Archives for September 2005

A couple weeks back I was asked by Jennifer McCausland to co-host an upcoming fundraiser for King County Executive Ron Sims. I reluctantly said yes, not because I’m reluctant about Ron, but because of some misplaced sense of journalistic ethics. But then, I’m not a journalist and I make no pretense of being objective… so I thought, what the hell.

Well, my few seconds of ethical wrangling proved unnecessary, because Jennifer just called to tell me that Ron has decided to turn the event into a fundraiser for the WA chapter of the American Red Cross, to help support their relief efforts for the 2000 Katrina refugees being evacuated to WA state.

Sure, Ron’s got a substantial money advantage over David Irons, but candidates simply don’t pass up fundraisers in the heat of a campaign. Who knows what kind of vicious “independent expenditure” Irons is coordinating, and Ron might need every last penny to respond. Ron’s decision is thus as selfless as it is generous, and both he and Jennifer deserve some applause.

Anyway, since I’m a co-host, I’ve decided to invite all my readers (well… most of you.) So here’s the scoop:

WA Red Cross Fundraiser
Monday, September 19th
5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

At the home of Jennifer McCausland
2601 Cascadia Avenue South
Seattle’s Mt. Baker Neighborhood

Jennifer has a lovely old house, and this is a great opportunity to meet Ron, have some good conversation and a glass of wine, and raise some money for a very worthy cause. If you can make it, please R.S.V.P. to me, so we have an accurate head count.

The refugees coming here from New Orleans have not only lived through a week of horror, but have lost absolutely everything. They need our compassion and our help to get back on their feet and move on with their lives. So please accept my invitation to attend this fundraiser… and don’t forget to bring your checkbook.

Ron, Jennifer and I hope to see you there.

Oh man… I wish I’d thought of this!

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff and FEMA director Michael Brown: make headway…

Chertoff: All I’m tryin’ to find out is what’s the guy’s name in charge of food and water.
Brown: : Oh, no, wait a minute, don’t switch ’em around. What is in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I’m not askin’ you who’s in charge of evacuation.
Brown: : Who is on food and water.
Chertoff: I don’t know!
Brown: : He’s in charge of media spin…now we’re not talkin’ ’bout him.
Chertoff: Now, how did I get on media spin?
Brown: : You mentioned his name!
Chertoff: If I mentioned the media spin guy’s name, who did I say is in charge of media spin?
Brown: : No…Who’s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: Never mind food and water, I wanna know what’s the guy’s name in charge of media spin.
Brown: : No, What’s in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I’m not askin’ you who’s in charge of evacuation!
Brown: : Who’s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: I don’t know!
Brown: : He’s in charge of media spin.
Chertoff: Aaah! Would you please stay on media spin and don’t go off it?
Brown: : What was it you wanted?
Chertoff: Now who’s in charge of media spin?
Brown: : Now why do you insist on putting Who in charge of media spin?
Chertoff: Why? Who am I putting over there?
Brown: : Yes. But we don’t want him there.
Chertoff: What’s the guy’s name in charge of media spin?
Brown: : What is in charge of evacuation.
Chertoff: I’m not askin’ you who’s in charge of evacuation.
Brown: : Who’s in charge of food and water.
Chertoff: I don’t know.
Brown: & Chertoff: MEDIA SPIN!!
Chertoff: You got someone in charge of fixing the levees?
Brown: : Oh yes!
Chertoff: The guy’s name?
Brown: : Why.
Chertoff: I don’t know, I just thought I’d ask you.
Brown: : Well, I just thought I’d tell you…

Last week I broke the story about FEMA director Mike Brown, whose ten-year tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association left him stunningly unqualified to lead national relief efforts. It has been a pleasant surprise to watch the story take flight, first on the national blogosphere, and now in the MSM. But none of the news coverage has been quite as gratifying as seeing a reference creep into a column by the New York Times’ Paul Krugman.

Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh’s college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency’s director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.

That contempt, as I’ve said, reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility.

