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DC to NE – Drop Dead!
If you’ve lived in NY for a long time, it is very hard to forget this now famous, headline. I think the Daily News will be able to reuse this title page again sometime over the next month or two. NY and NJ have stuck out their hands, and requested a very lumpy $80B from Washington to cover the cost of the clean up from Sandy.
Man is this bad timing. If granted, the cost to the Feds would be reflected in the 2013 budget. Good-bye to any hope of improvement in the overall deficit picture if this nut has to be paid. The $80b that has been requested is more than the revenue from a reversal of the +$250k Bush tax cut. It comes to $530 for every worker in America.
The 2011 Budget Control Act limits annual payments of disaster relief to $11B. So the $80B is going to require a special spending bill. That’s not going to be easy to achieve in Washington with all the Cliff/money issues that are now on the table.
NY’s big Democratic Senator, Chuck Schumer is very much in the middle of this. He knows he has problems with this request. From The Hill (Link).
“There is no doubt this is going to be a hard fight. It comes in the middle of strenuous negotiations around the fiscal cliff.”
Schumer is a weasel; he also had this to say about the process of getting the necessary legislation passed:
I am working to keep the quest for Sandy aid separate from the talks and to preserve a tradition of not offsetting disaster relief.
Separate? How can you keep $80B separate? The issue of not offsetting the cost of a disaster by reducing other spending is not going to come easy. Some Republicans are going to insist that there be cuts in the budget to offset a big portion of the Sandy clean up. An aide for Eric Cantor chimed in with this:
Cantor has made clear that needs beyond the $11 billion allotted by the Budget Control Act will be properly considered.
Properly considered? That is Washington speak for, “No way in Hell”.
There is an element of this that is going to prove difficult for the NE legislators. Why are the costs of Sandy so high? Answer:
Schumer wants to do away with limits such as a $31,000-per-home cap on repairs because of high home prices and expenses in the New York area.
Ah! That explains it. The numbers are big because of expensive beachfront homes. This is not going to sell very well, nor should it.
I’m looking for a big fight over this money, and I think it has to be part of the Fiscal Cliff discussions. It is too big a number to sweep under the carpet. There is the broader issue of what really should be the role of the Federal Government when weather turns bad. It’s way past time for a discussion of the costs of cleaning up properties that are in storms way. The folks who don’t live on ocean water, are subsidizing everyone who does.
If you live on the West Coast the weather report this morning is terrible. Another “Pineapple Express” is headed to land. The expectations are for winds north of 80mph and rainfall of as much as 12 inches. If that is what happens, expect to see pictures of houses being washed down the streets of Bel Air. A storm like this could easily cost $10B.
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"US" paying "THEIR" bills MEANS less freedom.
"Why do you hate freedom?"
Too many toilet paper choices, most likely. People end up dazed, confused, and blocking the isles in Walmart as their brains overload.
Less freedom means less congestion in Walmart isles, and therefore better customer flow and higher sales and prosperity for all.
They hate us for our toilet paper selection.
The great American melting pot has many different types of asses to wipe.
Genetic diversity is a bitch.
especially on the NEt; too much choice!
Agreed. There should be only 1 website - US.gov
And in due time, we can further simplify and converge into UN.org.
I guess we are past using <sarc> tags. : >
Acerbic wit is the life blood of the ZH blog-o-sphere.
How much did they give NO after Katrina?
The precedent has been set.
They'd rather have us pay than require their sponsors (insurance companies) pay.
Just wait until the next whopper hurricane hits Florida. The whole damn state is insured by the government (us).
Take it away Marla: http://www.finemrespice.com/node/68
Yeah, right. You pay my home insurance bill and tell me how free it is.
It's kinda like Obamacare.
This is simply what happens when the government becomes too big, rich and powerful. There is no constitutional obligation or responsibility being met here.
And it really shouldn’t cost any more to rebuild a house near the water than it would far away from the water (other than appropriate structural reinforcements etc.). What makes it so much more expensive is all the costly, rent-seeking “environmental” BS you have to go through which in the end amounts to little more than a ton of fees, permits and “studies” plus a ring of hay bales around your property.
Wrong. You can't fart in NJ or NY without union involvement. 25 billion in damages, plus 55 billion to the unions.
A while back, New Jersey had a license motto contest to replace "The Garden State". Guess what won?
"New Joisey, you got a problem with that?"
I say let them increase taxes on what's left of their own wealthy to pay for it. At some point, we must stand up and say "This government no longer represents me".
Is this a joke?
One of those funny things about real-estate is that the location of stuff has a big effect on how much it sells for. A 1500 sq. ft. 2 bedroom in Topeka might run $45,000, but that exact same house on Hampton shoreline would cost over a million.
So it makes a good amount of sense for the folks who live on the Hampton shoreline to build BIGGER AND MORE EXPENSIVE houses than it does for the folks in Topeka. When you're paying over a million dollars for a house, you may as well pay the extra $100,000 in construction costs to get nicer stuff.
"Rich government", you say? What government were you thinking of?
Rich is printers
Well, if they're not rich, then, maybe they can borrow some funds from the recent Powerball lottery winners.
rich in corruption
The one that builds houses on the backs of it's citizens.
Well, not balance sheet rich obviously but still rich as far as all of Uncle Sam's nephews are concerned. Goodies continue (for now) to be promised and delivered.
Plus he has a printing press and, as far as I can tell, near unlimited authority to do as he pleases. You can't argue with the "powerful" part and at some level rich and powerful are the same thing.
oligarchy, caymanista, shadow, holographic, invisible, all knowing, all anticipating, never-short-of-fiat type!
Rich in the bar is the drunk with no limit on his card.
Iceland
Meanwhile back at the ranch in the Midwest, the worstest drought on record is causing deep soil contraction and foundation settling. Building foundations and walls are cracking through and no insurance covers it. The stabilization costs are huge. Local water departments are gearing up for many broken pipes this winter, when frost heave plus drought heave stresses older underground pipes beyond their brittle weaknesses.
Should the heartland be applying for federal aid too? A few billion would make the season merry.
Us tax paying middle class white sheet wearin' bitter clingers in redneckistan will just have strap on some tin bills and go pick shit with the chickens.
We don't count because we're only 3/5th's of an Obama voter.
Last time I was on LI, I took my wife out to my old stomping grounds in the Hamptons. Where I used to pull over and swim in the ocean now had Mcmansions and $10 parking meters. No doubt, to keep out average joes such as myself. Reconstruction aid? They can go to hell. Should have bought more insurance like the rest of us. If not, too bad. Sell the place at a loss and let someone new come in and redevelop it...
"Where I used to pull over and swim in the ocean now had Mcmansions and $10 parking meters."
Why are you blaming them? They didn't build that!
No problem:
$40,000,000,000
There, I just created $40 billion for them, too.
Say, this is both quick and easy. No wonder the Ben Barnank enjoys it so much.
$40,000,000,000
Hey! I did it too - that was fun!
I'm gonna take a shot. $400,000,000,000 whoops, not as easy as it looks; I'll leave the printing to you guys and just keep stackin'
wow, you're really pushing it, be careful there, you might need someone with a phd and/or nobel prize and a couple of shills to help you top the next one.
For the Mid West Bank,no problem.Serfs need not apply.
Yes, you've exactly nailed it. Why sweat the 80 billion? It's a tiny drop in a 16 trillion $ bucket. And to take it a step further, why not just stop collecting taxes and print that up as well? - people could take all the money they didn't give to the IRS and dump it into USTs.
Greece
Can't wait till we get to the Quadrillion $$ deficit mark so these petty "trillion$$" annoyances seem insignificant.
"And to take it a step further, why not just stop collecting taxes and print that up as well?"
A capital idea. Good thinking. I think that would make both Republicans and Democrats happy. You should be in congress. You would be an honored statesman in no-time flat.
We could print up $80,000,000,000,000 and build you a quite grand monument for solving all our problems.
The midwest should have asked for the aid before they voted for obummer.
Here in Commiefornia, deranged humans build million dollar homes on unstable slopes, yards from tinderbox grasslands and right dead center on the San Andreas Fault. Man plans while Mother Nature continues to chuckle at his folly. Same as it ever was.
"Same as it ever was."
This is not my beautiful house...
These homes are the stuff of dreams for CDS investors on BS MBS!
I used to attend college in Malibu. The celebrities came onto Campus before large storms and begged students to help sandbag their houses. Waves crashed onto sectins of PCH, numerous houses were destroyed in the Colony and elsewhere, and the sandstone cliffs poured down on the highway in massive mud slides. One weekend, all the canyons were closed due to rock slides. There was no accessing LA unless you had a helicopter (the university had a helipad for commuting students) or drove north 40 miles first before heading south inland, a good 90 minute detour. And in the late spring, a massive fire destroyed over 100 homes and the campus was evacuated. Never understood why anyone in their right mind want to live there. Insurance rates must be outrageous.
Schumer can fuck off. He Reid, Pelosi, ball sack Boehner and orhers are the biggest reasons we're in the fucking shit hole mess we all fester in.
fucking eat raw hot shit and die Chuck you fuckstick.
"fucking eat raw hot shit and die Chuck you fuckstick."
You can sure say that again!
If NY hadn't pi$$ed away all their 9-11 money, it would be easier to bear.
Millions of $$$ (maybe a billion+) and 10 years of cost overruns and contractor non-performance and all they have to show for it is a waterfall into a hole in the ground.
Pathetic.
You're ALMOST right about something here...
The fundamental problem was that everyone kept saying, "we must rebuild WTC" but there was never any demand for that much office space.
If they'd left it to free markets, there'd be a mosque and a Starbucks there, and that's about it. The construction would've been completed by '03.
And double decker tour buses making a loop around the block with headphone recording of the carnage in 8 languages of $15.99. That being said, they would have limited the clean-up in order to maintain the effect.
Hey, it's a beautiful waterfall.
Besides, we're commemorating a false flag attack. Haven't quite figured out how to do that... : {
Pissing away billions might be the perfect way to remember 9/11/01.
"Millions of $$$ (maybe a billion+)" ???
I'd be surprised if they pissed away as little as single digit billions.
NE VOTED for the black man. DC will pay this and maybe much more.