Soup, Charity and the American Way (NYT)
October 30, 2012, 2:45 pm
By DAVID FIRESTONE
On a day when millions of Americans face serious hardship as they recover from Hurricane Sandy’s damage, Mitt Romney clearly decided it would be crass to campaign in a conventional way. So he turned a scheduled rally in Kettering, Ohio, this morning into a “storm relief event,” and posed before piles of donated canned goods ...
... Most disaster agencies don’t want donated goods; they need cash. And in the modern era, the most important cash comes from taking people’s tax dollars and distributing them in the form of federal aid to communities hard-hit by a disaster. Because that involves the federal government, it is tainted in the minds of Mr. Romney and his party. It is compulsory, and thus not an offering of the heart.
As our editorial noted this morning, Mr. Romney wants to end centralized emergency relief and let states handle the load themselves, though few states can do so without federal assistance. In any event, storms, as we have seen time and time again, cross state lines. (Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whose state may have been the hardest hit by the storm, was effusive in thanking President Obama for assistance today, drawing criticism from Republicans who are more interested in politics than recovery.) ...
Mr. Romney ignored all questions this morning about his plans for federal emergency management. It’s probably embarrassing to admit those plans consist largely of collecting soup cans.
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/soup-charity-and-the-american-way/