That’s because this is normal. What, you think politicians normally go on TV and say, “Hey, I’m breaking the law here, isn’t it awesome!” They do it because they think taxpayer money is for whatever they want to use it for.
and yes, I know it’s a right-wing source, but until today that was the only way you’d know Christie was misusing funds. If I was Andrew Cuomo, I’d start to wonder if maybe Obama’s helping out Clinton here. Kill two birds with one stone.
Tourism ads aren’t relief? It seems to me that, in an area where tourism is a major industry, and a disaster has cut down the tourism, that’s a great way to provide relief.
Well sure, if you define relief spending broadly enough you can justify almost anything. But when the public ponies up tens of billions of dollars, they expect it to help people rebuild what they’ve lost. While drumming up new business for the state is helpful to economic recovery, it’s not really disaster relief.
However, if it is defined that broadly, it explains why it’s so expensive. If you can justify spending on so much, then obviously the price tag will be astronomical, and if you emotionally blackmail people into thinking every dime is going to help homeless people, then you can get it passed quickly.
But really, it doesn’t make Christie look good to slam Republicans for holding up relief spending because he couldn’t wait to spend it on TV ads.
BTW, you know what helps with tourism? Repairing the damage! TV ads that encourage people to come visit battered areas isn’t going to do the trick. I remember visiting Orlando three months after Hurricane Charley. What I saw did not make me want to come back until they had a city again.
On the one hand I agree that this is an indirect way to assist the recovery of an area in the long term. On the other hand, there are likely rules about what you can spend federal relief money on and that tourism ads ain’t it, given that the focus of relief efforts tend to be on dealing with the short-to-medium term impact of the disaster (e.g. food, water, clothing, shelter, sanitation).
True Soldier Rants? National Review? I guess I need to know a bit more before I condemn Cuomo. Like how much money went to advertisement. Even a poisoned well can provide some useful information, but I will take more stock if there’s a source that isn’t from the right wing fringe.
When I see a mainstream source saying that Cuomo ditched the low bidder for an ad campaign because the ad didn’t feature him and his family, I’ll jump all over Cuomo for it. The cites against Christie seem to be much more reputable than those against Cuomo.
No you don’t. There was no unusual damage around Central Florida from Charley. It was pretty much just downed power lines and flipped mobile homes. We went without power for two weeks, but otherwise you would hardly know anything happened.
The problem isn’t that relief money was spent on tourism ads. The problem is that the relief money was spent on tourism ads that cost nearly twice the price of the lowest bidder for the contract. Also, the winning bidder’s proposal happened to feature Chris Christie while the lowest bid did not. This is significant because the ads ran during Christie’s campaign.
I don’t doubt your eyewitness account, but International Drive was screwed. My favorite gift shop was seriously messed up, closed and never was repaired, and signs everywhere were blown half off. I mean, it wasn’t Katrina or Andrew, but it was quite a mess, and it was three months after the storm. Most importantly, it was no Sandy. Which is why it doesn’t make sense to try to lure “customers” to your jacked up state before you’ve fixed the damage.
That doesn’t make sense. Since when do the feds oversee a state’s contracting process? Did Christie break New Jersey law? If Christie was allowed to use funds for tourism ads, then he would have done so in compliance with state laws, correct?
But this, this is the damaging part:
“This was money that could have directly been used for Sandy recovery. And, as you know, many of my constituents still haven’t gotten the money that is owed them to rebuild their homes or raise their homes or to help,” he told CNN.
Okay, so I get it. You got more money than you needed, so you spent some on tourism ads. But that’s not how it went. People still needed help, but you decided to spend on other things instead, and furthermore spent more than you had to by turning down the low bidder.
As a conservative, this does not give me faith that Chris Christie would be a good steward of taxpayer money.
I don’t know whether there’s anything to the story or not, but I can imagine there being a federal law or two against spending federal disaster relief money on campaign ads.
Tourism is vital to the area so you’d want to spend money in ways that brings tourists in. Ads to do this could be money well spent. If millions extra were paid because the chosen ads featured Chris Christie, that is money that could have been better spent on rebuilding homes.
You obviously don’t work in state government. If you receive federal money, they will be watching how you spend it. If you spend some of it on contracts, they will want to be assured that you’re following accepted contracting processes.
I can see how reviving tourism would be vital to economic recovery and that an ad campaign could be an effective use of disaster funds.
