FEMA Director Incompetent

[Guitar Shark]

CNN BREAKING NEWS -- FEMA director Michael Brown being sent back to
Washington; Homeland Security Director Chertoff to announce new leader for on-the-ground Katrina relief efforts, senior administration official tells CNN.

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[FORD]

BCE pulls Brownie from relief effort

FEMA chief relieved of Katrina duties
Move follows controversy over Brown’s qualifications, agency’s response
NBC News and news services
Updated: 1:36 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2005

WASHINGTON - Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, government sources said Friday.

Government sources disclosed the move but spoke on condition of anonymity because the change hadn't been officially announced. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff was expected to announce the change at a 1:45 p.m. ET news conference.

Brown will be replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who earlier this week was named his deputy to oversee relief and rescue efforts.

Brown is being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, La. He was the primary official overseeing the federal government's response to the disaster.

FEMA has been criticized for its response to the disaster, and Time magazine on Friday reported that Brown’s official biography overstated his emergency-management experience.

Brown's biography on the FEMA Web site says he had once served as an "assistant city manager with emergency services oversight," and a White House news release in 2001 said Brown had worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., in the 1970s "overseeing the emergency-services division."

However, a city spokeswoman told the magazine Brown had actually worked as "an assistant to the city manager."

"The assistant is more like an intern," Claudia Deakins told the magazine. "Department heads did not report to him." Time posted the article on its Web site late on Thursday.

A former mayor of Edmond, Randel Shadid, confirmed that Friday. Shadid told The Associated Press that Brown had been an assistant to the city manager, and never assistant city manager.

“I think there’s a difference between the two positions,” said Shadid. “I would think that is a discrepancy.”

FEMA, White House response
Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA’s office of public affairs, told Time that while Brown began as an intern, he became an “assistant city manager” with a distinguished record of service.

“According to Mike Brown,” Andrews told Time, a large portion of points raised by the magazine are “very inaccurate.”

White House press secretary Scott McClellan referred all questions about Brown’s resume to FEMA.

McClellan said the White House’s earlier statements that Brown retained the president’s confidence remain true — but he declined to state that confidence outright.

“I’d leave it where I left it,” McClellan said. “We appreciate the work of all those who have been working around the clock to respond to what has been on the worst natural disasters in our nation’s history.”

Other work experience
Brown, a lawyer, was appointed as FEMA's general counsel in 2001 and became head of the agency in 2003. The work in Edmond is the only previous disaster-related experience cited in the biographies. Brown served as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association before taking the FEMA job.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut "Democrat" , had cited Brown's Edmond experience as "particularly useful" for FEMA during a hearing in 2002.

Critics, including some Republicans, have blasted Brown for delays and missteps in the federal government's response to Katrina's deadly and devastating assault on the Gulf Coast last week. Some have demanded his ouster.

Bush last week gave Brown a word of support, saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

This week, Bush put the U.S. Coast Guard's chief of staff in charge of the federal recovery effort in New Orleans and gave Vice President Dick Cheney the job of cutting through bureaucratic delays.

Other FEMA officials
The Washington Post reported on Friday that five of eight top FEMA officials had come to their jobs with virtually no experience in handling disasters. The agency's top three leaders, including Brown, had ties to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign or the White House advance operation.

Former Edmond city manager Bill Dashner recalled for Time that Brown had worked for him as an administrative assistant while attending Central State University.

"Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt," Dashner told Time.

Edmond's population is about 70,000.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9266986/

[FORD]

"Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt," Dashner told Time.

Yeah, that qualifies him to manage national fucking calamities alright

[ELVIS]

Good!

When this guy first appeared on TV while I was evacuating the nursing home, I knew he was clueless...

I could have done better...

[Nickdfresh]

CHERTOFF is announcing it now. Thank God this clown has been sacked. At least Pres. BUSH did the right thing here.

[ELVIS]

..as he often does...

[FORD]

Originally posted by ELVIS
..as he often does...

About as often as Sammy Hagar makes a decent record.

[Angel]

Originally posted by ELVIS
Good!

When this guy first appeared on TV while I was evacuating the nursing home, I knew he was clueless...

I could have done better...

Please tell me you WEREN'T working at the home where they left the patients behind to die...

By the way ELVIS how & where are you?

[ELVIS]

No, we evacuated all of our residents in plenty of time...

I'm in Lockport, LA. The nursing home is in Cut Off, a tiny town further down the bayou in a dangerous area...

We did great!

Everybody lived!

:D

[Angel]

Originally posted by ELVIS
No, we evacuated all of our residents in plenty of time...

