The Mayor of Baltimore (D-Elected) took the 1600 Crew to task in the Democratic rebuttal to the weekly Presidential radio address on Saturday. He correctly claimed that the 1600 Crew has not fulfilled their pledge to fully fund local law and emergency services as they said they would after 9/11.
Your neglect of homeland defense funding has relegated 'the common defense' to yet another unfunded federal mandate for already cash-strapped cities — cities that are still reeling from federal and state tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy," O'Malley said in the Democrats' weekly radio address
Why is this surprising. Karl Rove sent the empty suit to NYC to get accolades for his "strength" and "decisiveness" while the rubble was still smoking. How could he have had those qualities on 9/11 (after he got done running around in AF One), and all the days immediately following, if on 9/10 he was getting dismissed as a corporately-owned dunderhead, incapable of much more than putting on the "right" suit? The imagery of Dubya standing on the rubble at the WTC was powerful, and used to its absolute best advantage by Rove and the 1600 Crew.
Ironically, isn't the states-rights-we-hate-the-federal-government party supposed to HATE unfunded mandates from the federal government?
The reality is that there was never a chance in hell of the funding coming out of the DC, it would have meant a genuine commitment to working with numbers and making trade-offs that would have annoyed the beneficiaries of the Tax Cut.
1600 Crew: WIN
Tax-Paying Americans who wanted a promise kept: lose
