Past As Prelude
As details about the career of FEMA head Michael Brown have emerged, we've learned some interesting things about his past. From The Boston Herald (via Josh Marshall here):
Did Brown or the White House somehow forget to submit that information to FEMA? Or at some point was a decision made that getting fired from running horse shows was either too inconsequential or too inconvenient to cite as a qualification for Brown's present occupation?
Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado.And how does Brown's bio on the FEMA website describe those eleven years of his life?
"We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records," explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner's office. "This was his full-time job...for 11 years," she added.
Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.
"He was asked to resign," Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.
Prior to joining FEMA, Mr. Brown practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court.Eleven long years. A full-time job. And not a single equestrian reference.
Did Brown or the White House somehow forget to submit that information to FEMA? Or at some point was a decision made that getting fired from running horse shows was either too inconsequential or too inconvenient to cite as a qualification for Brown's present occupation?
posted by The Cunning Realist at Sunday, September 04, 2005
32 Comments:
Nice catch. Have not seen this mentioned anywhere else yet.
http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/hlspersonnel/jonesbio.htm
This is a link to the bio of a man I have not seen once trying to cover his ass on TV. Perhaps he was too busy trying to help by doing his job.
Too bad criminal incompetence doesn't come with a jail sentence. The two Michaels could use a break from TV and their jobs.
I'd say "too embarrassing"
And we're gong to let the same moron who appointed this guy appoint two people to life-long Supreme Court justice positions?
I think this in and of itself is enough reason to dismiss Roberts and whoever the next right wing political hack is out of hand.
Hey, his predecessor (& college roommate), Joe Allbaugh (who was doubtfully better qualified, other than being a campaign manger for GWB), is busy working for KBR:
"In March, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is tasked with responding to hurricane disasters, became a lobbyist for KBR. Joe Allbaugh was director of FEMA during the first two years of the Bush administration."
http://halliburtonwatch.org/news/hurricane_katrina.html
Time for a 'Presidential medal of freedom', like Tenet got one.
And, again, I have to ask: Where's Cheney?
"Where's Cheney?"
Who do you think is handing out those contracts to Halliburton?
Cheney was on hand for Bush's latest "TV Ad" .... SCOTUS driven.
Brown is Bernie Kerik without the press!
BTW, with the WH scapegoating Tenet, it looks like he might decide the "handshake, wink-nod and medal" .. didn't seal the compact of silence. In other words, he's ready to BLOW THE WHISTLE on this criminal bunch.
Let's hope Fitzgerald is about ready to go too.
Maybe people will now notice that Bush has populated his administration with people who have no business being in the position they've been appointed too.
I mean, seriously, has it escaped everyone's attention that there are nearly zero actual economists in advisory positions? That scares the hell out of me ... idealogues deciding fiscal policy without the input of people who know the suhject.
King George admit mistakes? Never!
So what? Does anyone think Bush will admit any responsibility now? That anyone will be accountable now? Bush has already told Brownie that he's doing a good job. Why would he change his tune now?
Bush has been able to plow ahead regardless of what millions of citizens think.
What do we really expect to change? The corruption, negligence and abuses of power will continue. What can we do to stop it?
To Brown's "credit" he has admitted to some of shortcomings of the FEMA response last week. He even acknowledged on Thursday that he didn't know about all the people in the convention center until that very day.
I'll be curious to watch how he, as a candid (naive?) confessor of unpleasant truths, is treated by the big boss man who lacks in this department.
Where is Cheney? I suspect he has had his 5th or 6th open heart surgery - in secret - and is recovering in a bunker somewhere. How else this unscrupulous man effaces himself for a period of 5 weeks?
He
could not under normal cicumstances make his presence noticeable without spouting stupidities. The less we see and hear of him the better off we are.
It is all about the base, politics, corruption, and favors. What a lovely way to run a democracy for the people.
I've read some reports from the admin saying they didn't get the paperwork. I find it ironic, in an emergency, in the 21st century, that paperwork is what held things back. Shame on them if true. Maybe we should start keeping a list of all the excuses they are giving us (just like the Iraq war). What did Wolfowitz say, they used the one they thought would stick.
On ABC news tonight they talked with the mayor. He gave one specific example and said this needs to be answered (in due time). People were instructed to go to the Superdome, and then they had only one way out over a bridge to get food, water, medical attention, some tried. Fema was called to drop water and food for them; they didn't. But worse, on the other side of the bridge, they had dogs and armed guards and would not let them pass. Was it class, race?
If these stories are true where FEMA went out of its way to make things worse, like stopping the RedCross and Walmart trucks with water, this needs to be addressed so it never happens again.
Man, have you heard Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard talk about one of his men who runs the emergency program there. His mother was in a nursing home and she called her son asking when help would arrive. He said someone is coming. Tuesday someone is coming to get you, again on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning, and Friday night she drowned.
On ABC tonight they showed the morgue setup. They are expecting thousands of dead.
It seems to me that Bush, HLS, FEMA, can not spin this without massive lies or confirming their incompetency. This is very simple, Washington (whether actually in Washington, Crawford, NY, Wyoming) should have been in constant contact with the Gulf emergency security people until the "crisis-period" had passed. But even then, Bush passed in December 2004 the National Response Plan to deal with emergencies just like this.
I suspect Mike Brown is just one of many, in many areas, that Bush hired not because of skill. I am chilled to the bone to thing what he'll do to our Supreme Court. But hey, Pat Robertson is happy. No kidding!
