Super storm Sandy, one year later

[Value Buy]

A year has passed, and Sandy is still very visible in Queens, and New Jersey and all along the coast.
Why hasn't anyone held the Obama administration accountable for failure to disperse the federal funds that were promised at the time?
If this was Bush II it would be daily headlines.

[Tennesseer]

Oct 29, 2013 10:36:54 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

A year has passed, and Sandy is still very visible in Queens, and New Jersey and all along the coast.
Why hasn't anyone held the Obama administration accountable for failure to disperse the federal funds that were promised at the time?
If this was Bush II it would be daily headlines.

How many dollars ìn state and federal funds have been allocated to date?

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Oct 29, 2013 10:55:52 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Oct 29, 2013 10:36:54 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

A year has passed, and Sandy is still very visible in Queens, and New Jersey and all along the coast.
Why hasn't anyone held the Obama administration accountable for failure to disperse the federal funds that were promised at the time?
If this was Bush II it would be daily headlines.

How many dollars ìn state and federal funds have been allocated to date?

Roughly $42 billion. In NY alone.  They've started disbursing funds in two counties so far- Nassau and Suffolk Counties.  I wish I could go into detail, but I'm bound by contract not to discuss the fiasc...I mean situation.  Suffice it to say, I have intimate knowledge of the whole relief effort in NJ and NY.

[happyhoix]

Most of the outrage over the Bush handling of Katrina came from the poor response by FEMA immediately after the storm.  That whole fiasco of allowing 20,000 people to sit in squalor in the Superdome until Sept 4th instead of evacuating them promptly, or to supply the Superdome with adequate food, water and generators while they were there,  seemed pretty outrageous to most Americans.

I don't recall, post Sandy, that there were large numbers of people left stranded for days in miserable conditions.

As for people demanding the administration be held accountable for dispursing the money - they have disposed a lot, and they are still dispursing more.
 
I heard on NPR the other day that most of the local anger in New Jersey is being directed at the local permit offices, who are months behind in issuing building permits and performing inspections, due to the enormous amount of work.

From my own personal experience of having my house get blown away in an F4 tornado, I can say that most of my anger was toward my shitty insurance company who worked as hard as they possibly could to come up with schemes to short change us on our rebuild.

I'm pretty sure even the most ardent Obama hater is not going to blame Obama for overwhelmed permit offices and immoral insurance companies.  

[Deleted]

Oct 29, 2013 10:36:54 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

A year has passed, and Sandy is still very visible in Queens, and New Jersey and all along the coast.
Why hasn't anyone held the Obama administration accountable for failure to disperse the federal funds that were promised at the time?
If this was Bush II it would be daily headlines.

 But it is NOT GWBush in the oval office... it's the guy who inherited the captaincy of the sinking/scuttled ship after the previous captain deserted it.
 Obama's been busy staving off the collapses that have their roots in previous administrations.
 He's been challenged with keeping a sinking ship afloat, despite the machinations of the remnant of the previous crew (The Republicans in the House) to sabotage and stymie anything he can do to mitigate the strait circumstances we're in.
The mutinous bastards would rather sink the vessel outright rather than risk Obama getting credited with keeping the vessel afloat.
 Imagine... trying to run a ship with half the crew on strike and refusing to perform their assigned duties... and half the passengers bitching about trivial cosmetic issues.

[Peace Of Mind]

Oct 29, 2013 17:10:17 GMT -5 @patiencetried said:

Oct 29, 2013 10:36:54 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

A year has passed, and Sandy is still very visible in Queens, and New Jersey and all along the coast.
Why hasn't anyone held the Obama administration accountable for failure to disperse the federal funds that were promised at the time?
If this was Bush II it would be daily headlines.

