Not too personal
To ask who is made more comfortable in the security of their home, neighborhood, and town by the notion that Michael Brown has not left the government, or for that matter that DHS is involved in reconstruction instead of protecting the homeland from the next major risk? Is there a reason why the Administration cannot act promptly and efficiently, like every regiment or business unit or other organization known to humanity, to assign tasks to people who can do them?
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More comfortable? I'm scared shitless!!!
These people want to run the government after they've needlessly killed thousands of people???
This is exactly why NOW is the right time to play Scottie's blame game.
Your questions are ones our Democratic leaders need to ask LOUD and OFTEN.
September 9, 2005 6:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
In my job, the employers are reulctant to fire people, it's just their way. Heck, I'm sure it's appreciated. They just kind of maneuver people away from important projects and let them stew off to the side.
I hate calling for people to be fired. I think it's bad karma to wish some one into unemployment.
But I'm pretty sure that if I F'ed up as bad as Brown did, even with my "we hate to fire" bosses... I'd have been sooooo fired.
September 9, 2005 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the kind of organizations which are the subject of Dilbert comic strips, it used to be common to promote someone to out of harm's way, so they'd be less of an obstruction to the people who know how to do the job.
Now of course many of those corporations are too financially weak to continue those policies.
September 9, 2005 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
George W. Bush, of course. He has great people devoted to the task of protecting him, so he doesn't have to worry about losing his life to Brown's incompetence, and this way, he also doesn't have to admit a mistake.
Obvious, but I think true.
September 9, 2005 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point! Here's an odd thing... in 2000 we were told that it was okay that Bush is kind of stupid because he'd surround himself with smart nerds and would play the role of "jock decision maker." But, really, he's just kind of appointed people who either do an adequate job and saket by or who take the heat for him.
September 9, 2005 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tut...Tut. You know he's doing one hell of a good job. Why won't you just shut-off your partisan attacks on a good American and let him do it. He's got 50 more billion dollars to sign over to his former boss before finding the need to spend time with the family. I mean he'll need to be rested up when he takes a job working for the Shaw Group.
September 9, 2005 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Time article barely scratched the surface on how utterly unqualified Brown is for anything. It’s astonishing that he is kept on to “manage our next threat.” Never admit fault. Never accept responsibility.
This article by Paul Campos in The New Republic renovates Brown’s bio:
It's bad enough when attorneys are named to government jobs for which their careers, no matter how distinguished, don't qualify them. But Brown wasn't a distinguished lawyer: He was hardly a lawyer at all. When he left the iaha, he was a 47-year-old with a very thin resumé and no job. Yet he was also what's known in the Mafia as a "connected guy.”September 9, 2005 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the reason is simple enough. Bush does not care about the vast majority of people in this country or what happens to them. Katrina was nothing but another photo-op for Bush. As long as Bush has the support of the big money people that is all that matters to him.
September 9, 2005 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Having said that we have a much bigger problem. New Orleans is a relatively small city by many standards. A citywide disaster in one of our larger metropolitan areas would be impossible to manage by city, state or federal agencies. Even an immediate response in such a circumstance would be inadequate.
It's uncertain that if FEMA tried to remove everyone from the threat zone of Katrina beforehand if they would have been able to conduct such an action without some serious problems. That assumes they were willing to exercise their responsibility for doing so. And yes, they have that responsibility. It is certain that no large metro area has the means to evacuate the entire population on short notice, which leaves the necessity of federal intervention a mandatory circumstance.
The same applies to an event for which there is no opportunity to evacuate beforhand. Such an event in one of our large metro areas would tax all of our resources at all levels.
This entire situation provides a clear heads up of how crucial our routine preparations for addressing such an event are. We know the locales of probable events and need to consider them on a case by case basis and figure out where and how emergency equipment is to be pre-positioned and have a carefully considered deployment plan in place.
All of this can only be done with the full cooperation of local, state and federal authorities working together in a unified way. The partisan bickering and such we have seen in New Orleans isn't going to get it done. We can't ignore that an event of such scope will happen. It is in all likelihood a statistical certainty.