While I think it's wholly appropriate that you're zeroing in on the Bush administration as a source of the misery we have seen in New Orleans, something I find conspicuously absent from your analysis and the analyses of lefty bloggers is the role that local/state authorities played in this catastrophe. I fully agree: Bush f**ked up this one bad. The level of support New Orleans got at the federal level was nothing short of a pure dereliction of government's basic functions in allieviating a horror like this. FEMA has been completely incompetent through this crisis, and continues to be, and the Bush administration is partly if not wholly culpable for this incompetence. DHS Secretary Chertoff is an incompetent boob; FEMA Director Brown is not just incompetent, but a brazen liar. Both need to be promptly fired and literally booted out on their asses, NOW. Is it possible to bring them up on charges? Nor can I fathom the thought process in the mind of Bush as he fiddled with a guitar while New Orleans was drowning. Did he not know? Or, even worse, what if he did and played the guitar anyway? The administration needs to get its full share of the blame in this disaster.
And yet, as I read this blog, and traverse lefty blogs, websites, and forums, I see the entire focus of the tragedy focused on Bush, as if it's his administration alone that caused this crisis. I hear all this talk about how it is the feds that need to bear the brunt of responsibility, since a disaster like this is supposed to be beyond the capabilities of officials at the state and local level (and yet, Jeb Bush seems to be able to manage the consequences of a hurricane consistently and efficiently every time one hits Florida). I see no criticism of Governor Blanco, nor of Mayor Nagin, and I have an unpleasantly sneaking suspicion that the reason for this is that they are Democrats. It's got me worried that this outrage isn't just being played out just for its own sake, but also for political maneuvering that will burn everyone responsible for this tragedy unless they are Democrats or left-wing. Why isn't anyone paying attention to Mississippi? Despite the horror that we have seen in New Orleans, at least Katrina didn't score a direct hit, and some of the city is still standing. The coastal areas of Mississippi, by contrast, suffered a direct hit from Katrina and have literally been wiped clean, thoroughly devastated. Barbarism hasn't erupted there, even though their plight is as bad as that of New Orleans. Is the reason so little is being said about it is that something may be going right there that isn't going right in Louisiana, and that Republicans might possibly, in some way, partly be the reason why? I hope not. Has anyone bothered to point out that despite Mayor Nagin's angered pleas for buses, there were and are fleets of them sitting in huge parking lots, totally submerged because no one bothered to use them? Why didn't he use them? Not to mention the bureaucratic tug-of-war Gov. Blanco played with the administration that resulted in only more chaos? I mean, if the administration was trying to assert a federal presence late last Friday, that would at least be SOMETHING they tried to do. If state and local agencies aren't prepared to deal with a tragedy of this size, then why did Gov. Blanco resist federal intervention in that case?
I want to see the administration get hit as much as you. That doesn't mean I want ONLY to see the administration hit: I want EVERYONE culpable in this tragedy to hang and hang well. That means not just at the federal level, but at the state and local level too. Louisiana is well-known for its corruption; I became fully acquainted with it when I lived in New Orleans for 2 years around 9 years ago. That corruption ran down to the root of the state, and definintely in New Orleans, a place where I have seen cops pad down people for pot, and then pocket it only to later sell it to college students at Tulane and Loyola. Despite the justified criticism I see of Bush, I know it wasn't just his blundering - that corruption had to play a part in the mess we now see. And when I see criticisms like yours and that of lefties, I completely appreciate the well-earned criticism of the administration. Not to mention that I'm not putting blame on the heroic first-responders, policemen, firemen, and residents who are trying to do their best in the midst of chaos. But your and their collective amnesia about state and local f**k-ups (and believe me, it will come out that there are plenty, if that hasn't happened to some extent already) make it seem as if you guys are simply trying to play partisan politics. That will give the opening unthinking supporters of the president need to excuse him or take attention away from him for what happened, on the grounds that his critics are only looking to zero in on Bush and not on the whole story. I hope that this isn't the case, since in order to make right what went wrong here, ALL of the demons who caused this need to be exorcised and purged. And that has to go beyond simple labels like "Republican" and "Democrat," or "liberal" and "conservative."
In the upcoming session of Congresss, at the top of the agenda are:
*permanent repeal of the estate tax
*an extension of deep cuts to capital gains and dividend taxes
*the first entitlement spending cuts in nearly a decade
*private investment accounts for social security
Be scarded.
Be very scarded.
blanco requested aid in the ascribed format and outlined the needs of the areas parish by parish on oct 28th.
she was on the news stating the same and thanking the admin for it's promise of aid and preparedness on sunday as well and worrying about the levees...
she was lied to,... maybe because she and the mayor are dem's???
this isn't about politics gagn, but politics got us into this shit!
bush has consistantly dismantaled the necessary infrastructure of this nation and removed the governments ability to serve the people. now we serve it.
welcome to the reality of the world in neocon heaven.
Bush is in power. Democrats and lefties are piling on.
If this had happened under Clinton's watch, Republicans and right-wingers would be piling on.
It's all too predictable and tiresome. Come up with something more unique.
Thirdeye, you're missing the point, this is ALWAYS how the game is played.
That way the 1.5 party system in Murika will always control things.
Demopublicans/Republicrats
Brown resigned, but now he is back as a FEMA consultant, and I suspect with a lot of coaching so he supplies the right talking points. I thought consultants were suppose to be experts in their field. Guess no one else would hire Brown.
Also read today, that FEMA, for the first time ever, is going to reimburse religious organizations for their aid during Katrina. Should these organizations be tax-exempt anymore?
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