Category: Old Dish

Here’s an emailer taking issue with me and many others:

The criticism against FEMA and Brown are misplaced and, actually, quite silly. FEMA is not and never was intended to be a first responder. It has only a couple of thousand employees and most are paper pushers. FEMA’s main job is not to prevent disasters in the making but rather to come in after a disaster and coordinate relief efforts (i.e., dispense pork, er, excuse me, “relief funds” to various groups) and make bureaucratic reports to Congress. That’s the way Congress set it up. An ex-head of FEMA was on TV this morning and said he used to regularly tell members of Congress that if D.C. ever got in trouble, they would be saved by the local fire or police officers, not FEMA. This is another instance of Congress trying to pass the buck, when, in fact, things worked exactly the way they set them up.
As to Brown, much has been made of his lack of “experience.” This is bunk. Almost all appointment jobs (esp. below the cabinet level) are bureaucratic jobs that are filled by politically-connected people who are usually pretty bright and ambitious. Sometime they work out, and sometimes not, but very few of them have directly relevant experience, and I defy anyone to show me a connection between “experience” and how they actually perform. Many of our best Presidents (Lincoln, Truman) and Cabinet officers (Bobby Kennedy (a purely political appointment if ever I saw one), Paul Nitze (an investment banker by trade) had much in the way of directly relevant experience when they took their gov’t jobs, but did just fine. Besides, given what FEMA was set up to do, a lawyer is actually perfect for the job. Again, this is just a diversion.
I’ve no doubt that there may in fact be some real criticism to be leveled against the Bush administration. But I haven’t seen it yet.

I guess I should just quote the email again. FEMA’s job is to “come in after a disaster and coordinate relief efforts.” Does anyone in their right mind think that has been done competently? If at all?

I linked to this before, but it’s worth linking to again. This first-hand account from New Orleans of people who know about emergency work beggars belief. It gathers steam as it goes.

The video clip of the African-American evacuee I linked to earlier, I should have mentioned, was not of any person. It was of Charmaine Neville. A New Orleans native emails:

I saw the clip you linked to earlier of the woman who escaped the 9th Ward. That’s not just any woman, either. In New Orleans, she’s about as big a celebrity as her uncle, Aaron Neville, the singer. To New Orleanians, it’s shocking that even she was trapped in the city.

Here’s more detail on her. One thing I keep thinking: there’s still so much we don’t know about what really went on in New Orleans. Imagine what they have kept from us on Iraq. Or do they even know?

According to the new Pew poll (PDF file here), they’re almost as angry at Bush as Democrats are. 71 percent say he could have done more; 25 percent say he did all he could. 85 percent of Democrats fault Bush. 63 percent of Republicans, in contrast, rate the federal performance as “excellent or good.” I guess there comes a point at which partisanship and polarization are so deep nothing will budge them. There’s an enormous racial divide as well. African-Americans are much angrier about this than whites. My bet is that no amount of gay-baiting will win much of the black vote back for the GOP in the near future. But they’ll try.

Yep, the U.S. now officially needs foreign aid to deal with a disaster. Hey, they’re better than FEMA.

Mark Blumenthal is invaluable as always. 58 percent now disapprove of Bush’s handling of Katrina, up from 12 percent in the early days. 80 percent say the feds were too slow. More blame the feds than the locals (but they rightly don’t spare them either). Money quote:

Where the President has taken a serious hit on the CBS poll (though not necessarily just in the last week) is in perceptions of him as a strong leader and crisis manager. Right now, roughly half of Americans (48%) agree that Bush “has strong qualities of leadership,” down from 64% a year ago. Right now only 32% express “a lot” of confidence in George W. Bush’s ability to handle a crisis (19% express “some” confidence). In the weeks after 9/11, 66% had a lot of confidence in Bush, 24% some. Note that these were the second and third questions on the CBS survey, asked before any mention of Hurricane Katrina.

But Bush’s support among Republicans remains high and his generic approval rating hasn’t budged much. The country is polarized, and Republicans so wedded to the president, that he may never go below 40 percent approval, regardless of what he does or does not do. I’d love to know how Independents have shifted, if at all. More here.

Florida’s Sun-Sentinel was on Michael Brown’s case a year ago. Money quote:

[N]othing can restore FEMA’s full functionality so long as the agency’s incompetent director, Michael Brown, remains at the helm. Brown, a patronage appointee with no previous disaster management experience, embarrassed himself last year with his attempts to justify FEMA’s waste of more than $31 million in hurricane relief given to areas not affected by a hurricane. After a South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation exposed the waste, the newspaper called for Brown to be fired. It now repeats that call.

Will Bush listen? Nah.

A disturbing article on South African president Thabo Mbeki’s and his ANC’s involvement in a phony HIV medication. The farce continues.

The Los Angeles Times makes an important point about the historic fact of a state legislature passing marriage rights for gay couples:

[O]nce the highest court does order the state to stop discriminating, it will be harder for critics to complain about activist judges getting ahead of the political process. In this case, judges will be reaffirming the Legislature’s intent.

And the social right will then say … what? They’ll blame “legislative activism”? As to what gay couples, their friends, families and supporters should do … use this as another opportunity to make the case for responsibility, equality, and family for everyone. Polls in California show that an initiative backing marriage rights has a chance of winning. Support this organization. Talk to every non-gay person you know and explain why everyone deserves the chance to have a family protected by law. Make the case. Now more than ever.

Don’t miss Paul Campos’ review of Michael Brown’s career at TNR. Money quote:

When Brown left the IAHA four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer – a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn’t attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA, he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA.

In normal times, appointing this kind of unqualified political hack to an agency with direct responsibility for saving lives is reckless. After 9/11, it is an incomprehensible failure.