire photos, but I took this one from Mulholland Drive when the other side of The Valley was on fire:
And then, by evening on my side of The Valley...
And that was relatively minor because it was completely out within about 48 hours.