 But it is NOT GWBush in the oval office... it's the guy who inherited the captaincy of the sinking/scuttled ship after the previous captain deserted it.
 Obama's been busy staving off the collapses that have their roots in previous administrations.
 He's been challenged with keeping a sinking ship afloat, despite the machinations of the remnant of the previous crew (The Republicans in the House) to sabotage and stymie anything he can do to mitigate the strait circumstances we're in.
The mutinous bastards would rather sink the vessel outright rather than risk Obama getting credited with keeping the vessel afloat.
 Imagine... trying to run a ship with half the crew on strike and refusing to perform their assigned duties... and half the passengers bitching about trivial cosmetic issues.

Yeah, that's what I used to think too until I ran out of wine. Stupid Obama! Why can't he and his administration do their jobs?  

I'm always amazed at what the President of the United States gets blamed for.  I get the OP's point here but the other crap that I read or hear in RL blows my mind.  Besides, like Patience said - Everybody knows it's Bush's fault! 

[Deleted]

Beside, like Patience said - Everybody knows it's Bush's fault!

 But that's NOT what I said. What I said is there in black and white.
 I lay responsibility upon ALL the previous administrations (Dem AND GOP) for running up the debt that has been accumulating for generations. That responsibility is shared with Big Business (and their lobbyist minions) who have deftly avoided bearing the burdens that they're foisting upon Ted Taxpayer and Suzie Shopper.
 If I were pressed to opine when the the apples started to rot, I'd say there were always bad apples here and there... but the process was accellerated by the diabolical policies of Reaganomics.

[Tennesseer]

Oct 29, 2013 16:43:27 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Most of the outrage over the Bush handling of Katrina came from the poor response by FEMA immediately after the storm.  That whole fiasco of allowing 20,000 people to sit in squalor in the Superdome until Sept 4th instead of evacuating them promptly, or to supply the Superdome with adequate food, water and generators while they were there,  seemed pretty outrageous to most Americans.

I don't recall, post Sandy, that there were large numbers of people left stranded for days in miserable conditions.

As for people demanding the administration be held accountable for dispursing the money - they have disposed a lot, and they are still dispursing more.
 
I heard on NPR the other day that most of the local anger in New Jersey is being directed at the local permit offices, who are months behind in issuing building permits and performing inspections, due to the enormous amount of work.

From my own personal experience of having my house get blown away in an F4 tornado, I can say that most of my anger was toward my shitty insurance company who worked as hard as they possibly could to come up with schemes to short change us on our rebuild.

I'm pretty sure even the most ardent Obama hater is not going to blame Obama for overwhelmed permit offices and immoral insurance companies.

You must be new to P&M.  

[busymom]

New Orleans is still not rebuilt either, from Katrina.  And that was what, 8 years ago?

[Value Buy]

Oct 29, 2013 10:55:52 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Oct 29, 2013 10:36:54 GMT -5 Value Buy said:

A year has passed, and Sandy is still very visible in Queens, and New Jersey and all along the coast.
Why hasn't anyone held the Obama administration accountable for failure to disperse the federal funds that were promised at the time?
If this was Bush II it would be daily headlines.

How many dollars ìn state and federal funds have been allocated to date?

Millions have been allocated, it is the minimal amount that has been paid out in Federal assistance that is the problem.
The government held British Petroleum to a much higher standard, and made them pay immediately after the rig explosion.
Granted it was an explosion with industrial causes rather than an act of nature in super storm Sandy.
The money was promised by Obama, but still just sits there, somewhere, far, far, away.

[Opti]

I am not current on the state of repair in NJ, but I'd love to know what is a federal issue,
what is a state issue, and what are local/insurance issues. A recent article I think in the Star Ledger concerns a woman who Governor Christie had spoken to possibly as long as a year ago and nothing has been fixed yet. There was also an article in the same paper about various churches who don't have the funds to repair the damage. The picture from the article shows a broken cross a top a church steeple.


