Brown and Excuses

I have to apologize to everyone for being tardy on some posting. I am traveling for work this week and have been a little busier than I thought. I had hoped to do a post over the weekend about Bush’s out of control spending spree of the last 5 years but that didn’t happen either. Maybe by the end of the week it will be up.

This morning I was watching some of Mike Brown’s testimony before a congressional committee and I laughed so hard it almost made me cry. Talk about snowball questions. It made me think that Jeff Gannon was in there somewhere feeding the questions to the committee. I think Gannon, though, is too busy attending pro-war rallies for a war that he himself won’t go fight. I wonder if his open homosexuality would keep him out of the military or if it’s just his fetish for Marines in PT gear that motivates him. I digress.

Former FEMA director Mike Brown at his congressional hearing is once again blaming the state and locals for the lack of response to Katrina. Insisting that it’s not the job of the federal government to respond to various relief and rescue operations. Sorry Brown and other neocons but that’s simply not true. It’s worth repeating:

According to the Department’s 2004 National Response Plan (a mandate by the Bush government), the federal government will assume a “proactive” response to catastrophic events. It goes on to define a catastrophic event as “any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions.” Concluding, “all catastrophic events are Incidents of National Significance” (pg. 43).

There’s more:

In the Guiding Principals for Proactive Federal Response (in the DHS 2004 National Response Plan), which tell the government when, how and why to intervene, specifically states that no calls for assistance from the state level is needed when such a catastrophic event occurs: “Standard procedures regarding requests for assistance may be expedited or, under extreme circumstances, suspended in the immediate aftermath of an event of catastrophic magnitude” (pg. 43-44). Given the strategic importance of New Orleans and the magnitude of Katrina, this catastrophe clearly falls within such federal guidelines.

And finally:

At that time, the Federal Response Plan also calls for the immediate deployment of all “identified federal response resources,” and to immediately begin “necessary operations as required to commence life-safety activities” (pg. 44).
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Now the question is what part of the federal guidelines for Homeland Security does the President of the United States and the Director of FEMA not understand? If the state and locals failed at their efforts it’s because the feds failed. It is the job of the federal government to have the state and locals prepared. It’s like when a coach sends a baseball team out onto the field to play. It’s the job of the coach to ensure that the players are ready for what’s ahead. Brown you were the coach and you lost the game.

I think the funniest part of Brown’s testimony is when he blamed horseass.org for the failures of FEMA and ultimately of the federal government. Horseass.org was the blog that broke the story about Brown not being qualified for the job as well as having lied on his job application. I think the entire net is posting about this; you can read it here, here and here. Let me get this straight, it’s not the fact that Brown creatively forged his resume and that the Bush administration hired someone totally unqualified for the position, but it’s the fault of a lonely blog for breaking the story during the crisis? I’m not sure what to say about this one. But is the MSM so fractored that they can no longer do their job? And why when Bush gets caught in broad coverups is he not held responsible? I guess the major statement of the era is that nobody has a job and nobody is accountable for anything. We’re in bad shape people.

Tags:
FEMA, find the brownie