Hurricane Katrina and Brownie...the gifts that keep on giving.
Michael D. Brown was days away from announcing plans to resign as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, according to e-mails released by separate House and Senate investigations into the government's flawed response to the disaster.
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"The fact that it appears that Michael Brown was planning to resign may explain in part his curious detachment during the Katrina catastrophe," Collins said.
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Brown had privately shared his intentions with acquaintances, and FEMA announced in the aftermath of Brown's resignation that the director of the agency's recovery division, Daniel A. Craig, had also planned to leave a month later.
In an Aug. 31 e-mail to FEMA aide James Tillie, Brown wrote, "I should have done my announcement a week early." That evening, Craig wrote to Brown: "We need to get this done right or neither of us are leaving on great terms . . . and we were days away."
Uh, yeah. What was your first clue there, Sherlock? Not leaving on great terms...gee whiz, is his next job going to be Mr. Obvious?
posted by Jo Fish on 10.26.05 at 12:08 AM
Comments:
I'm hoping Brownie's next job involves a close proximity to fries...
The fact that drownie is still on the FEMA payroll as a consultant, drawing full salary and working from home, should have every US citizen outraged. The fact that it doesn't is further proof that Seymore Hersh was right when, speaking about our late great republic, said: "We're fucked."
posted by: Klyde on 10.26.05 at 07:31 AM [permalink]
From what I can tell, the real deal is the GOP decided to move more responsibility for disaster relief down to the state and local level. This decision didn't filter down to the locals, though. That's why they were expected to prepare detailed lists of exactly what they needed.
It was equal parts incompetence and right-wing ideology.
posted by: Tony on 10.26.05 at 03:23 PM [permalink]
FEMA just extended Brown's contract for 30 days so he can continue investigating himself. Best quotes from the Yahoo article:
"Keeping Mike Brown at Homeland Security to investigate his role in the Katrina fiasco is like paying Ken Lay to run a price gouging investigation," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (news, bio, voting record) of Mississippi, ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee.
Lay is the former Enron chairman now charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with the energy company's collapse.
Rep. Gene Taylor (news, bio, voting record), D-Miss., whose coastal district was among the hardest hit by Katrina, said Brown's contract extension is an insult to taxpayers, particularly those Gulf Coast residents "whose lives were in danger in the aftermath of that storm because of Mike Brown's incompetence."
"I've got tens of thousands of people living in two-man igloo tents tonight, and less than a quarter of the people who have asked for FEMA travel trailers have gotten them," Taylor said. "And at the same time they can find $140,000 a year to pay this incompetent son of a gun; that's ridiculous."
