Gov Romney Refused Emergency Funds — And Talk — For 2006 Flood Victims
Mitt Romney, as Massachusetts Governor in 2006, refused to distribute his state’s copious emergency funds to Lowell city residents who had lost their homes to “the great Mother’s Day floods of 2006,” as Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce reports:
The right-leaning Lowell Sun was particularly displeased.
We find it inconceivable that Gov. Mitt Romney claims the state can do nothing to help those residents still struggling to rebuild homes and businesses after the May flood. Massachusetts is sitting on millions in unspent emergency funds from Hurricane Katrina and more than $1 billion in cash reserves, yet Romney has failed to even respond to the Lowell delegation’s requests to discuss additional aid for victims. The governor’s spokesman — since Romney can’t be bothered to comment now that the photo opportunities have dried up even though some residents’ basements haven’t — said the state will not consider spending its own money for flood victims until it’s clear how much cash the federal government will give.
A local online news site reported the scene like this:
Crews floated boats down flooded streets to rescue people trapped in their homes, overflowing pipes spewed sewage into streets and rivers and hundreds fled homes and businesses Monday as New England braced for its worst flooding since the 1930s.
The flood waters overwhelmed sewage systems and drowned waste water treatment plants. Burst pipes in Haverhill have been dumping 35 million gallons of waste a day since Sunday into the Merrimack River. And the flood at a regional treatment plant in Lawrence was threatening to shut down the power there, which would send sewage into the Merrimack at a rate of 115 million gallons a day.
“This is a level of crisis which is beyond anything these communities have ever experienced from water in their history,” Gov. Mitt Romney said Monday.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Romney said.
Romney then went on “Good Morning America” and “described the flooding as ‘almost Biblical’ and said ‘We’re sort of making jokes about Noah and taking two of each kind of animal because we haven’t ever seen rain like this’,” according to Wikipedia.
And then his PR stunt show was over.
Reporting that “abdicating on government flood relief was one of the first steps” Romney took to paint himself as, well, a “severely conservative Governor” — to quote Mitt himself — Esquire’s Pierce, a constituent of then-Governor Romney, adds that Mitt “pretty much had given up his job as governor and was gearing up for the seven-year run at the presidency that will climax, one way or the other, next Tuesday night.”
Imploring readers his Esquire readers to “trust us,” Pierce — whose report is laced with other ugliness about Governor Flip Flop — closes with this intimate assessment:
“We know this guy. There’s a reason why he’s going to lose this state by more than 20 points. The only thing about him that you can depend on is that there’s never any room in the lifeboat for The Help.”
For more local color, consider this from a right-wing local Massachusetts blogger, writing about the flood and Romney’s response, dated May 17, 2006:
Our elected officials are on the front line, and their mettle is on the line now too. We were pleased with first impressions, but all too soon our Republican Massachusetts leaders of choice revealed their feet of clay. We caught Lieutenant Governor Healey saying something to the effect that this sort of thing would be common now, given global warming.
…
At the same time, the man who would be Leader of the Free World — Oh, sweet Mitt of life, at last I’ve found you? — played a most disagreeable disgrace card on “Good Morning America” with the silken, fawning Diane Sawyer:
“We’re continuing to be very, very careful and going through our neighborhoods, securing them, and making sure there is no looting of any kind,†Romney added.
The remarks puzzled local officials, who reported no incidents of looting in the Bay State, New Hampshire or Maine, and prompted experts to question if Romney was raising red flags for no reason — or for political reasons.
Politics are the way of the world, but without knowing anything more about it, this one left a bad taste in our fiercely independent New England, home-rule mouth. We aren’t like those folks down yonder in New Orleans, our local-pride first response told us. Mitt owes us more respect. Kerry Healey, too. We weren’t born yesterday.
Nor were we.
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President Donald Trump concluded his executive time Friday morning with a statement announcing he would end the U.S. naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and laid out his requirements for a deal with Iran, before declaring, “I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination.”
After a two-hour meeting with his advisors, Trump left without making a decision.
“It was not clear why Mr. Trump did not reach a decision,” The New York Times reports.
“In recent days, the sides have exchanged fire, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened a return to full-scale war,” the Times added.
Among Trump’s demands were that the Strait be reopened “immediately,” with no tolls imposed on traffic, and all water mines removed — although he noted, “we have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers.”
“Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of ‘heading home!’ Say hello to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President,” he wrote. Trump added: “No money will be exchanged, until further notice.”
READ MORE: Judge: Trump Cannot Rename Kennedy Center
Were an agreement to be reached, the Times noted, “it could give Mr. Trump an off-ramp from a war that has driven up oil prices and grown deeply unpopular at home. It could also eventually allow Iran to regain access to frozen overseas assets and provide a route for Tehran to get billions of dollars of oil revenue flowing again.”
Even if the Strait reopened immediately, experts warn, replacing the lost oil could take months.
“The spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said in a telephone interview with Iranian state media on Friday that current negotiations were limited in scope and did not include ‘the nuclear issue,'” the Times reports. Trump did specifically state that “Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb.”
He also mentioned “nuclear dust,” writing that it “is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it.”
The president said that it “will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and destroyed.”
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Image via Reuters
A federal judge has ordered that President Donald Trump cannot rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, nor may he close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations.
“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote, CNBC reports. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
Just weeks after he was sworn into office, Trump removed members of the board of the Kennedy Center and replaced them with allies and administration officials, including Richard Grenell, Pam Bondi, and Susie Wiles. The new board then voted for Trump to become chairman of the Kennedy Center.
In December, after the White House announced that the board of the Kennedy Center — the official, “living memorial” to the late president — had voted to rename the iconic cultural institution the Trump-Kennedy Center, several members of the Kennedy family took the opportunity to denounce the move.
Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California, wrote: “The Kennedy Center was named after my uncle, President John F Kennedy.”
She called the renaming “beyond comprehension,” “beyond wild,” “downright weird,” and “obsessive in a weird way,” while explaining that the Kennedy Center was named in honor of a man who was interested in the arts, culture, education, language, and history.
“Next thing perhaps he will want to rename JFK Airport, rename the Lincoln Memorial, the Trump Lincoln Memorial,” she said. “The Trump Jefferson Memorial. The Trump Smithsonian. The list goes on.”
May 17 is President John F. Kennedy’s birthday, he was born in 1917.
This article has been updated.
Image via Reuters
The Villages in Florida is deep red Trump country — it’s called the “largest retirement community in the world,” where nearly seven out of 10 county residents voted for Trump in 2024. It’s roughly four hours to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, and it’s not unusual to see Trump flags on the backs of residents’ golf carts.
Trump visited The Villages just a few weeks ago, where one resident told BBC News, “we’re as red as red gets.”
“The Village are very Republican and very Trumpster,” said another.
“Trump 2028!” declared another, waving his fist.
But the tide appears to be turning in Florida, where several polls spell bad news for Trump. His approval is underwater in one poll from April, and one released on Thursday shows a majority of Florida voters hold a negative view of the president.
Still, some may find a letter to the editor in The Villages local news declaring “MAGA has abandoned core Republican principles” surprising.
The letter declares MAGA is “not conservatism,” but rather a “betrayal” that has “embraced indulgence.”
“The irony is cruel,” says the letter writer, Carl Young. “Those who once railed against ‘big government’ now defend its excesses when it serves their side. The philosophy of restraint has been replaced by the politics of spectacle. Rome is burning, and the arsonists call the flames freedom.”
Young scorches Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that he says “produced the highest deficit spending in history.”
Citing dystopian and totalitarian works by George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and Ayn Rand, he writes: “This is not renewal but regression. America has been dragged into an alternate 1984, where responsibility collapses and chaos parades as strength. The political temperature has risen to 451. The pigs now rule the farm.”
“These were never meant as prophecies. They were warnings,” he continues. “Atlas has finally shrugged.”
Image via Shutterstock
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