The administration has always tried to treat 9/11 purely as a lesson about good versus evil. But disasters must be coped with, even if they aren’t caused by evildoers. Now we have another deadly lesson in why we need an effective government, and why dedicated public servants deserve our respect. Will we listen?

I have received emails or comments from more than a dozen IAHA members, and while a handful have taken issue with my reporting of the circumstances surrounding Brown’s resignation, it doesn’t really matter if he was forced to resign or his departure was mutual. It doesn’t even matter if his tenure was indeed “an unmitigated, total fucking disaster” as my original source contended. What matters is that his job experience left him totally unprepared to manage our nation’s disaster relief operations… a lack of preparation clearly evidenced by FEMA’s criminally inadequate response in New Orleans.

The issue here, as Krugman and others point out, is cronyism… cronyism that in this instance, may have turned out to have fatal consequences.

The story of Brown, the horse show commissioner cum FEMA chief, adds much needed color and context to accounts of the Bush administration’s disastrous disaster relief efforts, and its haphazard approach to political appointments in general. And the story of the story — how an angry email from a longtime HA reader moved international headlines — is a vivid example of how the blogosphere can amplify the voice of the people, so that any one citizen can speak as loud or louder than the most obstreperous talking head.

Truth is, I didn’t really even know what I had. I rarely cross-post to Daily Kos, but since this was a national issue, and I was angry, I thought, what the hell. My original headline was a profane rant, and the first few comments insisted that this was too important a diary to be lost due to a non-descriptive headline. I followed their advice, changed the headline, went to bed… and awoke the next morning to find the story featured on Kos, and the traffic flooding in. Then the calls and emails from the MSM started coming, and I knew we were going to move headlines.

So if any of you out there believe that you cannot make a difference, let this be lesson to the contrary. A single email from a horse breeder to the proprietor of an oddly named local blog provided the angle the MSM needed to expose the Bush administration cronyism that doomed thousands of Katrina’s victims to a week of unimaginable — and unnecessary — suffering, and which may have condemned thousands of others to an untimely death.

This is democracy in action.

Bush has nominated John Roberts to succeed William Rehnquist as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. I’m guessing Roberts’ confirmation has just been elevated from a contentious sure thing, to a real political drama.

When current FEMA chief Mike Brown is eventually forced to resign from this job too, chances are his old college buddy Joe Allbaugh will once again help him land on his feet, this time with a cushy job at Halliburton. That’s where former FEMA chief Allbaugh landed, and surprise… now Halliburton subsidiary KBR has started landing big contracts to participate in the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

As reported last week by Halliburton Watch, the US Navy has asked Halliburton to repair naval facilities damaged by Katrina under an existing $500 million contract. Earlier this year the Navy awarded KBR and three other companies $350 million in contracts to repair facilities damaged in 2004 by Hurricane Ivan. And according to the New York Times, Halliburton is planning to profit further from Katrina:

Although Halliburton has not yet been asked to work on installations around New Orleans, it said on Friday that it would begin performing damage assessments there “as soon as it is deemed safe to do so.”

No doubt helping out with both the assessments and the bids will be Allbaugh, who Halliburton hired in March as a consultant and lobbyist. Allbaugh’s lobbying disclosure form states that he will “educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues.” And who better to educate Brown, the current head of FEMA, than Allbaugh, his predecessor, benefactor and college roommate?

[Cross-posted to Daily Kos]

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars, a truly heart wrenching interview with Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press. (Quicktime or WMP)

The prepared statement at the beginning is damning enough, but stick with it until the horrible, horrible end. And if you can’t get past the busy servers, here’s a transcript:

“The guy who runs this building I’m in, Emergency Management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” and he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you.” Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday… and she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night! [Sobbing] Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The Secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For god’s sakes, just shut up and send us somebody.”

And when you’re done drying your eyes, wet them again with this clip of Sen. Mary Landreau threatening to punch President Bush… before she breaks down in tears herself. (Quicktime or WMP)

I’m heading off to Yakima for a day of u-pick and me-drink. So here’s a special Open Thread, Sunday Edition. Have at it.

… Chief Justice William Rehnquist is dead. May he rest in peace.

