While in general I think the complaints about Brown are way overblown, I think that if you apply science and logic to the situation, more than one thing sets Louisiana apart from the other states. The biggest difference is the under-sea-level protected-by-levees locale. The other states may have flooding, but the water runs off, subsides, etc. That is the biggest difference. Call that Factor 1. That said, I do agree that the local/state incompetence is astonishing. Call that Factor 2. This one has multiple subfactors, including failure to evacuate (plus the notion that evacuation means moving people within the city rather than out!).

I agree with Susan above that Republican v. Democrat is not the only difference.

However, I appreciated your pointing out Brown’s previous record and the fact that it was good. I hadn’t seen that anywhere.

I agree with Susan above that Republican v. Democrat is not the only difference.

However, I appreciated your pointing out Brown’s previous record and the fact that it was good. I hadn’t seen that anywhere.

You have to give the lunatics a state to run. That way when they allow thousands in it to drown the rest of the country will learn a lesson. This seems difficult for those who die, I know. But electing liberals will lead to disasters on a much larger scale. Look what happened when LBJ got elected. Over 50,000 young Americans died while he had his finger stuck up his nose. Over and over again, we see. We were very lucky we didn’t have a major war while LBJ’s two political descendants, Carter and Clinton, were in office. Neither one of them could have prevented major defeats for this country. Carter couldn’t even go boat riding without getting beat. Why? Lying liberals have no guts. They can’t fight. They can’t win.

I think putting somebody else in charge, but not firing him, is a good idea. Let’s face it, this guy is radioactive in the MSM, and if he were still running the show, every time he did his job would give the MSM another opportunity to editorialize while pretending to present news:

FEMA director Michael Brown, who has been widely criticized for the Federal government’s slow response that doomed thousands of poor minority people their death, today announced…

Note the MSM have not, after 10 days of continuous effort, established a shred of evidence that he actually failed to do something he should/could have. The mere fact that he has been accused or criticized allows them to keep insinuating that he did.

That said, if it turns out that he padded his resume (for which there may be evidence) or screwed up the relief effort signficantly (for which there is none) he will have to be fired, and rightly so.

Not only does nobody “in charge” in LA seem to understand the proper role of FEMA, but nobody in the MSM seems to understand it either. One would hope that the MSM would use the opportunity to get the word out that there’s a really good reason why ready.gov talks about everyone having at least three days supplies in their disaster kit. Instead, they clutch desperately to the fundamental error that somehow the Federal response was somehow inadequate. From what I’ve seen in the news, the Federal response was (for the most part) superb. Some room for improvement has been exposed, mostly I think because of the sheer magnitude of the disaster. (HINT: print a map of the US, cut out two copies of Virginia, lay them together to form a rough rectangle, lay them over the Gulf Coast, and you’ve got a bit less than the devastated area.)

Director Brown would’ve looked less foolish if only somebody had established a standard procedure of having a person or several people monitoring the news outlets (including any local outlets still running). Of course, FEMA’s hands still would’ve been tied by Blancout’s lack of a brain, but at least he could’ve said he was aware of the Convention Center/Superdome problems and was eagerly awaiting a request by the Govn’r to provide assistance.

- Eric.

I predicted this comment would come from one of the partisan right-wing websites. No surprise at all that it is coming from the most partisan (well, after FreeRepublic.com, which doesnt allow people with dissenting opinions to post there) site of them all.

As another intelligent person said above, the fact that New Orleans is UNDER SEA LEVEL and had close to 500,000 people living in those areas.

This isnt about politics, or politcal parties, dumbass. Its about GEOGRAPHY and DEMOGRAPHICS.

Get a clue…

Brown’s main problem is he has no PR skills, and therefore makes statements to the press that can be twisted around to make him look stupid or inept.

Brown is just the fall guy.

My sense of the whole thing is everyone was just too complacent about Katrina and had no idea we were going to end up where we are - especially the state and local folks.

So the media wants to skewer Bush blah blah blah. What else is new. Brown said a few things that weren’t helpful, so he’s the odd man out. I kinda feel sorry for him in a way, because it appears to me there was nothing anyone could have done to mitigate the situation very much after the die was set, and the die was set when people weren’t evacuated properly.

I know in Florida during the 2004 hurricane season we were happy Dir Brown was in charge of FEMA. Of course we have a competent Governor, but I doubt the MSM cares about facts.

FEMA was submerged in 1999 after Floyd, but no one seemed to care. Let me see, I wonder why that was …

Um, fake resume?

