Obama emergency disaster hypocrisy

After the recent water main break in Weston Massachusetts that caused a disruption of clean water to 2 million customers, the Obama administration made an Emergency Disaster Declaration. Essentially, this permits FEMA to send federal aid money to Massachusetts. As a resident of MA was was affected during this incident, I found this response by the White House to be absurd.

First of all, the water supply was never disrupted. Customers could still shower and use toilets as normal. The only precaution necessary during the water main break repair process was that water should be boiled for a few minutes prior to use for brushing your teeth, cooking or drinking.

As a scientist, I was shocked at how ridiculous some people were being as a result of this boil-water order. Local news coverage talked about stores suspected of price-gauging and consumers hording bottled water. Instead of local and federal government assuming a leadership position and telling the public that there should be no fear of drinking the water so long as it was boiled, the state and federal government declared a state of emergency.

While MA was receiving a swift handout of federal tax payer dollars, legitimate catastrophes slowly found their way on the Obama Administration radar map. For example, it took several days for Obama to issue a similar Emergency Disaster Declaration for Tennessee after massive rainfall in that state killed 21 people and caused millions of dollars in property damage. Furthermore, it took over a week for the Obama administration to get involved in the environmental and human health hazard of the ongoing BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

In juxtaposition to these two serious disasters, I still fail to see why the state of Massachusetts merited federal disaster relief money. This begs the question whether Obama loosely grants federal aid to friends of the White House like the Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Isn't this politics as usual? Doesn't this exemplify everything Obama claims to be against? Is this not the epitome of hypocrisy?