Hurricane Relief, Prayers and a Gift for Your Assistance
Supplemental - October 1, 2024 The Rowen Report
Dear Subscriber,
I want to apologize to all the victims of the hurricane for not mentioning in this column the devastation and suffering goin on. Terri and I have not experienced anything like this but we are very close to many who have – those wiped out in the great fires of Sonoma county 5 years ago.
We cannot even imagine what has happened to Asheville N.C. It is especially moving to me as I strongly considered living in Asheville a few decades ago, and now can see how my life would have fared in my 8thdecade had I gone there. I love the beautiful green mountains of the Appalachians. Sonoma county is particularly green for California. We cannot wait for the winter rains to come and nourish the land.
What is hard for me to understand and accept is how our Federal government can give away hundreds of billions to Ukraine to prosecute a proxy war where no American was endangered, and can solicit the illegal immigration of unvetted millions from all over the world to cross our borders and provide them food, clothing, shelter, cell phones, hotels, medical care (perhaps sex change operations) and more, and, to the best of my knowledge of the current situation, FEEMA has not yet arrived to assist people without clean water, food, power, and perhaps no shelter. I want my tax dollars to provide for the government to assist and protect our own, particularly those victims of natural disasters, and our veterans, many of whom are living desperate lives on the streets.
We want to help and solicit you to help us help. I found a charitable organization where 100% of donations go to the hurrican relief cause. The subscription to our Premium section is only $35 per year. If you make a donation to the charity for hurricane relief, all you need to do is send me, by email, your receipt for $35 or more, and I will provide a year’s subscription to the Premium section. My Substack email is rrowen@drrowendrsu.com.
We need to do for our own people what our government will not or cannot do. (And get it out of the business of doing what it should not be doing).
I hope you will consider.
To Reconstruction, Survival, and Healing for those devastated by Nature,
Robert Jay Rowen, MD (and Terri Su, MD)
Thank you for researching and providing a good charity for hurricane relief. I've been looking for one for a week. I did a little research on Mercury One and they seem fairly grass roots and trustworthy. I have a hard time trusting pretty much any charities anymore. So I gave some dough but I'd really like to go over the mountain and help those poor people with some human support. Five dams came down. Crazy. Don't live below dams. Don't live near rivers (I used to) Don't live on mountains ( they'll slide down) Don't live in forests (they'll burn, I know). Don't live on an island. They'll DEW you.
And yet, the hurricane has become the latest topic of disinformation for MAGA Republicans. Social media today is full of accounts claiming that the federal government is not responding to the crisis in western North Carolina because it prefers to spend money in Ukraine and on undocumented immigrants. Newsmax host Todd Starnes claimed that FEMA’s “top priority is not disaster relief” but to push diversity, equity and inclusion. “So, unless you’ve got your preferred pronouns spraypainted on the side of your submerged house—you won’t get a penny from Uncle Sam. Western North Carolina is just too Conservative and too Caucasian for FEMA to care.” The House Judiciary Committee posted that “Joe Biden was at the beach.”
These posts echo Russian disinformation, and Trump was on board with it. Touring Valdosta, Georgia, today, as a private citizen where people are still without power amidst the devastation, Trump said he had spoken to Elon Musk to get his Starlink satellites into North Carolina; FEMA has already provided 40 of the systems to North Carolina. He claimed that Georgia governor Brian Kemp is “having a hard time getting the president on the phone. They’re being very non-responsive.”
Kemp himself told reporters that Biden had called yesterday. “And he just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’” Kemp told him, “We got what we need, we’ll work through the federal process. He offered that if there’s other things that we need just to call him directly, which I appreciate that.” South Carolina governor Henry McMaster, a Republican, called it “a great team effort…the federal government is helping us well, they’re embedded with us. There is no asset out there that we haven’t already accessed.”
Republican governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin told reporters that he was “incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and cooperation from the federal team at FEMA.” Asheville, North Carolina, mayor Esther Manheimer told CNBC “We have support from outside organizations, other fire departments sending us resources, the federal government as well. So it's all-hands-on-deck, and it is a well-coordinated effort, but it is so enormous….”
FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg responded to a post claiming that FEMA was refusing to help certain Americans, saying: “This is a lie. We help all people regardless of background as fast as possible before, during and after disasters. That is our mission and that is our focus.”
In contrast, numerous posters today noted that Trump repeatedly withheld federal aid from Democratic governors—including that of North Carolina—after disasters in their states. After the Trump campaign organized a fundraiser for victims of the hurricane, David Frum of The Atlantic reminded readers that in 2019, Trump was fined $2 million and three of his children were ordered to take classes as a penalty for taking for their own use funds from charities they ran.
When a reporter asked President Biden and Democratic North Carolina governor Roy Cooper to respond to Trump’s accusation that they are ignoring the disaster, Biden responded: “He's lying. And the governor told him he was lying…. I've spoken to the governor, spent time with him…. I don't know why he does this. And the reason I get so angry about it, I don't care about what he says about me, but I care what he communicates to the people that are in need. He implies that we're not doing everything possible. We are…. I assume you heard the Republican Governor of Georgia talk about that he was on the phone with me more than once. So that's simply not true. And it's irresponsible.”
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/09/30/fema-administrator-deanne-criswell-ground-north-carolina-biden-harris