Another important thing to keep in mind, disbursements on Sandy were held up by
Congress much longer than Katrina and any other recent federal disaster. I forget the actual numbers, but it was something like federal relief for Katrina was approved within 3 months and for Sandy it took over 6 months after the disaster for federal moneys to be approved. I remember some politicians said the issue was pork in the bill back when it happened, but perhaps someone remembers that better than I do. There is still much damage that hasn't been fixed, but I wouldn't expect things to be done in a year given how long it took for the funding to be approved at the federal level. (And there was that
fire on the NJ shore not too long ago as well. Took out lots of repairs. )

[EVT1]

Took congress forever to ok care for ground zero responders- WTF do they care about anything?  I will mention that it was the GOP holding up pretty much all of these bills..........And what do they care- they get paid no matter what happens.

[Opti]

Post by Evil T1000 on 1 minute ago:Took congress forever to ok care for ground zero responders-

Yep, that took way too long. And I believe health issues started showing up pretty early
like within the first month for some folks.

[EVT1]

Oct 29, 2013 22:34:16 GMT -5 Opti said:

Post by Evil T1000 on 1 minute ago:Took congress forever to ok care for ground zero responders-

Yep, that took way too long. And I believe health issues started showing up pretty early
like within the first month for some folks.

But it could have been pre-existing conditions- so they weren't going to shell out a dime unless it was 100% proven.  Like global warming- until the dirt is on fire they aren't doing shit

It was a disgusting display.  And they still get votes.  I defer to Carlin- politicians come from us- so maybe something else sucks around here- the people.  Allow me:

     "Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. F*ck Hope.'"

[fairlycrazy23]

One year later and I still don't know why it is/was called a super storm..

[justme]

I don't recall, post Sandy, that there were large numbers of people left stranded for days in miserable conditions.

I recall stories of people, particularly old and disabled, that were stuck in their apartments with no power/food because the elevators weren't working due to no power. A lot of the stories were of people volunteering to walk up 12 flights of stairs to get them food and such, and it was only for a few days. Though it wasn't to the extent to what happened in Katrina. More stuck in your own home vs having to flee because the water destroyed yours.


There was an article somewhere yesterday (helpful, right?) that detailed where all the money raised went. According to the article most of the hundreds of millions raised by the concerts/telethons has been disbursed, but it didn't go into detail of what it was disbursed on/to.


I read today in USA about all the plans people are thinking of to keep Sandy from happening again. Including expanding the island of Manhattan (!) and then making all the buildings on the expansion hurricane proof () so they can take the brunt of any storm and "save" the rest of the island. The article then pointed out that Manhattan was not hit as hard as surrounding areas. There was also an idea of building a giant ass sea wall that would stop any storm surge, but it would take decades to build and a ton of money. At the end it said something about the last big hurricane to hit the area was in 1938. Maybe I'm a jaded Floridian, but while Sandy was bad if it only comes every 80 years or so that's a lot of money to protect people from "what if" and by the time the next one actually comes a lot of the protections will be 50 years old and probably not that protective anyways I would think.

[happyhoix]

I read today in USA about all the plans people are thinking of to keep Sandy from happening again.

I've ready some extravagant plans, too. Along the lines of making the subways to where they can't flood, and protecting all the electrical substations, etc. Yes, it's possible to do, but you have to determine if we want to spend our infrastruction dollars trying to make New York hurricane proof or if we want to spend it fixing all the bridges.

Realistically what needs to happen (but what won't) is we need to relocate high population density centers like NY and New Orleans further inland, on higher ground. I did hear that some of the homes on Staten Island were being bought and leveled, with the ground being returned to wetlands/marshes, to act as a storm buffer - while that's possible on a small scale, I don't see everyone being willing to abandon NY because it can't be made hurricane proof, anymore than people will move away from Florida to avoid the hurricanes or will stop building their homes in the areas of the west prone to wildfires.

[happyhoix]

Oct 29, 2013 18:38:58 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Oct 29, 2013 16:43:27 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Most of the outrage over the Bush handling of Katrina came from the poor response by FEMA immediately after the storm.  That whole fiasco of allowing 20,000 people to sit in squalor in the Superdome until Sept 4th instead of evacuating them promptly, or to supply the Superdome with adequate food, water and generators while they were there,  seemed pretty outrageous to most Americans.

