(Mods: that auto-suggested title is different from the one on on the page itself, but it’s honestly a better headline in terms of the article’s contents. Let me know if i need to change it.)

On Thursday, Rep. Andy Harris told Newsmax that money for wildfire aid isn’t a priority for Republicans because “we just put more money into FEMA before we left for the Christmas holidays,” and the Maryland Republican claimed that Los Angeles “mishandled the fire department so egregiously that they ought to bear some of the burden for that rebuilding.”

151 points

It’s a sad state of affairs that this kind of news is so unsurprising, but if Democrats said screw the people in Florida who got flattened by a hurricane it’d be the story of the month…

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63 points
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Wasn’t that the narrative being pushed after that bug hurricane this past fall? That FEMA wasn’t passing resources to right wing counties?

Edit: “Trump also claimed without providing evidence on his social media platform, Truth Social, that the federal government and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas”” –Hurricane Helene Wikipedia Article

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46 points

Persecution complex always at the ready. I did see one story where some segment of them had been told to avoid places with lots of Trump signs, but the reason was for the worker safety because of the hostility by the right wing. So basically in that case they created a self fulfilling prophecy.

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11 points

but the reason was for the worker safety because of the hostility by the right wing.

Notably, local conservatives out firing guns at FEMA who showed up to try and save their lives.

If I’m helping save your life and you send a bullet whizzing past my head then yeah, I’m going to leave you where you are as well.

This, of course, was reported as “FEMA is refusing to help Republicans!” and not “Local Conservatives perform war crime, fire deadly weapons at humanitarian aid”

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9 points

Not just that, but some representatives were pissed because the broader Republican party seemed to want to undermine recovery efforts to make it look worse for Biden… Then after the election asserting a bill was in the name of helping them while that bill still did nothing at all for those afflicted.

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34 points

Used to be they didn’t want FEMAs help because FEMA was going to put everyone in camps and steal their houses. Now FEMA is purposely ignoring them?

WHICH IS IT??? I can’t get my conspiracy theories to agree.

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1 point

It’s whatever you need to believe to rationalize saying screw you to West Coast democrats and giving a tax break to your buddy or privatizing the fire department or something, obviously.

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8 points

They did go out of their way to not help them. And by they I mean Republicans

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2 points

The lies never stop and nothing is to low. Get ready for another round of “crisis actors” when the next major school shooting happens.

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4 points

Story of the month? They’d be crucified…

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12 points

They were crucified. Some people freaking believed it with Helene.

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64 points

California should just secede. I’m not joking, what’s the point of funneling money to other states that don’t care about human rights, don’t come to our aid when we need it, and happily siphon all our tax dollars but fight any reciprocation? California could absolutely succeed as a sovereign nation.

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16 points

It would be nice, but unless California has a militia on the same level as the US military, it wouldn’t end well

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15 points

While I agree it would go poorly, the way this would happen in theory is that the state would take their contributions to the federal military with them, and for California that would be a pretty sizeable chunk. So it’s not just local police and national guard.

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2 points

This is very interesting. It’s my understanding that a lot of grunts in the military are big fans of Trump, so wouldn’t that throw a wrench in the gear? Even if that isn’t the case, the military falls under the executive branch, the president is their commander in chief. What does that mean when a state seceeds?

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8 points

We shit on Texas everytime they talk about seceding. Don’t be as dumb as those people.

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18 points

California has the fifth largest economy in the world, Texas has half the GDP of California and still manages to post a net loss.

There’s a reason we clown on Texas about it and that reason is because Texas quite literally cannot survive on its own but screeches constantly about threatening secession. California on the other hand would survive just fine without a single one of the entire rest of the States but they don’t constantly remind everyone of that fact.

Texas gets made fun of for it because the answer to “Well what would you do without Texas, huh???” is… I’d pay less taxes because Texas wouldn’t be sucking down a bunch of surplus anymore.

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15 points

That’s generally because it’s ridiculous and often right in the heels of some big illustration of how Texas benefits from the other states.

If the federal government did withhold aid, then that would perhaps be part of a scenario where California is tossing money at a government that will not reciprocate.

Now it may be premature, as this might just be posturing and even if they made it rough, there is every reason to hope that in 2 years than shift . But if this was a real and durable situation, I could see it being their only path to get some more negotiating power.

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4 points

I do agree with the sentiment and all of the points are valid. I think talking about it as secession detracts from those points. Highlighting that California pays in way more than it takes is important especially in the context of not receiving aid for malicious reasons.

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11 points

Honestly I don’t care if Texas secedes too. Fuck em.

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5 points

Hasn’t Texas changed hands several times. It was it’s own country at one point. It was part of Mexico now part of the US. Texas is a clown show for many reasons.

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7 points

I’m not an American, but I heard that if California was a separate country it would be one of the top wealthiest countries in the world. The rest of the US is a tick on your butt. NY excepted.

I may be wrong.

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4 points

I don’t think the government would allow that

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2 points

Can’t they just not recognize the federal government? Should just make their own (maybe other states would participate as well). It wouldn’t be seceding, but they would de facto work as a separate political entity. That is unless they get raided of course.

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5 points

unless they get raided

You should see how many icbm’s are parked along the coast of California…

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1 point

It would be 10x worse than brexit for California to secede.

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62 points

We’re Republicans, we don’t help ppl!!

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28 points
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Republicans are me/I people and if it doesn’t happen to me, then I don’t care. Think of all GOP that vote down any disaster aide til it hits their constituents.

Another one version of this I hear is “I don’t need (ealcare/student loan forgiveness/ basic human decency) I alreadyhavr that. What do I get if I do that?”

A functioning society is not appealing to them at all. It’s a party of selfishness.

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9 points

Hell, they were hiding from disaster aid calls in Florida while there’s a hurricane coming through just so they could try to stick it to Biden.

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3 points

That was a great one. My inlaws don’t believe a social safety net is nessesary bc they have never needed it, so why would someone else need it

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17 points

They help rich people.

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24 points

They don’t even help rich people at this point:

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13 points

Well unfortunately he lives in a blue state in a blue county so… sol

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7 points

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1 point

Destroying a rich person’s planet while giving them more of something they don’t have a use for isn’t helping them.

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40 points

California should just withhold the money they pay the federal government to subsidize those lazy ass red southern states. Problem solved.

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33 points

Democrats should have treated Republicans like a foreign power interested only in the destruction of the country.

Because that’s what they are

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3 points

I mean the repubs are russian puppets… so yeah you’re last sentence :)

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