Brownie, We Hardly Knew Ye
Today comes the news that FEMA director Michael Brown has resigned.
Man, what a career: from underemployed lawyer to failed horse show "czar," back to underemployed lawyer; then rapidly up through the ranks of FEMA to director. And in the space of eleven days, he's told on national television by the president that he's doing "a heckuva job;" is then "fired in place;" then reassigned to Washington to oversee "national disaster planning"--perhaps a Freudian slip, there--without losing his title. And now comes the end, soon, no doubt, to be followed with the inevitable explanation that Brownie's decided to "pursue new challenges in the private sector," maybe as a FEMA contractor or something.
The President, meanwhile, continues to say any admission of mistakes by his administration would represent "playing the blame game."
I know this administration has provided an unusual number of Emperor Has No Clothes kinda moments, but this one would have embarrassed the Nixon White House.
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How long before Brownie is "doing a heckuva job" for Shaw?
September 12, 2005 12:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
It would appear he may have ample qualifications for a position requiring servility, and the ability to spend much time on his knees.
September 12, 2005 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
yep and yep - Nixon woulda been horrified at the incompetence. It'll be worth watching to see where Brown lands - I suspect that's a measure of how out of royal favor he is.
September 12, 2005 12:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a national embarassment. The bottom line is 2 states were ravaged, and had their resources overwhelmed, by a natural disaster. Meanwhile our federal government sat idle because they claim they didn't receive the requests for aid from the states, in triplicate, for the third time.
What took so long for Michael Brown to be relieved of his duties?
September 12, 2005 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know this administration has provided an unusual number of Emperor Has No Clothes kinda moments, but this would would have embarrassed the Nixon White House.
Ed!
Leave this poor Nixon alone. He was competent. And, by today's standards, hw was a fiery liberal we should all be proud of.
I miss Nixon. I really do. At least, he knew he was lying.
September 12, 2005 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
My test for when the Bush house of cards came tumbling down has always been if Bush was forced to admit he screwed up, or had to hold someone in his administration accountable. Once that happens, the aura of divinity is shattered, and the disillusioned cultists are forced to start to consider the possibility that Bush's actions are not inexplicable because he is a foward thinking visionary ahead of his time, but an idiot.
Which leads me to my next prediction: I'm not sure Bush will complete his term. What we are witnessing is the final days of Enron. There has been a leadership bubble where success has been built upon the lies of past successes and illusions of invincibility. The CEOs are buoyed because they see the writing on the wall, so more and more off-the-books accounting have to be set up to keep the denial going. Things get so bad that people will accept any lie, no matter how preposterous, to avoid reality, and pretend a little longer.
We have all experienced the frustration of watching the country snare itself in an inreasingly tangled web of deception. Every "tipping point" is shown to be illusory because bubbles can never shrink; your only choice is to burst now or keep growing. Faced with that choice, people always choose denial. But there is no "up" from here. There is no place else to go. We can't grow. We can't shrink. Our only choice now is to pop.
September 12, 2005 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting comment from Brown: "In Washington,Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown announced he is resigning "in the best interest of the agency and best interest of the president."
Notice, he did not mention "the country"!
September 12, 2005 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Josh needs to start a betting pool feature here at the cafe. I saw this one coming.
September 12, 2005 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is what happens when Dems get partisan.
It works.
September 12, 2005 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
It occurs to me that he wasn't actually fired until today in order to displace the John Roberts confirmation hearing from top headline -- and pundit chatter fodder -- status? Does this timing make sense to all y'all political hounds?
September 12, 2005 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Does this timing make sense to all y'all political hounds?"
Not at all. The headline news was when he was removed from NO.
September 12, 2005 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Certainly, Brownie just wants to spend more time with his family, and his resignation is in no way related to his gross incompetence.
September 12, 2005 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
now that he's gone, the GOP slime machine will call for more heads, at the local level. "brown did the right thing, now blanco must do the same." etc.
heading them off at the pass might be good, instead of cherishing this small victory. "brown resigns, where's chertoff"?
September 12, 2005 5:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
What took so long for Michael Brown to be relieved of his duties?
The president's termination memo was sent to DHS, and DHS sent it to NSF for redaction, and NSF sent it to FEMA packaged with a pile of single-source contract rfps, and it ended up on the desk of Bechtel CEO Riley Bechtel, who sent it to Grover Norquist with a post-it saying "What's up with this?" Norquist compelled Jeff Gannon to hand-carry it to Brown, but when Gannon got to Baton Rouge he was told that Brown had been sent to FEMA HQ in D.C. Gannon Fed-Exes the termination order immediately, and FedEx loaded the document on the ill-fated flight that Tom Hanks was on when it crashed into the ocean...
