I wrote yesterday about Romney saying earlier in the campaign that he'd privatize FEMA. Today, the candidate who several days ago ruled out media interactions and interviews between then and Election Day, made the error getting close to reporters, and they asked him about it. From HuffPo:
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...
..."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?"
Meanwhile, a campaign spokesperson gave a mushy statement to Politico saying he wouldn't abolish FEMA but would give more power in emergencies to the states. That story moved before 11 a.m., which appears to have been before Romney dodged the question 14 times in Ohio. So I guess his own campaign forgot to text him the talking points.
The whole business is nonsense to begin with. The only reason FEMA is "controversial" is that it massively effed up one big thing, Katrina. But the reason it screwed that up is that the president at the time didn't give a crap about the agency and put a guy in charge of it who had no business whatsoever being in that position. And so, logically enough, they screwed it up, and tragically.
But now that FEMA is being run by someone who's actually interested in doing his job well and fulfilling his agency's mission, there's basically nothing wrong with the way it works.
Flood control only fails to work when politicians in charge make dumb decisions, like a certain governor of Massachusetts did regarding the town of Peabody in 2004, as you will see here. As you will also see in that article, he got caught lying. Plus ca change. He really has no scruples at all.