Will we be ready?
thepeoplechoose
September 9, 2005 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
HTML trouble. Here, hopefully, is the link to the aforementioned article by Paul Campos (from TNR yesterday).
September 9, 2005 7:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Reed, I'm going to put on my tinfoil hat for a moment, and think malicious rather than moronic. Bear with me, please - I'll be rational again soon.
Bush makes a decision. Propaganda flies. The decision looks absolutely horrendous. The consequences cost billions of dollars. His cronies control the money, and a lot sticks to them. Bush looks dumb, and seems oblivious.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
BushCo's investors have gotten a great return on their investment. His people have uniformly generated the glitches, errors, bug, and disasters that provide the best opportunities for his investors to cash out. We have, in fact, misunderestimated him (that is, underestimated him in the wrong area. He's not dumb. He is evil.)
You assume the task is to govern. He assumes the task is to loot the Treasury. In corporate terms, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al have rationalized the supply chain, and now are vertical monopolists - managing the situation to create needs (ie, make a disastrous mistake), generating funds to meet those needs (the gummint) and positioning their companies to meet the needs and get the funds (privatize cleanup while making sure no actual market competition is involved).
Please don't confuse this Administration's tasks with what we think are the tasks to be done. As Bush said last week regarding Brown, "What didn't go right?".
---
whew, tinfoil hats don't breathe very well. It's probably just incompetence. Really.
September 9, 2005 8:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although she can't seem to find her way to the Politics Table, Juliette has a smart take on Brown being retained.
September 9, 2005 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
You assume the task is to govern. He assumes the task is to loot the Treasury.
With apologies to George Will --
"Democrats come to Washington to make government work; Republicans come to make money."
September 9, 2005 9:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The US is now in the middle stages of its third great crisis, after the Civil War and the Depression. In this case, the symptom is that the national government has been taken over by those whose entire conception of governing is maintaining their power and wealth. Essentially, we are becoming a 'banana republic'. One cause of this is the political laziness of much of the public, allowing their votes to be bought for a handful of carefully crafted emotionally resonant slogans. Things will go on until they get really bad. Iraq and Katrina are too small to bring down the ruthless entrenched power we have now. Another smashup is coming; what form it takes I don't know, but it will be bad. I predict 2010.
September 10, 2005 4:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Reed, I think you and the other commentors are missing a key point here. I believe Rep. Nancy Pelosi insured that Brown would be kept on as the head of FEMA by asking Bush if he would fire Brown. Recall that Bush asked why he would fire Brown and Pelosi responded that he should be fired because of everything that went wrong the week before. Bush's response to her: what went wrong?
This goes to a core part of who and what makes George W. Bush the person he is. The man cannot admit he is wrong about anything or that he has made a mistake. This is a lifelong trait that defines him and it is a shockingly dangerous thing for a man with as much power as he has.
I can show you various instances that prove this point:
Can anyone show me an example, anywhere, ever of a situation where GWB has said I was wrong, I apologize followed by a change in behavior to indicate an acknowledgement of the mistake and a move in a new direction?
Didn't think so.
When Pelosi questioned Brown's competence and the response to Katrina she triggered the GWB immediate defensive reaction: I was right! I was not wrong! Inadvertently, Nancy Pelosi may have given Michael Brown more job security than almost anyone else in Washington.
If Brown leaves it will be because Rove or someone similar persuades him to quit. He will never be fired. GWB won't let that happen to Brownie, not because he thinks Brown is any good, but simply because he cannot admit that Brown's appointment is a mistake.
side note: I apologize for the formatting. I have tried the autoformat setting, the HTML setting and the Plain Text setting and I cannot get the paragraphs to line up.
September 10, 2005 9:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
W's near-total aversion to firing people would be funny if a whole lot of people weren't dying here and in Iraq because of it. He ran in 2000 in part on the idea that he was going to be a CEO, a real macho MAN OF ACTION. But he cannot hold his own in a conversation with any moderately smart person. Like many ultra-conservatives, he is anti-intellectual and suspicious of people who know more than he does, which is almost everybody. So he surrounds himself with sycophants whose only qualification for the jobs they hold is the loyalty of a dog to its master. These incompetent boobs owe everything to W. W doesn't think brains matter in guvmint jobs. (After all, W got elected president twice, didn't he? And he's a good man and he's doing a heckuva good job, ain't he?) W, in turn, is flattered by the pandering slobs, who constantly tell him how wonderful he is. It's all a conservative, touchy-feely mutual support group. But it has absolutely nothing to do with governing the United States of America in the 21st Century.