I don't recall, post Sandy, that there were large numbers of people left stranded for days in miserable conditions.

As for people demanding the administration be held accountable for dispursing the money - they have disposed a lot, and they are still dispursing more.
 
I heard on NPR the other day that most of the local anger in New Jersey is being directed at the local permit offices, who are months behind in issuing building permits and performing inspections, due to the enormous amount of work.

From my own personal experience of having my house get blown away in an F4 tornado, I can say that most of my anger was toward my shitty insurance company who worked as hard as they possibly could to come up with schemes to short change us on our rebuild.

I'm pretty sure even the most ardent Obama hater is not going to blame Obama for overwhelmed permit offices and immoral insurance companies.

You must be new to P&M.  

Yeah I know. Logic isn't always of primary importance on PM.

Obama will be remembered as the president who launched the amazingly inept healthcare website, or as the president who had the most dead locked congress on record, or the president who let the NSA spy on every breathing person in the universe, but he won't get blamed for the Sandy response like Bush got blamed for Katrina, because he didn't screw up like Bush screwed up Katrina.  

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Oct 29, 2013 16:43:27 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Most of the outrage over the Bush handling of Katrina came from the poor response by FEMA immediately after the storm.  That whole fiasco of allowing 20,000 people to sit in squalor in the Superdome until Sept 4th instead of evacuating them promptly, or to supply the Superdome with adequate food, water and generators while they were there,  seemed pretty outrageous to most Americans.

I don't recall, post Sandy, that there were large numbers of people left stranded for days in miserable conditions.

As for people demanding the administration be held accountable for dispursing the money - they have disposed a lot, and they are still dispursing more.
 
I heard on NPR the other day that most of the local anger in New Jersey is being directed at the local permit offices, who are months behind in issuing building permits and performing inspections, due to the enormous amount of work.

From my own personal experience of having my house get blown away in an F4 tornado, I can say that most of my anger was toward my shitty insurance company who worked as hard as they possibly could to come up with schemes to short change us on our rebuild.

I'm pretty sure even the most ardent Obama hater is not going to blame Obama for overwhelmed permit offices and immoral insurance companies.  

You weren't on Staten Island.  And there are STILL people left stranded in NY and NJ.  Stranded for over a YEAR.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Oct 30, 2013 7:28:29 GMT -5 fairlycrazy23 said:

One year later and I still don't know why it is/was called a super storm..

Because if it is called a Hurricane, Hurricane deductibles apply.  The politicians basically pressured the insurance companies and essentially modified the coverage of several hundreds of thousands of people.

[workpublic]

so we can conclude that when these things happen and the govt money doesn't get disbursed, it's not the govt's fault(no matter which party is in charge)?

bush admin is off the hook for katrina and obama admin is off the hook for irene and sandy?

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Oct 30, 2013 16:39:46 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Oct 29, 2013 18:38:58 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

You must be new to P&M.  

Yeah I know. Logic isn't always of primary importance on PM.

Obama will be remembered as the president who launched the amazingly inept healthcare website, or as the president who had the most dead locked congress on record, or the president who let the NSA spy on every breathing person in the universe, but he won't get blamed for the Sandy response like Bush got blamed for Katrina, because he didn't screw up like Bush screwed up Katrina.  

Bush didn't screw up Katrina response.  There were two giant mistakes of Democrat leadership with Katrina- the first was the failure to use all resources at their disposal to evacuate people from the path of the storm.  You will recall Democrat Mayor Ray "School Bus" Nagin's terrific bus blunder.  

www.latimes.com/news/local/wgno-its-not-fair-to-compare-eastcoast-leaders-to-ray-nagin-20121031,0,4529360.column#axzz2jJMLKalj

On the Saturday night before Katrina, the ex-mayor was seen yukking it up at the Steak Knife restaurant in Lakeview, charging another meal with his wife on his city credit card. A mere 30 hours before Katrina was set to hit New Orleans, our then-mayor was sinking his teeth into a prime steak.

