It's funny to me how Joe seems to be trying to be as nice as possible on his way to the exit but there are some things that happen that just show the level of incompetency not necessarily of Biden, but of the government in general. I didn't watch the live broadcast but I saw a snippet where Biden was addressing the really bad fire situation in Los Angeles and went on to explain that people are entitled to a "one time payment of $770."
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I kind of wonder if his handlers are setting old Joe up with this one. He didn't need to specify the exact monetary payout, nor did he need to say that it would "one-time." Both of these things make him specifically sound like an uncaring tyrant who will throw some scraps to the peasants to keep them quiet for a while. They did something very similar in North Carolina during the floods and one-time-payments that these people received was a slap in the face.
The fact that they strapped on "for food, baby formula, and prescriptions" to the end of the one-time payment sentence is just more pollical-talk and things that these people frequently use so that they can conjure the image of starving babies and sick old people that desperately need these things in order to survive and here comes Daddy government to the rescue! There are tons of responses talking about how $770 wouldn't even begin to cover the costs of most prescriptions because of the horrible state of the USA medical system.
Before anyone accuses me of Biden-bashing I want to point out that I am actually defending the guy here, which trust me, is not something I often do. I think that Joe's handlers specifically put Biden into this position so that the public ire can be directed at him specifically instead of the people that are actually responsible for this "payout." You can see from the video that Joe is making no secret of the fact that there is a script on the desk right in front of him with gigantic, probably 40-point font written out for him. You can be assured that Joe himself didn't write this speech.
I believe that Joe is being undercut by the very people that he has entrusted as part of his team. They know there is going to be severe backlash for the government response to this LA tragedy and who better to pin it on than a guy that is going to be gone in 4 days?
There's the video if you want to see him clearly reading a script that was provided for him. I was a bit impressed, he barely bumbled his words in this one and I hope that they were able to do it in one take. I doubt it, but I hope so.
I'm not saying that I am happy that the federal government is handing out this pittance to people affected but at least they aren't playing favorites. A state like North Carolina rarely votes for Democrats in Washington, California ALWAYS does. Yet both are getting the same laughably low amount of money.
$770 when your house and livelihood was completely decimated isn't going to do a whole hell of a lot for you, especially in a place as expensive as Los Angeles. The latest estimates of overall damage - which is almost certainly overstated - is at $250-300 BILLION dollars. Even if the insurance companies did pony up and pay (which is doubtful) do they even have that much money?