The consequences of packing FEMA with political hacks with no emergency management experience and otherwise decimating the agency are now well known. And every day brings us new details of the vast horror on the Gulf, and the horrors of the government’s handling of the entire situation.
Our consciences continue to fill with an outrage that cannot be contained by mere White House spin doctors. Those levees have been breached.
FEMA Director Michael Brown, who was relieved of day-to-day responsibility for Katrina relief efforts in the Gulf is not gone and not forgotten. He was certainly a PR disaster for the Bush administration every time he appeared in public. However the real disaster is what Brown and more importantly what the White House did and did not do over the past few years.
Knight Ridder newspapers is reporting that Brown is “the poster boy for what’s gone wrong with an agency once lauded for its lightning reflexes. The nation’s federal disaster agency has been politicized and dismantled over the past four years and Brown is a symptom of that transformation, said disaster and government-efficiency experts.
“The Bush administration has filled FEMA’s top jobs with political patronage appointees with no emergency-management experience, cut disaster-preparedness budgets and marginalized the agency by merging it with the new anti-terrorism bureaucracy, according to those experts, which include four former senior FEMA officials. The number of career disaster-management professionals in senior FEMA jobs has been cut by more than 50 percent since 2000, federal personnel records show…..
George Haddow, a former FEMA deputy chief of staff under President Clinton and the co-author of an emergency-management textbook, called what happened in the last four years the ‘deconstruction of the most robust emergency management and effective response system in the world.'”
“New York University Public Service professor Paul C. Light….[said] ‘The real problem here is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the appointments process. It’s the people who decided to put him in place and put all those politicals in place.’
Seems to me that Light has it exactly right. Brown deserves plenty of criticism — but he is not the only one. In fact, he is not even the biggest problem. In fact, to borrow an expression from the Nixon administration when it found itself under seige, Brown is being left to “twist slowly in the wind.”
The real problem is the people in the White House.
I have yet to see a story about exactly how Brownie and the other unqualified hacks got thier jobs.
And who exactly was it that decided to dismantle FEMA and turn it into a patronage palace?
Who it was that decied to dismantle FEMA? Look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC.
I would like t see one of those corporation charts of FEMA management with their non-qualifications in little boxes.
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Here at BooMan many excellent FEMA diaries ::
as starters I found these two special blogsites
Local failure caused by FEMA &
Five of eight top FEMA officials came to their posts with virtually no experience, only Bush campaign ties
▼ ▼ ▼ Could also try my diary ▼ ▼ ▼
I think you miss my point. I am aware of those diaries and have written about some of the same material on my own blog.
However I have yet to see a single article anywhere that takes the next step.
My questions are just that, questions. They are not necessarily directed to anyone here. The article I cite mentions the “appointments process.” Hmm. Seems like we can get more specific than that.
Who exactly in the White House was resonsible for the appointment of unqualified people? (and no it was not Joe Albaugh. He may have recommended Brown, but he did not appoint him.)
And who exactly was it, or where in the Bush admin plan, or who congress was responsible for gutting the agency and its functions?
You are exactly right on. The problem lies in the hands of an administration ripe with incompetence at every level. The President has the responsibility for appointing these hacks. “The buck stops at Bush”. It is HIS loyalty to all that surround him in his bubble to make sure that EVERY American is protected from harm.
We must not allow this administration to be held harmless. Removing “Brownie” from the scene is not enough. He should have been fired immediately following his proclamation on live tv that the feds were not even aware of the people at the convention center. No more excuses Bush. You and all your cronies need to resign.
The whole FEMA fiasco seems to be one big patronage party. Something got me thinking about who was head of FEMA in my state(CA.)and wondering what qualifications they have. So far I haven’t been able to find out a lot even though I’ve gone to state site-got the guys name-and he was appointed by our very own gropenator. Our emergency response, related to FEMA basically, is OES-Office of Emergency Services.
Reason I mention this is because according to article in Seattle paper the guy Bush appointed to head Region 10(Washington, Alaska, Idaho and Oregon)John Pennington got his BA degree or bought it from a diploma mill-uncredited college plus he of course has no emergency disaster experience. Heaven help those states.
I think maybe everyone should try and find out just who runs FEMA or coordinates in their state. I’m going to continue to try and find out about CA. and a guy named Henry Renteria?
And no Brownie(or as some sites are calling him now-Drownie)is not the main problem-it’s the whole FEMA patronage system under bush.
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Just don’t believe it, the official FEMA website for Region VI —
Very simply, failure is often the fastest and easiest way to learn. When something does not go right, we think about what caused that undesirable outcome. Success is wonderful but not necessarily the best teacher. When things go right we are often so relieved that we don’t analyze it to the same degree. Your experience could save hours, dollars and lives in reducing the learning curve for others. Jack Canfield and Mark Hansen highlighted some of the “failures”. This list a few of successful people who succeeded because they walked down the road of failure.
Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he didn’t have creative ideas. Disney also went bankrupt more than once before he built the Disney Empire.
Hey Brothers and Sisters of the Gulf Coast – thanks for dying, this has made us a lot smarter [and richer …]!
<click chart to enlarge – data up to 1998>
AREA MAP FEMA REGION VI
▼ ▼ ▼ Could also try my diary ▼ ▼ ▼
-It is interesting the way history is being rewritten on this subject. The failures of FEMA to adequately address the damage wrought by Hurricane Andrew led to Bush Sr. losing Florida, and the election to Clinton.
I’ve heard tales of woe from people whose homes burnt out west, as to the difficulty in wading and waiting through FEMA red tape.
FEMA to my knowledge, has never been known for its lightning reflexes, except perhaps last year, when Florida was crucial for Bush Jr., and four storms hit that region.
that is killing him.
Check the Newsweek artilce. (it is a little weak) It should be entitled “Bush Blew It AGAIN!” And it tends to put too much blame on local officials.
yes, it was the history of poor performance, the nadir of which was the response to Andrew that led the Clinton administration to turn it into a world class agency.
It took Bush II a few years to defund it and turn it into a patronage agency. In the meantime it was still functional enough to handle last year’s hurricanes, especially since it was Florida, after all. But its been in steep decline since.
To say that FEMA was once a lightning fast agency is is not a re-write of history, it was. Its a recognition of how and why the Bush White House is responsible for this.
Well Florida was apparently pretty much a fuck-up also. The way Brown mismanaged funds and screw-ups down there led to an investigation and had some politicians in Florida calling for his resignation-that was in 2004.
It certainly was a success though from photo-op standpoints with bush in Florida 5 times I think and show handing out bags of ice and presumably this ‘won’ him the state of Florida.
The FEMA Phoenix
Reform of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The Washington Monthly, July/August 1995
“Rarely had the failure of the federal government been so apparent and so acute.”