Hi guys,

I really like how it’s finally come down to “liberals are to blame for the whole mess”. All I can say is it took you long enough to be honest with yourselves.

Anyways, I just posted an article on my new blog about Outsourcing Safety and how it may have contributed to the current state of a nation.

You’ll have to guess what nation I’m talking about.

Source

Yes Source, we are playing “blame the liberals”, because they are the ones to blame for the state of Louisiana and Lake New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Was a Conservative Republican in any of these positions: LA Governor LA Homeland Security Chief New Orleans Mayor

If the correct answer is “NO” (and it is), there are only Liberal Democrats to blame. (The Conservative Democrats like myself have been hooted out of the party and forced to support Dubya in order to have any sane governance of our Republic.)

I agree if our Esteemed Bloghost, the Counter of Drowned Buses, that Michael Brown has done good work in chairing FEMA relief efforts before. His work in supervising FEMA coverage for Katrina would definitely be passable, but some Louisiana Libs went and fiddled while their state drowned, and now they & their MSM idiot mouthpieces are in full Screeching Butt-Monkey mode to prevent another state from slipping beyond Democrat control in 2006 & 2008, and maybe forever, at this rate. Michael Brown’s only error so far is to be one of Dubya’s officials, and therefore like his chief to NEVER get credit for ANYTHING, lest he get GOOD POLLS. Liberals care a lot about GOOD POLLS, especially more than GOOD GOVERNMENT. See the Counter of Buses’ pics for the smoking gun proof of that.

I cannot believe that someone as intelligent as Bryan is boiling this down to a Republican/Democrat competency test. Let me point out that Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin are DINOs, just like John Breaux was. Republicans in New Orleans were ecstatic that Nagin was elected because he was considered a solid conservative in all the areas that mattered. I know because I was there and I voted for his liberal Democrat opponent. And let’s also remember that every other affected Parish in the State, St. Tammany, St. Bernard, Jefferson, Plaquemines, have Republican Mayors and Parish Presidents.

And on the flip side, one might also reasonably argue by your logic that the very fact of Louisiana and New Orleans being nominally headed up by a Democrat would also make it very easy to say that the travesty of the Federal Government’s fumbling the ball in Louisiana is a product of partisan politics. One could take the partisan divide you note and state that the Federal Government abandoned Louisiana and New Orleans, and not the other states, in particular because they WEREN’T run by Republicans. But that would be just as foolish a notion.

If you want to play this game, ask your conservative Republican colleagues in the State of Louisiana, and the City of New Orleans, what they think of your logic. They’d tell you to get lost.

This thing shouldn’t be a partisan football. It’s a damn sad travesty. And, yes, even Republicans in the state were affected by it and suffered from it. My ultra-conservative brother, for instance, lived two blocks from the 17th Street Canal, and his house is completely under water. For once, he and I are of one mind about this tragedy to our City and about those like the JYB who want to go down the perverse role of partisan blaming for a “natural” disaster.

I deplore Jesse Jackson, Kayne West, and others from the left who want to make this a partisan issue. And I likewise deplore the right wing (including the JYB) for its completely baseless partisan insinuations.

Ya man, try to balance yourself in the middle of this. Only problem be you gonna have a bunch of liberals falling on your head when the scale fall over. Cause lying, lunatic leftists are the ones who are professional blame gamers. The rest of us are just pointing out the facts, jack. Just for the record. We don’t go out and organize rallies, telethons and commissions of ommissions to raise the blame game to an art form while the rest of America is busy contributing to relief in one way or another. There’s the professionals. And then there are the little bloggers pushing the other way. Like I said, don’t get buried under a pile of fat liberal asses trying to sit in the middle with your little balancing act.

I’d just like to say that this is a really fun place to post. I’m getting some great quotes.

Source

I almost forgot.

Laguna Dave, and anyone else who thinks there has been no real criticism of Brown by anyone, you do remember this, right?

FEMA waited until after storm hit before calling 1000 Homeland Security workers to support the relief efforts.

Or is this still considered news to some people?

Never mind the definition of “is”, I want to find out what “heck of a job” is supposed to mean.

Source

Oh yeah, and has anyone actually looked at what the 100 disasters that Mike Brown have covered actually were? Just a question…

Or is this still considered news to some people?

Old hat. Debunked. Untrained volunteers not fulltime agents.

Micheal Brown was FEMA director through 4 hurricanes in 2004, Charley, Ivan, Frances, and Jeanne. Thats experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2004_Atlantic_hurricane_season

This includes the second most damaging hurricane in US history.

FEMA was never designed to operate with a state that refused to execute its own disaster plans, refused to maintain emergency communications and had a governor that refused to set up proper command anc control and refused to cooperate with FEMA and the President.

Granted Mike Brown doesnt inspire confidence, but these problems are institutional, not personal.

I DO think Brown should have gone, not merely kicked upstairs, because when the situation was so desperate he was not responsive for calling out EVERYTHING. There were firefighters in Atlanta attending Sexual Harrassment seminars (about 1500) and several hundred firefighters turned away at New Orleans. Clearly, Brown did not communicate within FEMA the true urgency of the situation, regardless of Blanco and Nagin’s ineptitude, and kick enough butts within the agency to shake loose every possible resource early.

That’s a management failure that deserves accountability. Simple as that.

HOWEVER … all that being said, I find much of the Media and Dem coverage (any difference nowadays?) to be laughably ignorant. The same folks (Media, Dems) who are screaming for Brown’s head signed off on his confirmation hearings. Nobody had any problems with him when it MATTERED (instead we had screaming over Bolton who offended the core of the Party which is basically Moveon and Kos). No one seems to have a clue WHAT FEMA is (an agency of only 4,000 total employees who sit at desks with phones and computers) and what it does (co-ordinates only, does not take over). You had Dems and the Media seriously suggesting FEMA should have evaced the population of New Orleans before the storm (they had no legal authority to do so nor the means).

ALL the Dems and Media SCREAMED to have FEMA within DHS because the 9/11 Commission demanded it. Gee how well that worked out; with Brown sitting FIVE MILES away from DHS Head Chertoff (a lawyer). Having a Lawyer and former Judge (Chertoff) head DHS and thus FEMA is a disaster, you’ll get legalistic responses to follow the rules not respond to the disaster and save lives. THIS is what Dems and the Media wanted (in the wake of Abu Graib and fears of profiling) so we traded lives for appeasing the 9/11 Commission and making all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed with respect to profiling of airline passengers and the like. Regardless of Brown staying or going, or his qualifications.

Once Ray Nagin let lawyers deter him from following his own plan and issuing evac orders at T-72 hours (fear of being sued by tourist/hotel industries); or evacing the poor (liability issues on buses) then thousands would die in the floods. Simple as that. Particularly since the Industrial Canal was breached by a barge not tied down (incredible!).

Once Blanco refused to use the National Guard people she DID HAVE (7,000 of them) to restore order EARLY in New Orleans, and kept the Red Cross and Salvation Army from feeding and giving water to people trapped in the Superdome and Convention Center (wrongly reported as FEMA’s doing, instead Blanco’s as reported by BOTH the Red Cross and Salvation Army); MORE people were doomed to an ugly death.

What WILL drive this is not the Media or Dems, but the lawyers. This is the mother of all lawsuits. Lawsuits against Blanco, Nagin, Gretna (kept New Orleans Convention Center folks from leaving) are looking at massive lawsuits for active malfeasance. FEMA? The worst you can say is that Brown did not mobilize all assets when he could. ALL critical decisions belong to Blanco or Nagin and thus the deep pockets.

Somewhat related .. Louisiana paid over $186 million over the last decade to the Saints as part of their subsidy. Ahem. There will be plenty of lawsuits all around I think.

In short, Brown should go just as good management, but that’s unrelated to the REASON for the New Orleans disaster, which lawsuits will undoubtedly show belongs to the locals.

The fact that NO is under sea level, and that people actually gambled their lives and fortunes by LIVING UNDER SEA LEVEL in a HURRICANE-PRONE territory, is relevant—-

Only to the extent that such people (conservative or liberal) are object lessons in absolute stupidity.

Taking and keeping the “holy land” of high ground is not merely a military asset; it’s what we usually call common-f%$#^&g sense.

Boris said this:

“Old hat. Debunked. Untrained volunteers not fulltime agents.”

Now, I guess I’m just ignorant. But when I read…

“Make available DHS employees willing to deploy as soon as possible”

I assumed they were DHS employees, not volunteers. I wonder why I though that…

For anyone interested, here again is the link to the memo.

Source.

One of these days, I’m gonna figure out how to do italics…

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has asked for 2,000 Homeland Security Department employees to volunteer for two weeks working in the areas struck by Hurricane Katrina.

Furthermore: Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed, he said.

Why should I have to go and find stuff for idiots like you.

Source is flaking and Laguna Dave rocks!

Dad29 - One question: Where do you live?