September 10, 2005 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just with respect to Michael Brown: he was after all a contributor and therefore to be handled with great care. Other contributors are watching. Anyway, Brown's qualifications were secondary, weren't they?
Or were they? Take the matter of government competence. One way to destroy the reputation of the federal government is to undermine its ability to respond effectively -- to play a positive role in citizens' lives. That of course has been the goal of the radical right: destroy government.
That way you not only destroying anything which gets in the way of corporations, you also force social services and education into the hands of proselytizing churches, corporations, and any local government left standing. By turning over the functions of government to corporations and religious groups, you're cementing in your conservative, even reactionary, political base.
Now you've got a citizenry which is dependent on your people, your leadership, your generosity, your values, and on and on. It's a movement which has been growing for decades. Look at the growth of ersatz "christianity" in America alongside the ballooning of personal debt and the tethering of information sources through a corporate-owned media. Tell me these are not symptoms of anomie and willingness to be manipulated on the part of most Americans.
Whether Michael Brown is quietly guillotined or not seems almost irrelevant.
September 10, 2005 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the Admin. that brought you Attorney General John Ashcroft who couldn't beat a dead man in a Senate race, who held prayer services daily at the Department of Justice and who hid an art deco statue of Justice behind a curtain because her breast was exposed. Succeeding Ashcroft in the top law enforcement post was Al Gonzales, who thinks the Geneva Convention is quaint, and who has no prior criminal law experience -- other than his consistent failure to provide then Gov. Bush any counsel about death row prisoners whose sentences should have been commuted. Note: the most likely reason that John Roberts got the not instead of Gonzales is that Gonzales is just too close to the Plame scandal, and likely delayed 12 hours before letting the White House know it should retain documents when he was informed by Ashcroft that an investigation was being opened into the Plame leak. Shredder anyone?
Then there's Brown. This is the Administration that denounces affirmative action as "quotas" and "preferences," right? Yet with Brown, you could not find someone who more perfectly embodies everything they claim to detest about affirmative action. Yet, the man still has a job. Kinda reveals their true issue with a/a ... it's not whether the woman or the person of color is qualified, it's that that woman or person of color is taking up the slot where their unqualified guy could be!
The President is nothing if not loyal. The Executive Branch is nothing if not infested with these termites, and our troubles are mounting by the moment, because the contempt is about to be exported to the Supreme Court in the person of John Roberts who among other things, argued that Operation Rescue's clinic blockades were directed at persons seeking abortion, not women, and therefore not a civil rights violation.
September 10, 2005 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, if our leaders hate Government, but become part of the Government, I guess their idea is to put balls all day in their office just to while the time away.
September 10, 2005 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is possible that Katrina was nothing more than a photo op for Bush, but for his administration it is a golden -neh platinum oppurtunity to hand more of our tax dollars to their closest friends. If we were to impeach Bush tomorrow and through out everyone of his cronies, they have still made off with near $1 trillion of our treasury at the mere cost of a delapadated infrastructure, thousands dead, depleted military and diplomatic strength.
But Scaif, Cheney, and their ilk can be happy, because the got their greasy hands on unfathomable quantities of our tax dollar.
September 11, 2005 4:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Case in point:
Allbaugh selects incompitent Brown.
Brown f's up Hurricane response.
Allbaugh comes to the rescue co-ordinating distribution of contracts for Hurricane recovery.
Doesn't get much more simple than that.
September 11, 2005 4:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mcrose68, I think that is absolutely right, I have been reading about Halliburton and Bechtel. The vultures are circling in for a landing. It is amazing how Bush has no shame whatsoever it is kind of like having a grave-robber for prez.
September 11, 2005 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink