Presidential Malpractice

The highest priority for any president should be to keep the American
people safe. When George Bush appointed Michael Brown to direct the
Federal Emergency Management Agency he committed presidential
malpractice. Brown lacked any relevant experience or skills before
joining FEMA, but Bush appointed him anyway because Brown had the right
political connections. When Hurricane Katrina struck, Brown was
unprepared, uninformed and unable to respond effectively. (Bush's
reaction: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.") We will never know
for certain how many lives could have been saved or how much suffering
could have been avoided had there been a competent federal response.
Bush had an opportunity to show leadership by firing Brown. But he
failed again and meekly waited for Brown to resign. Responsibility for
FEMA's acute failures lies less with Brown -- who did as well as can be
expected for someone who spent the previous decade investigating
whether breeders performed liposuction on a horse's rear end -- and
more with President Bush, who entrusted the safety of Americans with
someone so profoundly unqualified.

FEMA REQUESTS AMBULANCES FROM AN AGENCY THAT DOESN'T HAVE ANY: New
documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal expose the scope of
FEMA's problems under Brown's leadership. For example, FEMA "first
asked the Department of Transportation to look for buses to help
evacuate the more than 20,000 people who had taken refuge at the
Superdome in New Orleans at 1:45 a.m. on Aug. 31. At the time, it only
asked for 455 buses and 300 ambulances for the enormous task. Almost 18
hours later, it canceled the request for the ambulances because it
turned out, as one FEMA employee put it, "the DOT doesn't do
ambulances." FEMA didn't settle on a final number of buses until "8:05
p.m. on Sept. 3" and even then "[t]he buses ... trickled into New
Orleans, with only a dozen or so arriving on the first day." (A popular
right-wing claim that 2,000 school buses were available to local
officials in New Orleans is false.)

FEMA DELAYS ENDANGER HEALTH OF FIRST RESPONDERS: FEMA's delays not only
impact the victims of Katrina, but also those who traveled to the
disaster area to help. The portion of the National Emergency Response
plan that permits OSHA to "to coordinate efforts to protect and monitor
disaster workers and victims from environmental hazards" wasn't
activated until 5 p.m. last Sunday. FEMA acted only after "officials
from NIH, the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection
Agency began to make frantic calls to the Department of Homeland
Security and members of Congress, demanding that the worker-safety
portion of the national response plan be activated."

FEMA DELAYS REQUESTING RESCUE WORKERS: Last week, the Associated Press
reported that FEMA Director Michael Brown "waited hours after Hurricane
Katrina struck the Gulf Coast before he proposed to his boss sending at
least 1,000 Homeland Security workers into the region to support
rescuers." According to internal documents obtained by the AP, Brown
specified that part of the workers mission would be to "'convey a
positive image' about the government's response for victims" to the
public. While it was sent five hours after the storm hit, Brown's
letter lacked any sense of urgency -- he requested the workers arrive
within two days. The letter politely ended, "Thank you for your
consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."

FEMA'S PROBLEMS DON'T END WITH BROWN: Brown's resignation doesn't solve
the problems with FEMA. He will be replaced by R. David Paulison, who
is certainly more competent. But many top posts are still filled by
political operatives "with virtually no experience in handling
disasters." The Washington Post reports that "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."

On 13 Sep 2005 11:07:56 -0700, wrote:

Presidential Malpractice

Attribution?

Or do you expect us to believe you actually wrote that?

Oh, wait...it was you who expected us to believe you owned a Moto Guzzi Desmo!

Hee, hee.
--
John H

"All decisions are the result of binary thinking."