• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    if Harris has won, FEMA wouldn’t have been gutted

    FEMA forced to restrict disaster spending because of low funds

    ~ 08/30/2023

    The Biden administration has stopped helping states rebuild from past disasters with money from the federal government’s main emergency fund, which is nearing depletion from dozens of storms and wildfires this year.

    This has been an ongoing budgetary fight between deficit hawks (of which Biden proudly counted himself a member going back 40 fucking years) and social welfare advocates. Trump took the next big leap in a parade march of staffing reductions and funding cuts. But this has been an ongoing mismanagement since the privatization and downsizing wave that Reagan imposed in the 1980s.

    If Harris had won an election that she lost in a landslide, she’d still have to contend with a Congress stuffed with deficit reactionaries on both sides of the aisle. She’d have whined about liberals not handing her Senate Supermajority and then signed whatever John Thune and Mike Johnson put on her desk, just like Biden did.

    Singling out scapegoats for a systemic nationwide ideological failure - particularly when they are the weakest and most vulnerable members of society - is the exact same brainworms bullshit that gets people like Trump elected President to begin with.

    Might as well blame the flooding on illegal immigration next.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Complaining about Biden’s handling of FEMA and comparing it to Trump’s is like equating a dumpster fire to an atomic weapon because they both burn stuff. The fact you are even presenting that as an argument shows how disingenuous your position is.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Complaining about Biden’s handling of FEMA

        This has been a degradation of service spanning half a dozen administrations over the course of decades. It is being driven by corporate mass media’s fixation on domestic fiscal austerity.

        This decline in public service is not unique to Biden or even to the United States.

        The fact you are even presenting that

        You need to put down your Great Man view of history and recognize the tidal social currents that got us here.

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5430469/faq-fema-elimination

          That article was written just a few weeks before those Texas floods.

          You need to put down your Great Man view of history and recognize the tidal social currents that got us here.

          I don’t need to do shit. You need to re-read my comments and understand that there is a huge scale of difference between “not getting any more funding because of Republican legislators” and “actively cutting and shutting down a department that millions of Americans rely on every year to keep them from starving or becoming homeless”.