You know, typical Bush Administration efficiency.
September 12, 2005 6:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look for Mike to receive his Freedom medal in a couple of weeks for his yeoman service during the Katrina disaster. At least Bush is still perfect - no mistakes yet.
September 12, 2005 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I never like playing the blame game, either, when I am to blame. Maybe this would have embarrassed Nixon, but I don’t think there will be any embarrassment here. It’s sort of like plausible deniability. When the pressure peaks, take action to ameliorate the mistake but never admit there was a mistake. It ends the uproar and requires no future accountability.
September 12, 2005 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Poor Brownie. He's a likeable enough guy, but essentially just a big zero. His talent lies mainly in making good friends.
In other words, he was the perfect representative of George W. Bush.
September 12, 2005 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bob,
It appears that Bush was unaware at a press conference that Brownie had resigned. It was news to Bush and Bush could not comment.
Not that having the foresight means you're qualified to be president...
September 12, 2005 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
We are in the middle of a convergence of considerable consequence. The Katrina Catastrophe has opened the policy window, and, in imperfect metaphor, policy, problem, and political streams are even now converging in a massive flood.
It appears that the first to extirpated will be the War Party. May we be so blessed because unless that happens, the policy window will slam shut and not a ffew necks will be broken.
It happened in 1927. It happened on 9/11 It is happening now.
As a Lousiana native, I am outraged but I am also greatly heartened, For how fitting, how very just and righteous it is that a New York City Tragedy made him and a Louisiana catastrophe broke him
May Southern Populism rise again!
Agendas, Aternatives, and Public Policies, John Kingdon
September 12, 2005 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
This Newsweek article by Evan Thomas humiliates Bush just by looking at what happened in the Katrina fiasco.
President Bush knew the storm and its consequences had been bad; but he didn't quite realize how bad.
The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.
Congressional investigations will take months to sort out who is to blame. A NEWSWEEK reconstruction of the government's response to the storm shows how Bush's leadership style and the bureaucratic culture combined to produce a disaster within a disaster.
September 12, 2005 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the correct term is Brownie got resigned...thank god LA didn't need to call FEMA!
September 12, 2005 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Which leads me to my next prediction: I'm not sure Bush will complete his term. What we are witnessing is the final days of Enron. There has been a leadership bubble where success has been built upon the lies of past successes and illusions of invincibility. The CEOs are buoyed because they see the writing on the wall, so more and more off-the-books accounting have to be set up to keep the denial going. Things get so bad that people will accept any lie, no matter how preposterous, to avoid reality, and pretend a little longer.
This is waaaaay over the top. There is absolutely no chance that, absent some absolutely stunning revelation, that Bush will resign or be forced from office. You are forgetting the real reason conservatives back this transparently un-conservative president. That is, their hatred of liberals transcends their desire to do what is best for the country. I truly believe that most conservatives and Republicans do not defend Bush because they actually think his actions are defensible and that Bush is really a good leader, but rather because conceding an inch to liberals makes them break out in hives.
Still, the next few months should be quite interesting. I've been having a number of conversations with Republican friends who are just as pissed off about the state of things as Democrats are. A friend of mine who is a lifelong Republican said he would vote Democratic the first time in his life in the next elections.
September 12, 2005 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Olbermann is excellent on this.
"David Paulison, then the government's Fire Administrator, joined with the then-head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, on February 10th, 2003, to say that duct tape and plastic sheeting should be part of any home's "survival kit" in preparation for a terrorist attack."
September 12, 2005 9:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's more a personality thing. I don't think Bush has the personality to stick around for three years if he's hated. If his popularity doesn't go up, I don't see him sticking around. He's run from everything in his life.
September 12, 2005 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Note that Brown alluded to having discussed his resignation with the president in his comments. It appears as if one or the other is lying...
September 13, 2005 3:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Note that Brown alluded to having discussed his resignation with the president in his comments. It appears as if one or the other is lying...
Not necessarily. One could easily imagine a conversation something like this...
Brown: Sir, I'm thinking of resignation.
Bush thought balloon: The 'Resig' nation must be a new Indian tribe that we can recruit to give us millions of dollars in donations.
Bush: Brownie you are doing a fine job. Mention me to the Resig nation crowd. [nod, wink, secret Arabian horse handshake - they turn, their butts meet, they bend down, shake hands under each others arched legs and wiggle their ears and yell Yippee, Ki-Yo, Ki-Yea!.]