After dismally failing to adequately respond to Hurricane Katrina, FEMA Director Mike Brown must now prepare to weather the full fury of the MSM. The Boston Herald struck first, corroborating my post that reported Brown was forced to resign from his job at the International Arabian Horse Association. And now Knight-Ridder further exposes the stunningly unqualified Brown with a scathing bio that is sure to hit sunday papers across the US.

From failed Republican congressional candidate to ousted “czar” of an Arabian horse association, there was little in Michael D. Brown’s background to prepare him for the fury of Hurricane Katrina.

“He’s done a hell of a job, because I’m not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm,” said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief. “The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience.”

As Josh Marshall explains in his coverage on Talking Points Memo, Brown’s main qualification for the post — perhaps his only — is the fact that he was a college roommate of former FEMA head and Bush political fixer Joe Allbaugh. And as Knight-Ridder points out, Brown’s prior experience with disaster was a disastrous run for Congress.

Brown ran for Congress in 1988 and won 27 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Glenn English. He spent the 1990s as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating.

“I wouldn’t have regarded his position in the horse industry as a platform to where he is now,” said Tom Connelly, a former association president.
…
“He just wouldn’t follow instruction,” said Bill Pennington, another former association president. “Mike was bullheaded and he was gonna do it his way. Period.”

It was Pennington who confirmed to the Herald that Brown was indeed asked to resign, and even Connelly, who speaks positively about him, calls Brown “abrasive.” This is consistent with emails I’ve received from a number of horse breeders — even those who respect him — who call Brown a “tough bastard” with a quick temper.

No doubt Brown had many enemies at the IAHA, and while there are conflicting stories as to the direct circumstances surrounding his resignation, he clearly fell victim to inside politics. Some say Brown was forced out by breeders angry at strict rules and enforcement, others say it was the burden of costly litigation. But the most convincing explanation I received was this inside report:

To help pay our mounting legal bills, there were people raising money for the IAHA Legal Defense Fund. Mike was suppose to be helping to raise some of the money. Mike it seems was trying to raise money for his own legal defense fund as well as IAHA’s and some people were willing to donate to him. There were two major problems with this. First, ALL of Mike’s legal bills including any personal ones were to be paid by IAHA. So he had NO legal bills so there was no reason for him to need this money to pay legal bills. Second, Mike was in a position that he needed to be seen as never playing favorites or having any loyalty to any individual. Many felt that taking this money would look very bad.

I was not personally at the IAHA Board of Directors Meeting when this occurred however I have been told about it by several people that were there and they all give the exact same story. There are many other things that people did not like about Mike’s job performance at IAHA but this is why he resigned.

Essentially, Brown was raising money from the very breeders he was charged with regulating, and that was the straw that broke the horse’s back.

But I don’t think the reason behind his resignation really matters. The point is, nothing in his IAHA tenure prepared him for running FEMA. Indeed, the fact that he fell victim to the inside politics of a horse breeders association, calls into question his ability to function amidst the high stakes political gamesmanship of the nation’s capitol.

The other issue that has become abundantly clear is that the misleading reference to the Olympics that was in the White House press release announcing Brown’s nomination was no accident. The transcript of Brown’s confirmation hearing shows virtually the identical wording used in the opening statement from Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Prior to his current job, from 1991 to 2000, Mr. Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the National Governing Organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Yet a number of IAHA/AHA members have made it abundantly clear that the organization is not in any way associated with the Olympics. Indeed, Arabians are not part of any Olympic competition. This was clearly an attempt by the White House to gussy up the resume of a man lacking the experience necessary to lead a major disaster relief effort… a lack of experience Brown has shown in his mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina.

More to come. The Denver Post is preparing a piece for Sunday, and the NY Times is working the story as well.

[Cross-posted to Daily Kos]

Update:
The NY Times article is online… third paragraph:

Mr. Brown has come under fire from critics of the federal government’s hurricane response, who describe him as a political appointee who had no disaster experience before joining FEMA.

