Monday, September 05, 2005

Staggering Incompetence

There are NO "unimportant" political appointments. Well, I'm sure there are a couple, but Director of FEMA is not one of them.

Everybody had their panties in a bunch, ready to filibuster over John Bolton taking a more or less ceremonial post at the UN while Bush gets to quietly appoint a fucking loser crony like Michael Brown, who was fired as a Commissioner of some Arabian Horse Association, to be the head of FEMA!!?? That's the FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY! Google for FEMA and this is what you get without even clicking the link:
Agency of the US government tasked with Disaster Mitigation, Preparedness, Response & Recovery planning.

In other words, if this clown is EVER actually called upon to do his job, it will be a goddamn dire EMERGENCY! Lives will hang in the balance... Experience might count... On what planet is Michael Brown qualified for that job? [answer at the bottom]

Here's a fucking heads-up from now on: If Dubya has a fucking nickname for a guy (i.e: "Brownie, you're doing a great job..."), then you know he is grossly unqualified for the position. End of story. If Bush has a relationship with the guy, he is a crony and his appointment is a straight-up pay-back of some bogus campaign "Pioneer" status and he will be stunningly incompetent. Or he is a savvy inside operator finely tuned in the methods of using his new federal post to enrich his previous industry. In either case they will not serve the interests of the country or it's citizens. This has never been more clear than the one-week crash and burn of "Brownie." Watch this footage if you don't believe me. The guy is a travesty.

Four years and billions of dollars since 9/11 and political jerk-offs like Brown are running the agencies responsible for the public's safety in the wake of a disaster? Hey red-state imbeciles! Still feeling "protected" by your big, tough President? This wasn't a surprise terrorist attack, this was a giant hurricane the whole country watched come across the Gulf for days and they were this badly prepared. In two days the U.S. was airdropping supplies to tsunami survivors in Indonesia. Four and a half days after the hurricane, Brown is asked by CNN [link above] why that hasn't happened yet in New Orleans and he says, "that's what we're going to do here too." Unbelievable.

[Answer]: Planet Bush! See if you can spot the parallels? [via TPM] "A Republican from the southwest. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress when he was thirty-three. Then he bounced from job to job, finally getting into the sports business in mid-life, before getting canned. And then he used connections to land himself a high-powered position in the federal government for which he had no apparent experience at all." I guess Bush figured they had a lot in common, "Brownie" must be "good people" or some crap. Here's the crony chronology (cronyology?): Joe Allbaugh manages Bush's campaign. Bush wins. Allbaugh gets appointed head of FEMA as a reward. Allbaugh taps his college roommate(!) Brown, recently canned by the horse Association, to serve as his Deputy. Allbaugh leaves in 2003 to work on the the reelection*, Bush promotes Brown. Brown completely botches everything, costing lives.

*UPDATE: Allbaugh didn't leave to work on the re-election. I forgot, he did something worse. He left to set up a profiteering consultancy to exploit the Iraq War... [link] "created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq." Oh, and who else is in on that? Ed Rogers, Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour's former law partner. And who is geting the early re-construction contracts in the wake of the hurricane? Halliburton. One big sickening circle of profit and politics that makes me want to fucking wretch.

Here's more on the job Bush and Allbaugh did gutting FEMA.

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