You would think the ex-mayor would have been holding news conferences hunkered down at city hall or some other command center, letting the citizens he was elected to represent know the dangers of this storm. That didn't happen til early Sunday morning, or less than 24 hours from Katrina's landfall. It was chaotic and crowded as citizens, all at the last minute, left New Orleans under a mandatory evacuation.  

Nagin's lack of smarts and sense of urgency left New Orleans scrabbling to get out last minute.

The second was Democrat Governor Blanco's ignorance about what her job was and how to do it- specifically with respect to her role as Commander in Chief of the Louisiana National Guard.  She did not know what troops she had under her command, and what their capabilities were, or when and how to best deploy them.  She failed to understand the role of state compact she later admitted she should have activated to speed things up.  It was this total breakdown in her command that led to much of the civil unrest in the days immediately following the storm and breach of the levy.

But the real problem is that New Orleans had a tremendous number of idiots living there- as evidenced by the fact that they lined up to re-elect the now indicted Ray Nagin.  As Ron White says- you can't fix stupid.  They don't call New Orleans the "Big Easy" for nothing.  A lot of grifters, con artists, welfare recipients and others looking for an easy life had congregated in New Orleans making it a conglomeration of basically not very self-sufficient people- to put it mildly.  Or, as one New Orleans business owner I know puts it-- Katrina was God flushing the toilet. A lot of people left after Katrina- and we don't miss most of them.

lonelyconservative.com/2013/01/ray-nagin-indicted-for-corruption/

[EVT1]

Oct 30, 2013 22:27:12 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

Oct 30, 2013 7:28:29 GMT -5 fairlycrazy23 said:

One year later and I still don't know why it is/was called a super storm..

Because if it is called a Hurricane, Hurricane deductibles apply.  The politicians basically pressured the insurance companies and essentially modified the coverage of several hundreds of thousands of people.

Which of course is 100% horse shit.  It simply failed to meet the criteria of a Hurricane when it made landfall and caused the damage.  No contracts were modified- insurance companies live and die by that sword and sometimes they lose.

Perhaps the 'outrage' is because some of the politicians pointed out that FACT loud and clear before some of these wormy companies started scheming ways to not pay out the coming slew of claims. They would love to have it meet hurricane criteria and save them a ton of money.  Of course what answer would you expect from someone that works for insurance companies....

[Angel!]

Oct 30, 2013 22:24:51 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

Oct 29, 2013 16:43:27 GMT -5 happyhoix said:

Most of the outrage over the Bush handling of Katrina came from the poor response by FEMA immediately after the storm.  That whole fiasco of allowing 20,000 people to sit in squalor in the Superdome until Sept 4th instead of evacuating them promptly, or to supply the Superdome with adequate food, water and generators while they were there,  seemed pretty outrageous to most Americans.

I don't recall, post Sandy, that there were large numbers of people left stranded for days in miserable conditions.

As for people demanding the administration be held accountable for dispursing the money - they have disposed a lot, and they are still dispursing more.
 
I heard on NPR the other day that most of the local anger in New Jersey is being directed at the local permit offices, who are months behind in issuing building permits and performing inspections, due to the enormous amount of work.

From my own personal experience of having my house get blown away in an F4 tornado, I can say that most of my anger was toward my shitty insurance company who worked as hard as they possibly could to come up with schemes to short change us on our rebuild.

I'm pretty sure even the most ardent Obama hater is not going to blame Obama for overwhelmed permit offices and immoral insurance companies.  

You weren't on Staten Island.  And there are STILL people left stranded in NY and NJ.  Stranded for over a YEAR.

I think you are using a bizarre definition of stranded.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means"

[Tennesseer]

Oct 31, 2013 16:22:27 GMT -5 Angel! said:

Oct 30, 2013 22:24:51 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

You weren't on Staten Island.  And there are STILL people left stranded in NY and NJ.  Stranded for over a YEAR.

I think you are using a bizarre definition of stranded.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means"

Stranded at Holiday Inn Express-no room service.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Oct 31, 2013 16:22:27 GMT -5 Angel! said:

Oct 30, 2013 22:24:51 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

You weren't on Staten Island.  And there are STILL people left stranded in NY and NJ.  Stranded for over a YEAR.

I think you are using a bizarre definition of stranded.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means"

And I think you're confused about the meaning of "not ready for prime time", "keep your plan", "keep your doctor", and "trainwreck".  I am sad to say that over the last 30 days you have moved closer to 0 and farther from 100 on the credibility scale... 

[Malarky]

Half our town was without electricity for a week.  Buildings were destroyed.  Basements were flooded. 

And we were peripheral.  Hardly affected at all, compared to many others. 

It was a significant event. 

[Opti]

"One year later and I still don't know why it is/was called a super storm.."

I believe it was called a Superstorm because of the huge area that was affected
by high winds. There were various pressure systems that basically corralled this storm
and kept it from petering out quickly after landfall. There were significant power outages
all the way out into Pennsylvania and I think perhaps as far north as Maine. I think
some parts of northern MA or above were without power for over 10 weeks.

I am not near the coast. Yet we had 60 mph winds and periods of sustained winds
over 50mph. Lots of trees and hence lots of damage to homes, roads, and there was very little power in the area. I was extremely lucky in that my power only flickered(long long flickers) but did not go out. Every single traffic light surrounding me was down at least
two days. Everything was worse than Irene and sadly way too many stories of kids or people
being killed in their homes from falling trees.


In the early stages when they were tracking it, they thought it might hit northern Ohio
and Chicago with winds still in the 40 to 50mph range. The swath it cut across the eastern US into the midwest portion of the country was enormous. The pressure systems prevented it from going out to sea if I remember correctly.

[Deleted]

Oct 29, 2013 22:06:22 GMT -5 Opti said:

I am not current on the state of repair in NJ, but I'd love to know what is a federal issue,
what is a state issue, and what are local/insurance issues. A recent article I think in the Star Ledger concerns a woman who Governor Christie had spoken to possibly as long as a year ago and nothing has been fixed yet. There was also an article in the same paper about various churches who don't have the funds to repair the damage. The picture from the article shows a broken cross a top a church steeple.


Another important thing to keep in mind, disbursements on Sandy were held up by
Congress much longer than Katrina and any other recent federal disaster. I forget the actual numbers, but it was something like federal relief for Katrina was approved within 3 months and for Sandy it took over 6 months after the disaster for federal moneys to be approved. I remember some politicians said the issue was pork in the bill back when it happened, but perhaps someone remembers that better than I do. There is still much damage that hasn't been fixed, but I wouldn't expect things to be done in a year given how long it took for the funding to be approved at the federal level. (And there was that
fire on the NJ shore not too long ago as well. Took out lots of repairs. )

I think when a Republican is in office, it's all a federal issue.  When a democrat is in office, it's probably a state/local issue.

[Angel!]

Oct 31, 2013 17:37:12 GMT -5 AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP said:

Oct 31, 2013 16:22:27 GMT -5 Angel! said:

I think you are using a bizarre definition of stranded.

"I do not think that word means what you think it means"

And I think you're confused about the meaning of "not ready for prime time", "keep your plan", "keep your doctor", and "trainwreck".  I am sad to say that over the last 30 days you have moved closer to 0 and farther from 100 on the credibility scale... 

NOPE!



Basically I have no interest in further arguing over the ACA with you on this or any other thread at this time.  So you can stop trying to call me out on it.  You have your opinions & I have mine.  I really don't care if you consider me credible, it has not been my goal in life to have internet strangers find me to be credible in what I post.  Maybe we can pick up the conversation in a few months or a year or so.  You know, when the actual impacts of the law are more fully known.  We can discuss what really has changed vs what the two sides think will happen.  All we seem to have now is a bunch of anecdotal stories & fear-mongering.