How to help those in Connecticut

[jimnyc]

Even $5 can help those who have been affected by what took place in Ct. The families, friends, workers & those on the scene. Can you imagine seeing what happened there as a matter of your job? I don't care how hardened one feels, and some say it comes with the territory - no amount of training in the world can prepare a police officer or fireman for what they saw in that school. The thought of being a parent of one of these kids isn't even imaginable to me. Money itself won't do much for these people and those affected, but it can help them get the services and help they need to have a hint of the beginning of the healing.

I read about this page from Yahoo. It's the official page setup to take in donations to help:


United Way extends our most sincere condolences and prayers to all those families affected by the devastating events in Newtown/Sandy Hook, Connecticut. While the eyes of the world may be on Newtown/Sandy Hook, to several staff, volunteers and contributors, Newtown is home. We will stand with the community and everyone affected directly and indirectly by this tragic event as we face the days and weeks ahead.


United Way of Western Connecticut is committed to providing support and resources where and when they become identified and needed. As people from our area and beyond respond to this heartbreaking tragedy, they are turning to United Way looking for ways to help. In response, United Way of Western Connecticut in partnership with Newtown Savings Bank has created the 'Sandy Hook School Support Fund' that will be able to provide support services to the families and community that has been affected.

https://newtown.uwwesternct.org/

[Kathianne]

I agree that those people need help, I am getting so sick though of Congress and even The Red Cross not getting help where help is needed. Like the following article reports, too often the money from people flooding for direct relief, is diverted to other things:

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2012/12/18/Shame-on-Congress-for-Robbing-Hurricane-Sandy-Victims.aspx#page1




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The overall cost of the relief bill introduced in the Senate this week might raise a few eyebrows at $60.4 billion, especially as Obama and John Boehner grapple over the fiscal cliff and massive deficits, but no one doubts the need to act in a focused manner to repair the damage to the region and to the lives of the families victimized by Hurricane Sandy.


It’s the focus taxpayers should question. Instead of providing a focus on the victims, or a focus on the nation’s bottom line, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have focused on pork-barrel projects as far from Sandy’s impact zone as one gets in the United States.


That’s no joke. The bill spends $150 million for fisheries in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Post reported (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/little_help_here_1kW6aQ8fElj4CKwbheEV0N)this week. That is perhaps a drop in the bucket for a $60 billion funding request, but sheer nonsense in relation to disaster recovery on the Atlantic seaboard. Nor is that the only absurd request. The bill contains another $4 million for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, hundreds of miles from Sandy’s impact zone. Another $8 million goes to buy cars and other equipment for the Department of Homeland Security.


A whopping $336 million would go to Amtrak – about a quarter of the annual subsidy the government train service receives on an annual basis, according to the Heritage Foundation (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/17/hurricane-sandy-relief-billions-spent-on-transportation/), which questions whether Amtrak took anywhere near that amount of damage from Hurricane Sandy. Further suspicion arises when considering that the original White House request for Amtrak emergency relief funds was $32 million – less than a tenth of what the bill now contains.
At least those requests would go to present-day needs. Various estimates abound for the amount of money being allocated to fund “mitigation” projects intended to prepare the US for future storms. The numbers range from $10 billion to $28 billion – anywhere from 15 percent to 40 percent of the entire bill.


This might be money well spent in a normal annual budget, depending on what these “mitigation” projects actually propose to do. However, this funding request is for emergency assistance for victims who have waited weeks for help. If Congress wants to fund these “mitigation” projects, the money should be allocated in the normal budgeting process for Homeland Security.


Some of that money, reports the Heritage Foundation, comes in at $17 billion in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds. Heritage rightly describes this as a “slush fund” for states, spent free from federal accountability. In the past, Heritage reports, “the CDBG program also has funded pork projects such as the Mark Twain House and Museum, the Salvador Dali Museum, and the Helen Keller Birthplace Foundation.”


Again, one can debate the wisdom and administration of the CDBG program, but it’s not a vehicle for disaster relief, and yet it’s nearly 30 percent of the entire bill – and one has to question how much will go to actual Sandy relief.


More of the “mitigation” funds can be found in a $12 billion allocation (http://blog.heritage.org/2012/12/17/hurricane-sandy-relief-billions-spent-on-transportation/)to the Department of Transportation (which includes the supplemental Amtrak subsidies), ostensibly to repair public-transit systems. However, more than $5 billion can be reallocated to other DoT priorities, one of which could be to combat “the rise in sea levels,” according to the Heritage analysis.


So how much of the $60 billion will go to actual victims of Hurricane Sandy and to rebuild infrastructure directly impacted by the superstorm? Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/14/pet-projects-tacked-on-to-sandy-relief-bill/) estimates $47.4 billion, which looks like a rather generous analysis. Even so, that means that almost 25 percent of this spending is unrelated pork. The Senate wants to spend the bill with no offsets, meaning the funding will be added to the deficit. Bear in mind that the sequestration in the fiscal cliff will force the Pentagon to spend $50 billion a year less – money that Democrats and the President insisted had to be cut as part of the August 2011 debt-ceiling compromise.



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