One asshole down---

[TexasTransplant]

a few more in the White House left to go

http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsA..._MCC956417_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-KATRINA-WRAP-DC.XML

Although I will now be attacked by reactionary lapdogs for doing "cut&paste" to actually present facts about the issue, here goes

FEMA head replaced, dead collected
Fri Sep 9, 2005 5:58 PM ET
By Paul Simao

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The Bush administration moved to quell a political storm on Friday by replacing the embattled head of emergency operations along the U.S. Gulf Coast and rescue workers in New Orleans ended recovery efforts to focus on collecting bodies left by Hurricane Katrina.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced he was recalling Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown to Washington and appointing Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the U.S. Coast Guard, to take charge of recovery operations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

"We have to have seamless interaction with military forces," Chertoff told a news conference in Baton Rouge. "Mike Brown has done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge. I appreciate his work, as does everybody here."

Brown had been the target of furious bipartisan criticism for the government's slow initial response to the hurricane and some of both political parties have called for his firing. Chertoff said he was now being asked to coordinate the response to other possible disasters.

Democrats criticized the decision to retain him as head of FEMA but President George W. Bush is well known for his loyalty to long-time political friends.

Four top Democratic senators, headed by Minority Leader Harry Reid, wrote to Bush after the announcement, again asking for Brown's dismissal.

"It is not enough to remove Mr. Brown from the disaster scene," they wrote. "The individual in charge of FEMA must inspire confidence and be able to coordinate hundreds of federal, state and local resources. Mr. Brown simply doesn't have the ability or the experience to oversee a coordinated federal response of this magnitude."

Some senior Republicans had also attacked Brown. Sen. Trent Lott, a Republican whose house in Pascagoula, Mississippi was destroyed by Katrina, said, "Michael Brown has been acting like a private, instead of a general."

Bush had publicly praised Brown last week for doing a "heck of a job." The last straw appeared to come Friday with published reports that Brown had padded his resume, although Chertoff refused to acknowledge a question on these reports.

 

[Kev]

Because of poor planning by many members of Bush's administration the citizens of N.O. are dieing, and this shlep Brown if responsible or partly responsible only gets relieved of duties. Wheres the justice?

 

[wildonion]

That isn’t even the half of it – to outline the criminal incompetence of the Bush administration – how many died because they handed out assignments like ice cream cones?

“How Reliable Is Brown's Resume?”
Not much, conclude Time magazine reporters, citing numerous discrepancies and outright lies o his vita. Places he claim to have run don't have any idea who he is, and awards he claims to have won don't exist.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1103003,00.html

But Brown is only the tip of the iceberg about what’s wrong at FEMA.

Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience
By Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff WriterFri Sep 9, 1:00 AM ET

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska anda U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.

Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

"FEMA requires strong leadership and experience because state and local governments rely on them," said Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association. "When you don't have trained, qualified people in those positions, the program suffers as a whole."

Last week's greatest foe was, of course, a storm of such magnitude that it "overwhelmed" all levels of government, according to Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record) (R-Maine). And several top FEMA officials are well-regarded by state and private counterparts in disaster preparedness and response.

They include Edward G. Buikema, acting director of response since February, and Kenneth O. Burris, acting chief of operations, a career firefighter and former Marietta, Ga., fire chief.

But scorching criticism has been aimed at FEMA, and it starts at the top with Brown, who has admitted to errors in responding to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans. The Oklahoma native, 50, was hired to the agency after a rocky tenure as commissioner of a horse sporting group by former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, the 2000 Bush campaign manager and a college friend of Brown's.

Rhode, Brown's chief of staff, is a former television reporter who came to Washington as advance deputy director for Bush's Austin-based 2000 campaign and then the White House. He joined FEMA in April 2003 after stints at the Commerce Department and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Altshuler is a former presidential advance man. His predecessor, Scott Morris, was a media strategist for Bush with the Austin firm Maverick Media.

Experts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters. Some security experts and congressional critics say the exodus was fueled by a bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in 2003, when FEMA was stripped of its independent Cabinet-level status and folded into the Department of Homeland Security.

Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said, extending from Washington to localities.

FEMA "has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it failed."

Richard A. Andrews, former emergency services director for the state of California and a member of the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, said state and local failures were critical in the Katrina response, but competence, funding and political will in Washington were also lacking.

"I do not think fundamentally this is an organizational issue," Andrews said. "You need people in there who have both experience and the confidence of the president, who are able to fight and articulate what FEMA's mission and role is, and who understand how emergency management works."

The agency's troubles are no secret. The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit group that promotes careers in federal government, ranked FEMA last of 28 agencies studied in 2003.

In its list of best places to work in the government, a 2004 survey by the American Federation of Government Employees found that of 84 career FEMA professionals who responded, only 10 people ranked agency leaders excellent or good.

An additional 28 said the leadership was fair and 33 called it poor.

More than 50 said they would move to another agency if they could remain at the same pay grade, and 67 ranked the agency as poorer since its merger into the Department of Homeland Security.

 

[FuZzYknUckLeS]

Either thats a bad selection for a thread topic or you just don't get it.
Michael Brown is not gone. He's just back in Washington, where he is still head of FEMA, only there he won't have to take all the fucking slack thats being thrown at him in N.O. Read the stuff before you haphazardly post it. And wildonion. Try editing those 3-page posts down to the important stuff. Please. Who has time to read all that? Also, try not to believe everything you read. If everyone did, we'd be in big doo-doo.

 

[wildonion]

Try editing those 3-page posts down to the important stuff. Please. Who has time to read all that? Also, try not to believe everything you read. If everyone did, we'd be in big doo-doo.

Yeah, I know they're long -- but only trying to give the whole article to show it's not just my opinion. Not that it will matter, either way, I'm sure.