Though he once worked as a municipal official in Edmond, Okla., Mr. Brown’s major previous job was as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, from which he resigned under pressure in 2001 after a controversial 10 years.

Not much, but it makes the point that Brown was a political appointee who had no disaster experience.

The LA Times has a nice lead:

The leader of the U.S. government’s much-criticized handling of hurricane relief efforts in the Gulf Coast came to Washington in 2001 with scant background in dealing with natural disasters. But he had an important connection: His new boss was an old friend who had managed George W. Bush’s successful campaign for the White House.

Michael D. Brown left his job in Colorado supervising horse-show judges to work for Bush’s longtime political aide, Joe Allbaugh, who was heading the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the new administration.

Brown had been a lawyer active in Republican politics whose most relevant emergency response experience was a stint supervising police and fire departments as assistant city manager in an Oklahoma City suburb.

But within two years, he rose from FEMA’s general counsel to deputy director and, when Allbaugh left, he moved to the agency’s top spot.

That’s the MSM’s take on this story: cronyism. And it’s a pretty good take.

The Denver Post weighs in, and with new information!

Former association board member Karl V. Hart of Florida alleges that in 2000 Brown improperly accepted a check for nearly $50,000 from a prominent breeder and put it toward his own legal defense for his work as commissioner. Board members thought this was improper because Brown already had protection, from the association’s legal team, Hart said.

Because of the money dispute, Brown was asked to resign, Hart said.

One of my sources had hinted at this, but was not a board member and only had hearsay, so I couldn’t use it. Nice reporting by Jeremy Meyer to follow this up.

And finally, my favorite take on this story comes from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

So let me see if I understand this. Brown’s a Republican from the southwest. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress when he was thirty-three. Then he bounced from job to job, finally getting into the sports business in mid-life, before getting canned. And then he used connections to land himself a high-powered position in the federal government for which he had no apparent experience at all.

How could such a fellow possibly be in the Bush administration?

Hmmm.

My 15 minutes of attention from the national blogosphere is bringing quite a few newcomers to HA, some of whom are apparently unfamiliar with the peculiar etiquette of discourse we’ve established here. For example, I just got the following email from Robert:

Oh, oh.. I can’t wait till we finally get into the streets and start the great purge. Horses ass piece of shit liberal opportunists will rue the day.

Fuck you shitface.

Um… in the future Bob, crypto-fascist, obscenity laden threats of violence belong in the comment threads, not sent via email. And oh… thanks for stopping by.

An absolutely must view video clip courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

Horror Show

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera were livid about the situation in NOLA as they appeared on H&C. When Hannity tried his usual spin job and said “let’s get this in perspective,” Smith chopped him off at the knees and started yelling at him saying, “This is perspective!” It was shocking.

Video-WMP-very big file so I had to compress it

Video QT

This is Fox News, for chrissake…! FOX FUCKING NEWS!!! (And don’t you trolls dare snipe back at me with your vicious, hate-filled comments until you watch the clip… the whole damn clip!)

I’m speechless… I’m literally crying. Six days later this isn’t a natural disaster… it’s a human tragedy created by callous and incalculable incompetence! This is a moral outrage!

If we were like Japan, a nation that at least feigns a deep respect for honor… then President Bush would be keeled over on the floor of the Oval Office with his sword in one hand and his guts in the other.

From the American Red Cross website:

Disaster FAQs
Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

• Access to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
• The state Homeland Security Department had requested–and continues to request–that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

You mean to tell me that the feds are withholding humanitarian aid in the hopes of smoking out the refugees? You mean like the thousands of sick and elderly who were physically unable to evacuate… or the tens of thousands of urban poor who lacked the cars or financial resources to do so? You mean like the untold multitude — men, women and children — starving and dying at the Convention Center, crying to the media for help for five days before a relief convoy finally arrived?

Is our government out of its fucking mind?

No wonder the Bush administration seems so taken aback by the sudden wave of criticism over federal relief efforts… they’re going exactly according to plan! It’s not that we couldn’t deliver aid to the victims of this catastrophe, it’s that we didn’t!

Teach a man to fish, and all that, I guess.