September 13, 2005 6:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
That would be the kind of admission of defeat I couldn't imagine this president ever making, even if he felt his presidency was legitimately a failure, and not merely the target of a hostile media. And quite possibly he doesn't realize it's a failure, due to the groupthink and isolation from reality in this administration.
September 13, 2005 6:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
His only other choice would be to isolate himself in a bubble, and effectively stop being President. Hmmm...
September 13, 2005 6:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe it was his contribution to Bush's re-election in FL;
http://tinyurl.com/avhxc
The explosive charges of mismanagement of disaster relief funds made against Brown and FEMA were confirmed earlier this year following a four-month investigation by Richard Skinner, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general. Skinner looked into media reports alleging that residents of Miami-Dade were receiving windfall payments from FEMA to cover losses from Hurricane Frances they never incurred.
Hurricane Frances hit Hutchinson Island, Fla., about 100 miles north of Dade County , on Sept. 5. Miami-Dade officials described damage there from heavy rain and winds of up to 45 mph as ''minimal,'' according to the Post.
Indeed. A May 14 story in the Sun- Sentinel said: " Miami-Dade County residents collected Hurricane Frances aid for belongings they didn't own, temporary housing they never requested and cars worth far less than the government paid, according to a federal audit that questions millions in storm payouts.
Responding to those allegations, Brown held a news conference Jan. 11 blaming the overpayments on a "computer glitch" and said the disbursements were far less than the $31 million that was cited in news reports and involved 3,500 people. Moreover, to silence his critics who said that Hurricane Frances barely touched down in Miami-Dade, Brown cited a report by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to prove that there were legitimate hurricane conditions there and as a result that a bulk of the payments was legitimate.
But according to the Sun-Sentinel, NOAA had refuted the weather maps Brown claimed to have obtained from them. That report prompted Congressman Robert Wexler to send off a scathing letter to President Bush calling for Brown's resignation.
Bush rebuffed Wexler. However, the DHS' inspector general launched a probe to determine how widespread the problems were involving overpayments to Miami-Dade residents. In May, the inspector general released his report. What he found was damning.
"The review found waste and poor controls in every level of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's assistance program and challenges the designation of Miami-Dade as a disaster area when the county "did not incur any hurricane force winds, tornados or other adverse weather conditions that would cause widespread damage."
In identifying one of the overpayments, the inspector general's report said FEMA paid $10 million to replace hundreds of household items even though only a bed was reported to be damaged, the inspector general's report said.
"Millions of individuals and households became eligible to apply for [money], straining FEMA's limited inspection resources to verify damages and making the program more susceptible to potential fraud, waste and abuse," the report states.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, said during a committee hearing in May that Brown "approved massive payouts to replace thousands of televisions, air conditioners, beds and other furniture, as well as a number of cars, without receipts, or proof of ownership or damage, and based solely on verbal statements by the residents, sometimes made in fleeting encounters at fast-food restaurants."
"It was a pay first, ask questions later approach,'' Collins said. ''The inspector general's report identifies a number of significant control weaknesses that create a potential for widespread fraud, erroneous payments and wasteful practices.''
But the most interesting charge against Brown is that he helped speed up payments in Florida and purposely bypassed FEMA's lengthy reviews process for distributing funds in order to help Bush secure votes in the state during last year's presidential election.
September 13, 2005 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I dont believe anything Bush says. Bush wanted Brown gone and he was told to resign, he did not volunterily resign. The evidence for this is clearly evident:
September 13, 2005 8:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think so. "Kenny Boy" only became Mr Lay after the Enron collapse.
And don't forget about "Rummy" or that Bush calls Rove "Turd blossom".
The childish (not patronizing - at least to the recipient) nickname thing is Bush's way of telling you you're "in". And the reason Bush called him Brownie when he did was that he had absolutely no grasp of the gravity of Brown's failure. Or more precisely how widely Brown's failure was being recognized - and how that would affect Bush himself.
The networks actually stopped doing "he said, she said" reporting during hurricane Katrina, at least in relation to Brown (and even to Bush himself). They highlighted plain examples where he was either lying or simply had no clue what was going on.
In the past Bush has been allowed to hang on to his coterie of miserable failures, by a pliant press who have been afraid to call gross incompetence for what it is.
But Brown's performance was finally one step too far.
This is not a story of Bush having decided early to axe Brown because he was unhappy with the job. It's a story of Bush deciding to axe him after the event because he belatedly realized that Brown had begun to stink so bad that the smell was transferring to his presidency
September 13, 2005 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink