It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, October 02, 2022
US Home Prices Now Posting Biggest Monthly Drops Since 2009
(Bloomberg) -- Home prices in the US have taken a turn and are now posting the biggest monthly declines since 2009.
Median home prices fell 0.98% in August from a month earlier, following a 1.05% drop in July, Black Knight Inc. said in a report Monday. The two periods mark the largest monthly declines since January 2009.
“Together they represent two straight months of significant pullbacks after more than two years of record-breaking growth,” said Ben Graboske, Black Knight Data and Analytics president.
The housing market is losing steam fast with skyrocketing mortgage rates driving affordability to the lowest level since the 1980s. The Federal Reserve has sought to curb inflation, which has thrown cold water on the US real estate boom.
While prices are falling on a month-over-month basis, they’re still significantly higher than a year earlier when the buying frenzy was going strong. Values were up 12.1% from a year earlier in August.
The sharpest correction in August was in San Jose, California, down 13% from its 2022 peak, followed by San Francisco at almost 11% and Seattle at 9.9%, the company said.
WHITE SUPREMACY RULEZ Migrant-death suspect ran detention center accused of abuse
"We don't even see people as humans anymore,”
This booking photo provided by the El Paso, Texas, County Sheriff's Office shows Michael Sheppard, one of two Texas brothers who authorities say opened fire on a group of migrants getting water near the U.S.-Mexico border on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022. Sheppard was a warden at a detention facility with a history of abuse allegations.
(El Paso County Sheriff's Office via AP)
ACACIA CORONADO Sat, October 1, 2022 at 3:03 PM·5 min read
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — One of two Texas brothers who authorities say opened fire on a group of migrants getting water near the U.S.-Mexico border, killing one and injuring another, was warden at a detention facility with a history of abuse allegations.
The shooting happened Tuesday in rural Hudspeth County about 90 miles (145 kilometers) from El Paso, according to court documents filed Thursday. One man was killed; a woman was taken to a hospital in El Paso where she was recovering from a gunshot wound in her stomach, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
DPS said the victims were among a group of migrants standing alongside the road drinking water out of a reservoir when a truck with two men inside pulled over. According to court documents, the group had taken cover as the truck first passed to avoid being detected, but the truck then backed up. The driver then exited the vehicle and fired two shots at the group.
Witnesses from the group told federal agents that just before hearing the gunshots, they heard one of the two men in the vehicle yell derogatory terms to them and rev the engine, according to court documents.
Authorities located the truck by checking cameras and finding a vehicle matching the description given by the migrants, according to court records.
Michael Sheppard and Mark Sheppard, both 60, were charged with manslaughter, according to court documents. Court records did not list attorneys for either man. Contact information for them or for their representatives could not be found and attempts to reach them for comment since their arrest have been unsuccessful.
Records show that Michael Sheppard was warden at the West Texas Detention Facility, a privately owned center that has housed migrant detainees. A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told The Associated Press that no ICE detainees had been held at that detention facility since October 2019, following the opening of a larger detention facility nearby.
Scott Sutterfield, a spokesman for facility operator Lasalle Corrections, responded to an AP email asking whether Sheppard had been fired as warden. Sutterfield said the warden had been fired “due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment.” Sutterfield declined further comment, citing the “ongoing criminal investigation.”
A 2018 report by The University of Texas and Texas A&M immigration law clinics and immigration advocacy group RAICES cited multiple allegations of physical and verbal abuse against African migrants at the facility. According to the report, the warden "was involved in three of the detainees’ reports of verbal threats, as well as in incidents of physical assault.” The warden cited in the report was not named.
However, Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat, said in a press conference Saturday that Sheppard was in fact the warden at the facility at the time of the allegations and when the report was published. According to information provided by Doggett's office, the webpage for Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections listed Sheppard as an employee at West Texas since 2015.
Doggett, along with other Texas Democratic congressmen, called on Saturday for a federal investigation into the shooting.
“The dehumanizing, the demeaning of people who seek refuge in this country, many of whom are people of color, is what contributed to the violence we see here,” Doggett said.
In one account detailed in the report, a migrant told the lawyers that the warden hit him in the face while at the nurse’s station and when he turned to the medical officers he was told they "didn’t see anything.”
“I was then placed in solitary confinement, where I was forced to lie face down on the floor with my hands handcuffed behind my back while I was kicked repeatedly in the ribs by the Warden,” a migrant referred to as Dalmar said in the report.
The attorneys submitted a civil rights complaint over the allegations that year but according to response letter sent to the lawyers in 2021, the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties conducted an onsite investigation, made multiple recommendations to ICE, but did not find evidence of “any excessive use of force incidents” or “incidents of wrongful segregation” and found some uses of force to have been appropriate.
Fatma Marouf, a co-author of the report and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Texas A&M, said it was difficult for authorities to follow up on the allegations because many of the people interviewed for the report were deported shortly after.
Marouf said current views on immigration enforcement based in deterring people at all costs have “spiraled out of control.”
"We don't even see people as humans anymore,” Marouf said.
The number of Venezuelans taken into custody at the U.S.- Mexico soared in August, while fewer migrants from Mexico and some Central American countries were stopped, officials said earlier this month. Overall, U.S. authorities stopped migrants 203,598 times in August, up 1.8% from 199,976 times in July but down 4.7% from 213,593 times in August 2021.
Silky Shah, executive director of advocacy organization Detention Watch Network, said this is both a problem of the current rhetoric around immigration, including the use of terms like “invasion” by GOP leaders including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and inaction from federal officials to move away from the previous administration's immigration policies that added to this sentiment.
“I think there is no question that there is a discourse that is stoking actions like this,” Shah said.
____
Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat and Paul Weber contributed to this report.
MOBILIZING FOR MIDTERMS
Americans want stricter gun safety measures. Gen Z will help us get there.
This is why I usually have little interest in reading yet another survey or poll about what we think about gun violence in our country. What are we doing about it?
The numbers fluctuate percentage-wise, but we already know that most Americans want stricter gun safety measures. We also know that, despite the growing number of mass shootings, most elected Republicans in Congress and state legislatures don’t care how much we want to protect ourselves, our families and our communities. If you think I’m being unnecessarily partisan, check out their voting records on gun safety and get back to me.
Listen to young people about guns
Better yet, let’s spend a few minutes with the findings of a new survey on gun violence that I do think is worthy of my time, and yours. This is one by Project Unloaded, which focuses on lifting the voices of today’s Generation Z. It partnered with Global Strategy Group and surveyed 1,000 people ages 13 to 25 to hear what they had to say about guns and gun violence.
►Most young people have had a personal experience with gun violence. The number jumps to more than 60% for those who are Black and Latino. Only a quarter of Black children say they feel very safe in school. Include all children, and it’s only a third.
►When asked to list their biggest concerns for our country, gun violence comes before climate change and abortion rights.
►When presented with the facts about gun risks, young people’s commonly held belief that guns make us safer shifts by 17 points. The more they know, the more willing they are to reject the myth that gun ownership saves lives.
March for Our Lives rally in support of gun control in Washington, D.C., on June 11, 2022.
Project Unloaded founder Nina Vinik addressed this last point in a recent column for the Chicago Tribune:
“Teens are on track to become the largest generation of consumers in the next few years, making them incredibly valuable to the gun industry. Manufacturers are pouring tremendous resources into campaigns to use the fears and insecurities of young people to convince them to buy guns for protection. But there’s hope. Most young people say they’re interested in learning more about gun risks. And when presented with the facts in a clear, non-polarizing way, their minds can shift.”
'Change can come from culture rather than policy'
As a college professor, I’ve spent enough time with Gen Zers to know when to get out of their way and let them speak for themselves. This is why I interviewed 19-year-old Karly Scholz, who is on the Project Unloaded’s youth council.
Scholz is a sophomore at the University of Virginia. In 2018, she was a high school freshman in Madison, Wisconsin, when a gunman killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. She wasn’t alive for the mass shooting atColumbine High School in in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, she said, and was too young to be aware of the tragedy of the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. But the Parkland massacre awakened her activism.
“Most of the (student) victims were freshmen, and I was a freshman at the time. Both of our high schools were public. No one expected it to happen, no one saw it coming. But it can happen to anyone and can happen anywhere, and gun violence does not differentiate its victims.”
Karly Scholz, a sophomore at the University of Virginia, is on the youth council of Project Unloaded, which focuses on lifting the voices of today’s Generation Z.
When Parkland students launched March for Our Lives, Scholz became its Wisconsin state director. She learned a lot, she said.
“March for Our Lives is very policy focused and politicized in a lot of ways. I thought there was a gap in the conversation where we needed to be talking about the culture of gun policy. Not necessarily the policies around it, but the way people interact with guns in daily life, the way guns are shown in our media and the way the news talks about guns. I wanted to talk about how change can come from the culture, rather than policy.”
When Project Unloaded went live about a year ago, she readily became involved. “I was very excited that other people saw that gap and took on that role – that change can come from culture rather than policy.”
Scholz repeatedly insisted that her activism is not political. I tried to prepare her for how she will be attacked as partisan, nonetheless. She was undeterred.
“I found in my work that young people are open-minded and are willing to hear what we have to say. … When presented with the facts and risks of guns, young people in all demographics shifted their views, which I think is a really hopeful data point. That’s my answer: There is a debate surrounding it, but when you look at the facts there really isn’t much room for interpretation or debate. Guns make us less safe.”
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There’s also this fact that Scholz emphasized, repeatedly: Her generation is always thinking about gun violence.
“Everyone knows what it’s like to get updates on phones and hear about another shooting. We think about it all the time. We fear gun violence at schools and in movie theaters and in malls, especially when a recent incident is fresh in your mind. But we’re far more likely to be shot at home or walking home from school or the movie theater.”
She’s putting her faith in her fellow Gen Zers: Give them facts, and they will change the culture of guns.
I don’t know if Karly Scholz is right to be so optimistic, but I do know that our collective surrender to the culture of gun violence is all wrong. So, I'll put my faith in her. And sooner than later, I hope, Gen Zers will use their other superpower in this fight to save lives.
Orlene strengthens into hurricane off Mexico's coast
Tori B. Powell Sat, October 1, 2022
Orlene, off of Mexico's Pacific coast, strengthened into a hurricane on Saturday, according to the National Hurricane Center. The slow-moving cyclone comes as the powerful storm Ian continues to unleash extreme weather conditions across southeastern U.S. states.
Located around 235 miles south-southwest of Cabo Corrientes, Orlene was moving north Saturday morning at nearly 5 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. By Saturday night, the storm is expected to move north-northeastward at a "slightly faster speed."
The storm's maximum sustained winds were near 75 miles per hour, with even higher gusts, and tropical-storm-force winds extended out up to 45 miles from the center of the storm. The weather agency noted "steady strengthening is expected through Sunday."
Orlene is expected to eventually weaken before reaching the coast of mainland Mexico early next week.
Certain portions of Mexico could be in for three to five inches of rainfall, with local amounts reaching ten inches, creating the risk of flash flooding and landslides. The National Hurricane Center warned of "life-threatening surf and rip current conditions" along the coast of southwestern Mexico and the extreme southern part of the Baja California peninsula.
Areas across the coast of mainland Mexico were under tropical storm warnings and watches as well as hurricane watches. The National Hurricane Center said it expects more advisories will be issued throughout the day on Saturday.
The U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Mexico advised those in impacted areas to monitor local media and the National Hurricane Center for updates on the storm, seek shelter if needed and to check with airlines for potential flight impacts.
A tropical cyclone is the generic term for a non-frontal synoptic scale low-pressure system over tropical or sub-tropical waters with organized convection (i.e. thunderstorm activity) and …
Henry Piddington published 40 papers dealing with tropical storms from Calcutta between 1836 and 1855 in The Journal of the Asiatic Society. He also coined the term cyclone, meaning the coil of a snake. In 1842, he published his landmark thesis, Laws of the Storms.
Law of Storms
A storm card to guide sailors
In 1833 a cyclone hit Calcutta and Piddington took little interest in it but in 1838 he stumbled on the "Law of Storms" by (then) Lt.-Colonel William Reid and this led him to return to his sailing experience and take an interest in ship logs. He was assisted by Captain Christopher Biden, the Master Attendant at Madras. Piddington also corresponded with R. W. Redfield who worked on storms around North America. His interest led the government to send all records of storms to Piddington from September 1839.[1]
Title page of the "Horn Book" (1848 edition) which included a translucent "storm card" in a sleeve within the book
The result of Piddington's studies based on the logs of several ships, notably the BrigCharles Heddle which was trapped in a storm off Mauritius was his observation of the spiral wind tracks and he wrote a series of papers (24 memoirs in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal) on the topic.[4][5] He noticed that the storms had a calm centre and that the winds around them ran anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere. This was followed by a book, The Horn-Book for the Law of Storms for the Indian and China Seas the first edition of which was published in 1844. He produced a second edition in 1848 and he introduced the word "cyclone" derived from Greek κύκλος (kyklos, meaning "circle" or "ring") based on the helical nature of the winds. The idea of the horn book was that a translucent sheet (made of horn) with the diagram of the cyclone could be placed on a map so that the wind directions could be readily compared by any sailor to identify a cyclone so that a tacking course to avoid it could be followed. A review in Nautical Magazine (1848) however claimed that it reminded the author of a children's "horn book" to teach alphabets. The book ran into many editions and Piddington was even made a president of the marine court of enquiry at Calcutta in 1851. In 1853 he advised the Governor General that Port Canning was best not built on the southeastern side of Calcutta as it was vulnerable to storms. The Port was however built there and after Piddington's death, it was devastated in 1867 by a storm and abandoned a few years later.[1]
In October 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck what is now Bangladesh and killed at least 300,000 people. There have been 13 tropical cyclones in the 21st century so far with a death toll of at …
Ky Henderson Sun, October 2, 2022 john-oliver_5 - Credit: PAULA L0B0
John Oliver and his Last Week Tonight crew decided to do a longer-than-normal show all about museums. Which on the face of it sounds like a terrible idea, but it actually worked because Oliver’s focus was on the theft by Western colonizers of other countries’ antiquities, and today’s Western museums that are none too keen to give it all back.
Here’s a pretty upsetting fact: In 2018 a French report concluded that more than 90 percent of Africa’s cultural heritage is currently in museums — specifically, museums that are located on the continent of Africa. Countries there and around the world are today demanding the return of antiquities plundered by colonizers over the centuries, from gigantic Indian diamonds shellacked to British crowns to Chadian wood funeral poles displayed in Paris.
Oliver, who relishes being a self-loathing Englishman, aimed his sights at the British Museum, which still houses massive numbers of antiquities plundered from the many places colonized by the British Empire.
“Honestly, if you’re ever looking for a missing artifact, nine times out of 10 it’s in the British Museum,” Oliver said. “It’s basically the world’s largest lost and found, with both ‘lost’ and ‘found’ in the heaviest possible quotation marks.”
The museum was founded in 1759 with the collection of an Englishman whose money came in part from Jamaican sugar plantations worked by the enslaved; Oliver made sure to point out this means the very foundation of the museum is inextricably linked to not just colonialism but slavery. He then took apart arguments often offered by Westerners for why artifacts stolen decades or centuries ago shouldn’t be returned to their home countries today.
“It was a different time back then—everybody looted and it was totally okay!” is one argument often used, but Oliver pointed out that British Prime Minister William Gladstone responded to the British Army stealing Ethiopian treasures by saying he “deeply lamented for the sake of the country and for the sake of all concerned… that these articles… were thought fit to be brought away by the British Army.”
Gladstone said that in 1868.
“We didn’t even know how to fix a UTI without leeches back then,” Oliver said. “But we knew that raiding other countries for their shit was ‘deeply lamentable,’ which is British for ‘super fucked up.’”
Another argument is that countries are unable or unwilling to take proper care of their own artifacts, so the West has to do it for them. Oliver pointed out that Western museums — including the British Museum — have rich histories of damaging artifacts themselves.
A third argument, that the museums serve as a showplace for all the world to be able to see the artifacts, is patently stupid, since the museums are often thousands of miles away from the people whose heritage is actually on display. Additionally, museums show just a fraction of their artifacts; the British Museum’s collection numbers around 8 million objects, but only 1 percent of them are on public display.
Artifacts are still routinely bought, sold, donated, and stolen with the help of dealers, auction houses, private collectors, and, yes, museums, which sometimes serve as reputation launderers for thieves. Say an antiquities thief donates pieces to a world-renowned museum. The museum happily accepts the donation, and the thief can now say they couldn’t possibly be a thief because a major museum would never accept stolen artifacts.
That is far from true. For instance, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has accepted pieces from known antiquity thieves, has had nine search warrants executed against it in the past five years alone. They led to 37 pieces bring seized by authorities.
“There is so much that we need to do to reckon with the harms both past and present of colonialism,” Oliver said, “but this should really be the easy part.”
Cubans protest in Havana for 2nd night over lack of power
People protest asking for the restoration of electrical service after four days of blackout due to the devastation of Hurricane Ian in Bacuranao, Cuba, Friday,
More than 100,000 customers in Puerto Rico are still waiting for power to be restored two weeks after Hurricane Fiona dumped historic amounts of rainRead More
You may be wondering what you can do to help after Hurricanes Fiona and Ian devastated parts of the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The American Red Cross isRead More
ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ Fri, September 30, 2022
HAVANA (AP) — Groups of Cubans protested Friday night in the streets of Havana for a second night, decrying delays in fully restoring electricity three days after Hurricane Ian knocked out power across the island.
A foreign monitoring group reported that Cuba's internet service shut down for the second time in two days, saying it appeared to be unrelated to problems from the storm but rather an attempt to keep information about the demonstrations from spreading.
Associated Press journalists saw people demonstrating in at least five spots in the city or on its outskirts, including the Barreras and La Gallega districts where residents blocked streets with burning tires and garbage.
Masiel Pereira, a housewife, said that “the only thing I ask is that they restore the current for my children."
A neighbor, Yunior Velásquez, lamented that “all the food is about to be lost" because there was no power for refrigerators.
On Thursday night, people protested at two points in the city's Cerro neighborhood. That area was mostly calm Friday with the power back on, although people were out on the important Villa Blanca Avenue chanting “We want light!” while banging pots with spoons. Police blocked access to the street, but there were no confrontations.
Power was restored in some parts of the country the next day, but other areas were left without service, including in the capital.
The government did not say what percentage of the overall population remained without electricity Friday, but electrical authorities said only 10% of Havana’s 2 million people had power as of late Thursday.
Internet and cellphone service also were out Thursday. Internet service returned Friday morning, at least in some areas, but in the evening it was interrupted again, groups monitoring access to the internet reported.
Alp Toker, director of London-based Netblocks, said the blackout in internet service on Thursday and Friday appeared different from an internet outage that occurred soon after Ian hit.
“Internet service has been interrupted once again in Cuba, at about the same time as yesterday (Thursday),” Toker said in an email to AP on Friday night. “The timing of the outages provides another indication that these are a measure to suppress coverage of the protests.”
Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik Inc., a network intelligence company, earlier described Thursday's event as a “total internet blackout.”
Repeated blackouts on Cuba's already fragile electric grid were among the causes of the island's largest social protests in decades in July 2021. Thousands of people, weary of power failures and shortages of goods exacerbated by the pandemic and U.S. sanctions, turned out in cities across the island to vent their anger and some also lashed out at the government. Hundreds were arrested and prosecuted, prompting harsh criticism of the administration of President Miguel Diaz-Canel.
Experts said the total blackout showed the vulnerability of Cuba’s power grid and warned that it will require time and sources — things the country doesn’t have — to fix the problem.
Cuba’s power grid “was already in a critical and immunocompromised state as a result of the deterioration of the thermoelectric plants. The patient is now on life support,” said Jorge Piñon, director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy’s Latin America and Caribbean program at the University of Texas.
Cuba has 13 power generation plants, eight of which are traditional thermoelectric plants, and five floating power plants rented from Turkey since 2019. There is also a group of small plants distributed throughout the country since an energy reform in 2006.
But the plants are poorly maintained, a phenomenon the government attributed to the lack of funds and U.S. sanctions. Complications in obtaining fuel is also a problem.
Associated Press writer E. Eduardo Castillo contributed to this report from Mexico City
Havana protests flare for second night as govt scrambles to turn on lights
Reuters Dave Sherwood and Alexandre Meneghini Publishing date: Oct 01, 2022
HAVANA — Crews restored power to more neighborhoods across Havana on Saturday after a second night of protests over ongoing blackouts in Cuba’s capital, including some of the largest demonstrations since widespread anti-government rallies in July 2021.
At one point, the group began to chant for freedom, or “libertad,” in Spanish, as protesters marched through a dark, densely populated district that has been without electricity since Hurricane Ian slammed into the island on Tuesday.
Reports on social media also showed smaller demonstrations and residents banging pots and pans elsewhere in Havana late on Friday. Protests, which remained largely peaceful, appeared confined to those places where power had not yet been restored.
The majority of city residents, whose electricity supply had returned during the day, did not protest on Friday.
“Little by little the power is coming back, and good thing,” said Jorge Mario Gonzalez, a 57-year-old postal worker in Havana. He said the power came back on at his home on Friday.
“The government is making a big effort but can’t satisfy everyone. We have so many problems.” AFTER FIONA
Ian knocked out power to the whole country of 11 million people when it plowed through western Cuba earlier this week. By mid-day Friday, officials said electricity had been restored to more than 60% of customers in Havana, a city of more than 2 million, but those still in the dark had grown increasingly anxious
“It’s like being in hell,” said Carlos Felipe Garcia, who marched shirtless at the protest in Playa on Friday night, covered in sweat. “That’s why we´re out on the street, and we’ll keep coming out.”
Officials said on Friday they hoped to have the lights back on across most of Havana by the end of the weekend. City officials have said the protests unleashed by the outages have hindered recovery efforts.
As the demonstration in Playa late on Friday gained steam, it was met by several truckloads of security forces in black berets, who blockaded the main boulevard, preventing those marching from advancing, according to a Reuters witness.
Later an equally large group of hundreds of government supporters chanting “I am Fidel” – a reference to the late former leader Fidel Castro – followed behind the protesters on an adjacent street. The men, many wearing jeans and T-shirts, were armed with sticks, baseball bats and scrapwood
No clashes or arrests were observed.
Street protests in communist-run Cuba are very rare. On July 11, 2021, anti-government rallies rocked the island, the largest such demonstrations since Castro’s 1959 revolution.
Internet communications in Havana appeared to collapse again for the second night on Friday as protests flared, making mobile calls and messaging impossible until around 4 a.m. on Saturday.
“Internet has been cut again in Cuba, at around the same time as yesterday,” said Alp Toker, director of internet watchdog NetBlocks. “The timings provide another indication that the shutdowns are implemented as a measure to suppress coverage of the protests.”
The Cuban government did not respond to a request for comment on the situation.
As the protesters marched in Playa, the electricity suddenly came back on in some housing and apartment blocks.
“When people protest, yes, they put on the lights,” said one local resident, Andres Mora, pointing to a recently lit building. “But our children’s food has already rotted and they don’t have anything to eat.”
The prolonged blackouts in Cuba are particularly upsetting for many residents because obtaining basic goods – including food, fuel and medicine – often means hours waiting in line under the hot Caribbean sun.
Outside Havana, vast swaths of the island were still in the dark as work crews continued to repair electric poles and lines and remove trees from roads.
(Reporting by Dave Sherwood, Mario Fuentes, Alexandre Meneghini and Nelson Gonzalez in Havana; Additional reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Frances Kerry and Daniel Wallis)
In the span of a week, Marco Rubio voted against hurricane relief, asked for additional hurricane relief, and praised the Biden administration's hurricane relief
Taiyler Simone Mitchell Sun, October 2, 2022 Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida is running for reelection in Florida.
Hurricane Ian devastated Florida this past week as Republican Senators voted against relief.
Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rick Scott also penned a letter asking for federal relief for the hurricane damage.
Florida locals say they are running out of resources as they attempt to recover from the storm.
Sen. Marco Rubio demonstrated this week a now-familiar Republican routine around taking federal money for hurricane relief.
Hurricane Ian hit Florida as a Category 4 storm on Wednesday, leaving more than 2.5 million people without power, more than 1,100 people in need of rescue, and nearly 80 people dead, according to The New York Times.
But Florida's senators, Rubio and Rick Scott, didn't vote in favor of a stopgap spending bill on Thursday that included an additional $18.8 billion allocated to FEMA spending for Hurricane Ian and other natural disasters, HuffPost reported. The bill passed, without the help of 25 Republican 'No' votes.
CNN's Dana Bash on Sunday brought up how Rubio voted against Hurricane Sandy relief: "Why should other senators vote for relief for your state when you didn't vote for a package for theirs?"
"It had been loaded up with a bunch of things that had nothing to do with disaster relief," Rubio replied. "I would never put out there that we should go use a disaster relief package for Florida as a way to pay for all kinds of other things people want around the country."
The New York Times disproved the idea that relief went down non-Sandy-related avenues in 2017 after Republican lawmakers defended their votes against the bill.
Rubio explained his position on the Hurricane Ian relief to Bash: "I will fight against it having pork in it. That's the key," he said.
Still, Rubio and Scott sent a joint letter to the appropriations committee asking for Hurricane relief support on Friday.
"A robust and timely federal response, including through supplemental programs and funding, will be required to ensure that sufficient resources are provided to rebuild critical infrastructure and public services capacity, and to assist our fellow Floridians in rebuilding their lives," the duo wrote.
On September 24, Biden approved federal emergency aid for Florida. The federal government then "coordinated and prepositioned supplies, and more than 1,300 responders ahead of Ian's landfall to ensure resources could get where they need to be as quickly as possible," according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency press release.
In a Sunday episode of ABC "This Week," Anchor Jonathan Karl asked Rubio: "How's FEMA doing? Is Florida getting everything it needs right now from the Biden Administration?"
"Yeah. FEMA, they've all been great. As I've said, the federal response from day one has been very positive — as it has always been in the past and we're grateful for that," Rubio replied.
Florida GOP Senators Request More Federal Aid Despite Not Voting For Hurricane Relief
Sanjana Karanth Sun, October 2, 2022
Florida’s Republican senators have asked for federal funding to help with relief after Hurricane Ian ripped through the state ― despite neither lawmaker voting on Thursday for billions in disaster relief, some of which would go toward hurricane recovery efforts.
“Hurricane Ian will be remembered and studied as one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit the United States. Communities across Florida have been completely destroyed, and lives have been forever changed,” the senators wrote.
“A robust and timely federal response, including through supplemental programs and funding, will be required to ensure that sufficient resources are provided to rebuild critical infrastructure and public services capacity, and to assist our fellow Floridians in rebuilding their lives.”
But just one day earlier, Scott and Rubio refused to vote for such additional funding. The stopgap spending bill that the Senate passed on Thursday includes about $18.8 billion in additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond to Hurricane Ian and future disasters.
All 25 senators who refused to vote for the bill were Republicans. Scott voted against it, and Rubio didn’t vote at all. The House also passed the bill, with Republicans overwhelmingly voting against it.
“The same week that #HurricaneIan brought so much chaos and destruction to Florida, not a single Florida Republican cared enough to vote in favor of Hurricane relief for the people in their own state hit hardest by the storm,” Florida Democratic Party Chairman Manny Diaz tweeted on Saturday.
“That is a level of callous indifference and political opportunism that boggles the mind. Thankfully, [President Joe Biden] and Florida Democrats are doing the right thing when it counts, and we appreciate their efforts to help Florida rebuild once again.”
In 2013, Rubio voted against the $50 billion relief bill meant to help states impacted by Hurricane Sandy, which left a trail of damage on the East Coast and hundreds dead. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who was a congressman at the time, also voted against multiple bills that would have provided aid to victims of Sandy.
When asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday why other senators should support disaster relief for his state when he voted against Sandy relief, Rubio justified his decision by saying the bill “had been loaded up with a bunch of things that had nothing to do with disaster relief.”
“What I didn’t vote for in Sandy is because they had included things like a roof for a museum in Washington, D.C., for fisheries in Alaska,” the senator said. Bash reminded Rubio that based on the congressional research report for the bill, the roof requested for the museum was damaged by the hurricane, and the Alaskan fisheries were impacted by a separate disaster.
Rubio added that he would not support an emergency relief bill for Hurricane Ian if it contained something not concerning the directly impacted areas.
Ian was one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S., hitting Florida the hardest last week before climbing up to the Carolinas. The Category 4 hurricane has resulted in a rising death toll ― escalating to at least 47 as of Sunday morning. Hundreds of thousands are without homes and power, and the destroyed infrastructure has left many people isolated.
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