Yesterday was a busy day, as Daily Kos and a number of other national blogs picked up my story on FEMA director Mike Brown, whose prior disaster experience was being one. Slight bump in traffic.

Today, the story is starting to make it into the MSM, and the real journalists are both corroborating and expanding on what I reported. First to the virtual newsstand is the Boston Herald:

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.
…
Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders’ and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

“We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,” explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner’s office. “This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years,” she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

“He was asked to resign,” Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.

So how do you get a job like this with absolutely no qualifications? The Herald reports that soon after his resignation, Brown was brought into the administration by his old college roommate, Joseph Allbaugh, who was heading up FEMA at the time. When Allbaugh quit in 2003 to work for the president’s reelection campaign, Bush appointed Brown to replace him.

And how did his job at the IAHA qualify Brown to coordinate disaster relief? Well, I asked several former IAHA members, and this was the typical response:

“I personally can not think of any way that being the IAHA Judges and Stewards Commissioner prepared him to be the FEMA Director.”

There you have it, straight from the horse’s… um… mouth.

As my regular readers know, I am not often at a loss for words, but I’ve been struggling all day to give voice to my feelings about the horror we have watched unfold in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. And so as I finish putting order to my thoughts, I’d like to quickly point you towards what the editorial boards of some major newspapers are saying, as collated by the folks at Editor and Publisher. Note that some of these are very conservative newspapers.

Dallas Morning News

Who is in charge?

Losing New Orleans to a natural disaster is one thing, but losing her to hopeless gunmen and a shameful lack of response is unfathomable. How is it that the U.S. military can conquer a foreign country in a matter of days, but can’t stop terrorists controlling the streets of America or even drop a case of water to desperate and dying Americans?

President Bush, please see what’s happening. The American people want to believe the government is doing everything it can do — not to rebuild or to stabilize gas prices — just to restore the most basic order. So far, they are hearing about Herculean efforts, but they aren’t seeing them.

The Washington Times

Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it’s past time. What took the government so long? The thin veneer separating civilization and chaos, which we earlier worried might collapse in the absence of swift action, has collapsed.

We expected to see, many hours ago, the president we saw standing atop the ruin of the World Trade Center, rallying a dazed country to action. We’re pleased he finally caught a ride home from his vacation, but he risks losing the one trait his critics have never dented: His ability to lead, and be seen leading.

Philadelphia Inquirer

“I hope people don’t point — play politics during this period.” That was President Bush’s response yesterday to criticism of the U.S. government’s inexplicably inadequate relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Sorry, Mr. President, legitimate questions are being asked about the lack of rescue personnel, equipment, food, supplies, transportation, you name it, four days after the storm. It’s not “playing politics” to ask why. It’s not “playing politics” to ask questions about what Americans watched in horror on TV yesterday: elderly people literally dying on the street outside the New Orleans convention center because they were sick and no one came to their aid.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

But whatever the final toll, the wrenching misery and trauma confronting the people of New Orleans is much greater than it should be — as it is, in fact, for tens of thousands of people along the strip of Mississippi that was most brutally assaulted by the storm. The immediate goal must be to ease that suffering. The second goal must be to understand how we came to this sorry situation.

How do you justify cutting $250 million in scheduled spending for crucial pump and levee work in the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), authorized by Congress in 1995?

How do you explain the almost total lack of coordination among federal, state and local officials both in Louisiana and Mississippi? No one appeared in charge.

Des Moines Register

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was the first practical test of the new homeland-security arrangements and the second test of President Bush in the face of a national crisis.

The performance of both has been less than stellar so far.

Katrina was a disaster that came with at least two days of warning, and it has been more than four days since the storm struck. Yet on Thursday, refugees still huddled unrescued in the unspeakable misery of the New Orleans Superdome. Patients in hospitals without power and water clung to life in third-world conditions. Untold tragedies lie yet to be discovered in the rural lowlands of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

I’m posting the weekly open thread a little early today, because I’m trying write another piece on Hurricane Katrina, and I’m finding it exceedingly difficult to put the horror into words. But talk about whatever you want here.