Brigantine NJ, October 31, 2012; REUTERS/Larry Downing
At the news conference today, Mr. Obama said, “When you see neighbors helping neighbors then you’re reminded what America’s all about. We look out for one another and we don’t leave anybody behind.”
Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.
Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.
It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.
Photo: Associated Press
U.S. Set to Sponsor Health Insurance
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will soon take on a new role as the sponsor of at least two nationwide health insurance plans to be operated under contract with the federal government and offered to consumers in every state.
These multistate plans were included in President Obama’s health care law as a substitute for a pure government-run health insurance program — the public option sought by many liberal Democrats and reviled by Republicans. Supporters of the national plans say they will increase competition in state health insurance markets, many of which are dominated by a handful of companies.
The national plans will compete directly with other private insurers and may have some significant advantages, including a federal seal of approval. Premiums and benefits for the multistate insurance plans will be negotiated by the United States Office of Personnel Management, the agency that arranges health benefits for federal employees.
Walton J. Francis, the author of a consumer guide to health plans for federal employees, said the personnel agency had been “extraordinarily successful” in managing that program, which has more than 200 health plans, including about 20 offered nationwide. The personnel agency has earned high marks for its ability to secure good terms for federal workers through negotiation rather than heavy-handed regulation of insurers.
John J. O’Brien, the director of health care and insurance at the agency, said the new plans would be offered to individuals and small employers through the insurance exchanges being set up in every state under the 2010 health care law.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette: Re-elect Obama: The made-over Mitt Romney is no alternative
When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he was known as a moderate. But that man has disappeared and no new shake of the Etch A Sketch can bring him back. Despite this long campaign it’s hard to know what he believes besides the fact that he believes he should be president.
In making his case to be the nominee for his radically more conservative party, Mr. Romney had to pretend to be someone he wasn’t. As part of this makeover, he has promised to scuttle Obamacare, even though it was modeled after his own successful state health care plan, and with only vague notions of how to replace it.
Driven by the political need to repudiate Mr. Obama’s bailouts, he stooped so low as to say he would have allowed a large part of the auto industry in Michigan, where he grew up, to go into bankruptcy, which would have doomed it along with millions of jobs. This was not his father’s Republicanism. …
This well may be a generation-defining moment. What will America’s future be? Will this still be a land of opportunity and freedom for all people or just for the favored few? Because we still hope, we endorse for president Barack Obama, whose heart — unlike his challenger — has not wavered nor his principles changed.
About Romney, he said:
It’s a moving target. One day he has a certain strong view about staying in Afghanistan, but then on Monday night he agrees with the withdrawal. Same thing in Iraq. On almost every issue that was discussed on Monday night, Governor Romney agreed with the President, with some nuances. But this is quite a different set of foreign policy views than he had earlier in the campaign. And my concern, which I’ve expressed previously in a public way, is that sometimes I don’t sense that he has thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have, and he gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to adjust to modify as he goes along.
US sues Bank of America for $1B for mortgage fraud; suit concerns Countrywide loans
NEW YORK — The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan says he’s suing Bank of America for $1 billion for mortgage fraud against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara says Countrywide, which was later bought by Bank of America, had procedures designed to process loans at high speed and generated thousands of fraudulent loans.
Bharara says it’s the first civil fraud suit brought by the Justice Department concerning loans that were later sold to Fannie and Freddie.
Update: The LA Times has the Complaint and a fuller article.