I'm in Lockport, LA. The nursing home is in Cut Off, a tiny town further down the bayou in a dangerous area...

We did great!

Everybody lived!

:D

I'm SO glad to hear that! Otherwise, I would have had to come down there and torture you in the worst ways possible!

[ELVIS]

Hmmm...

[blueturk]

Brown Just One Of FEMA Top Dogs With Little Or No Qualifications

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usfema094417778sep09,0,3221751.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

Dubious Resume
As calls increase for FEMA chief's ouster, new doubts come to light about where he did, and didn't, work

BY CRAIG GORDON AND DANIEL WAGNER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

September 9, 2005


WASHINGTON -- New questions surfaced yesterday about whether the White House inflated FEMA chief Michael Brown's past work experience when he took over the agency, where several of the most senior managers bring little or no disaster-response experience to their posts, including Brown.

The official White House announcement of Brown's nomination to head FEMA in January 2003 lists his previous experience as "the Executive Director of the Independent Electrical Contractors," a trade group based in Alexandria, Va.

But two officials of the group told Newsday this week that Brown, in fact, never was the national head of the group but did serve as the executive director of a regional chapter, based in Colorado, where Brown has lived.

And, Brown's immediate successor as the Rocky Mountain executive director, Terry Moreland, recalled that Brown held the job for less than six weeks before becoming FEMA general counsel in 2001.

Upon learning that the 2003 press release on the White House Web site states that Brown was the IEC executive director, the group's current top administrator, Larry Mullins asked, "Do you think I could get that taken down?" and said he planned to call the White House to have it removed.

At the same time, the January 2003 White House press release on Brown's nomination dropped any reference to Brown's main job prior to joining FEMA in 2001 - a decade-long stint with the International Arabian Horse Association.

FEMA spokesman Mark Pfeifle said last night that documents Brown provided to the White House stated that he was the interim director of the group in Colorado but "when it was written up in the public release, it did not contain that portion." Pfeifle did not know why, and the White House did not immediately return calls for comment.

With calls growing for his ouster, Brown's post with the Arabian horse association has come under much ridicule in the days since Hurricane Katrina. Brown's critics among Democrats have cited it as further proof that he lacked any significant qualifications to run the nation's disaster-response agency. The Denver Post reported that Brown resigned after group members questioned his handling of a $50,000 gift.

Brown is a Republican lawyer who is a longtime friend of former FEMA chief Joe Allbaugh, who himself took over after serving as President George W. Bush's campaign manager in 2000. Brown's only previous emergency experience was as an assistant city manager in the 1970s in Edmond, Okla., whose population in 2000 was 68,315, overseeing emergency services.

But Brown is not the only member of FEMA's top management team who comes to the job with ties to the Bush administration but little or no hands-on emergency response experience, according to official FEMA bios.

Brown's No. 2 aide, Patrick Rhode, is a former Bush campaign staffer who later worked on the White House advance staff, which coordinates presidential appearances.

Scott Morris, FEMA's former deputy chief of staff and now head of its Florida hurricane-recovery office, also worked on the 2000 Bush campaign in Austin as a media strategist.

Daniel Craig, who took over FEMA's recovery division in 2003, was a regional official for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and active in Republican politics in Connecticut.

And FEMA's No. 3 official, Brooks Altshuler, previously also worked on the White House advance team.

Vice President Dick Cheney defended FEMA on a tour of the region, saying he believes that the Bush administration managed to "strike the right balance" between political appointees and career professionals to oversee the relief efforts.

FEMA long has had a reputation of being a political dumping ground - though former Clinton administration FEMA chief James Lee Witt generally won good marks for trying to bring more professionals into the agency. Now former FEMA union chief Pleasant Mann charges: "If you look at most of the people down [from the top], it takes you quite a ways before you find someone who got here because of emergency management experience."

[ODShowtime]

Originally posted by DrMaddVibe
As far as Florida goes...69 feet below sea level in the gulf region...its not rocket science. Andrew was a wake-up call to builders here in Florida.

Live and learn...also we take evacuations a little more serious than inventing a new cocktail and throwing a party.

All I know is, I'm not playin' around. If we're supposed to evacuate, I'm gettin the FUCK out of dodge. I'm sure as hell not leaving that clown jeb to take care of me!

canned food and shotguns!

[ODShowtime]

Bush last week gave Brown a word of support, saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Do you guys see how easily this clown fritters away his credibility?

one week: "you're doing a heck of a job."

next week fired.

[FORD]

Well, giving credit where credit is due, FEMA has now successfully evactuated ONE person from New Orleans....... Brownie.