Romney campaign “hindering” and “impeding” Hurricane Sandy relief

[justiceischeap]

John Aravosis takes the RMoney campaign to task for collecting disaster relief supplies. He makes a couple of quotes from the Red Cross site that states that trying to do what the Mittens campaign is doing impedes and hinders the Red Cross' effort for a centralized relief effort.

http://americablog.com/2012/10/hurricane-sandy-romney-relief-red-cross.html

[Raven]

1. This may end up being one of the big political

stories of the storm. Again, Romney tries to capitalize on a disaster.

[liberal N proud]

2. He wants to privatize disaster relief

So someone (himself) can make a profit from it.

[get the red out]

3. So selfish

His people can't even understand that now is not the time to be pretending to be the Government. Everything is about them, even when a huge chunk of the country is being assulted by a dangerous storm; it is still all about rMoney.

That is just amazing. Horrific, but amazing.

[Berlum]

4. Shut up and sit down, Willard. This is not the moment to prance and pose.

[PearliePoo2]

5. Can't open americablog right now.

It may have crashed due to heavy traffic. This needs mass exposure.
If RMoney is "hindering" and "impeding" relief work, then the money-grubbing bastard needs to be exposed, arrested and charged with multiple crimes.

[LovePeacock]

6. This is a perfect representation of the conservative mentality: "I got mine. Fuck you."

Or as Mitt Romney might say: "Fudge you."

[TxBluebonnetDem]

7. It's a blatant, obvious political move...compassion conservative at work...(oy)

Wow. It's a cold calculated move. No doubt there. But that said I don't believe it's going to get any kind of hard play from the MSM because there are churches all over the nation doing the same thing; gathering supplies and finding volunteers to go help with the aftermath regardless of what Red Cross says. But don't despair, Mitt and his people will over reach with this, just as they always do...He'll insert himself at some point trying to be presidential and he'll fail---again.

[EC]

8. I'll bet Rmoney won't donate even

a dollar to his own shallow effort. He's convinced that everything is about him isn't he?

[justiceischeap]

9. You can be sure if this were happening to Ohio

he'd be all over it.

[haele]

10. The disaster relief collections themselves aren't impeding the Red Cross - it's the logistics -

The Red Cross works alongside FEMA is the experianced organizational lead for relief effort to ensure that everyone is on the same page, the resources go where they need to go, and organizations are not stepping on each other's feet.
It's one thing if it's a small local disaster where needs can be quickly identified and the Red Cross is there as a fall-back to the community resources, but in a wide-area disaster where families get seperated, there are refugees in shelters up to hundreds of miles away from their homes, huge gaps in communication, large casualty lists where there are unknowns injured or killed and other missing people, stress and incidence of PTSD, as well as immediate housing and long-term re-building issues - the Red Cross has the established protocals to address these situations.
While the Mormon Church can and does provide assistance and family support, it's generally geared to either warehousing supplies for local needs or providing other short-term localized support for personal emergancies (lack of job or cash and other domestic issues) rather than natural disaster emergancies and rescue efforts. And I have seen where the local bishops work with the Red Cross to provide some supplies to the long-term shelter organizations as needed, so the Romney campaign should be aware of the process, and should not be this "noticable" a problem.

I can see the Red Cross being p.o.'ed if they are staging rescue and support locations along with FEMA and the local National Guard, and the Romney "bus" or trucks come in to the area and plops down a redundant pallet or two of canned goods and blankets willy-nilly at a likely shelter site for a "Lookey, See - I Care about the 47%" photo op, instead of coordinating with the staging sites to deliver these supplies where they could best be used.
But I suppose that would mean that "Super-Romney" would have to admit the Government can do a better job coordinating rescue, shelter and relief in a disaster than the private sector would.

Haele

[Inuca]

11. They have just announced

that they are canceling all campaign events today and tomorrow.

[renate]

12. oh, I don't know...

I can't really find it in me to criticize anybody who's collecting supplies to help people out. (Unless he's doing something exceptionally stupid--I can't open that link.) Sure, he's probably being purely opportunistic about it, since it's Mitt Romney after all, but the action itself seems unobjectionable.

[Brother Buzz]

13. Had the Romney campaign bothered reading the Red Cross Web site to see WHAT was needed

or even simply asked someone at the Red Cross, they’d have known this:

Unfortunately, due to logistical constraints the Red Cross does not accept or solicit individual donations or collections of items. Items such as collected food, used clothing and shoes must be sorted, cleaned, repackaged and transported which impedes the valuable resources of money, time, and personnel.

Red Cross needs money to be able to move FAST!