So, when you see the word “volunteer” used in that context, what exactly do You think it means? Cause I’m confused. Clearly they were being paid. And since they’re DHS employees, I’d assume that they’d probably also have some concept of how to respond to a disaster. Maybe when they say “volunteer” they just mean an employee who agrees to go. They did have an important job. After all, Russ Knocke also said:

“Brown’s memo on Aug. 29th aimed to assemble the NECCESARY federal work force to support the rescues, establish communications and coordinate with victims and community groups”

So maybe that’s why security and rescue were slow coming and real aid wasn’t seen for days. Maybe? Cause when you think about it, if this is FEMA’s action plan, bringing in people who need 48 hours of training before they can be of any use, maybe it would have been a good idea to get them going before the storm hit? Remember our times lines.

Source.

So maybe that’s why security and rescue were slow coming

No wonder you can’t find your own stuff, your reading comprehension sucks. Did you miss the line …

Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed

Just can’t let go of it can you? These volunteers were to offload paperpusher and PR work from the rescue workers already deployed.

As another intelligent person said above, the fact that New Orleans is UNDER SEA LEVEL and had close to 500,000 people living in those areas.

I love how the original commenter saying the above, seems convinced this is Michael Brown’s fault.

Speaking of reading comprehension…

“Brown’s memo on Aug. 29th aimed to assemble the NECCESARY federal work force to support the rescues”

Now, when I think of “support the rescues” I think of everything that’s needed to actually have a rescue. From figuring out how the rescuers would be best used, to figuring out where they’d sleep at night, to figuring out exactly how many and what type of rescuers were needed. You know, the stuff paper pushers do. Coordination.

And again, I ask, when you see “volunteers” what do you think it means?

Source

Volunteers drawn from the ranks of DHS workers who are not part of deployable rescue operations and require 48 hours of training would not be put in charge of operations. So unless I was a clueless moonbat I would trust this statement, which describes to the volunteers what they would be doing if they volunteered, over your interpretation of some office memo boilerplate.

Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed

But then, I’m not a clueless moonbat, are you?

“The first thing we’ll do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Shakespeare, as always, lends his pen & wit to the average man’s frustration with legal semantics made at the expense of daily life. Elected officials are elected to enact the policies they said they would, and to provide the political leadership & guidance of their conmmunities when required by law or circumstance. They are NOT elected to second-guess their decisions, let over-paid shysters second-guess their decisions for them, or to shirk their responsibilities by saying “let’s wait and see”. If the politicians of Louisiana and Lake New Orleans should have done any of those things, they ought to be tossed out of office on their ears. Overpaid “advisors” and staff lawyers hired solely to be CYA butt-monkeys should be ridden out of the state on rails. They and their spineless second-guessing have done more to make Katrina a needlessly lethal & destructive hurricane than any unfortunate errors or meaningless procedurals of FEMA ever did.

Source, did you inject your nether regions with novacaine before arriving?

Because I can not think of any other explanation for the fact that you can’t feel the butt-kicking you are getting.

boris,

You keep saying the same thing.

“Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed”

This was said by Russ Knocke, DHS spokesman. He also said…

“Brown’s memo on Aug. 29th aimed to assemble the NECCESARY federal work force to support the rescues, establish communications and coordinate with victims and community groups”

Here’s a helpful tip. When someone points out that your argument is incomplete (ie, it cherry picks a single line out of a statement without taking into account the full context of the statement) it’s best to revise the argument to match the new information you recieve.

Further, I don’t recall saying anything about those DHS employee’s being in Charge of anything. I mean, i guess making up straw men is easier then dealing with the actual points I make.

Clearly these 1000 or so DHS employees weren’t in charge. They were merely the work force needed to support the rescue and relief efforts. Who were only called into action after the storm had hit, not 3 days earlier when the state of emergency had been declared.

Source

As for novacaine, I assure you that if I had any I wouldn’t waste it on my ass. I’d inject it into one of my hands and give myself “A Stranger”.

Ok fool …

Volunteers drawn from the ranks of DHS workers who are not part of deployable rescue operations and require 48 hours of training would not be put in charge of coordinating rescue operations.

figuring out exactly how many and what type of rescuers were needed. You know, the stuff paper pushers do. Coordination

But now … after having your nose rubbed in it … you quote coordinate with victims and hope nobody notices your sleight of words.

Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed

Now as to cherry picking, based on the true situation, my facts from the start gave a much clearer picture than your interpretation of what the word NECESSARY implies.

Thank you very much!