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The response to Katrina was the fuck up.....are the people to blame because they lived there.......by that logic no one should live in California near the fault line, no one should live on a coast where hurricanes frequent.......had the levies been adequate and had the recommendations of the Army Corps of Engineers been listen to.......but back on topic about Bush and Katrina look at who the fuck he appointed to run the show, a guy with zero experience........
FEMA Cronyism Led to Failure
Michael Brown, who resigned September 12, 2005, as FEMA's director, "has become a symbol of cronyism," Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times.
Brown "didn't know the difference between a tropical depression and an anxiety attack when President Bush charged him with life-and-death decisions," Maureen Dowd wrote in the Times.
"W. trusted Brownie simply because he was a friend of a friend," Dowd said. "He was a college buddy of Joe Allbaugh, who worked as W.'s chief of staff when he was Texas governor and as his 2000 presidential campaign manager."
When FEMA was "reorganized under Homeland Security, stripping it of authority," Allbaugh left the agency to become a lobbyist for companies like Halliburton, leaving behind "an eviscerated FEMA" with "his friend Brown in charge," Dowd said.
Spencer S. Hsu wrote in the September 9, 2005, Washington Post that "Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative."
"Meanwhile," Hsu reported, "veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials."
"Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina," Spencer S. Hsu wrote September 9, 2005.
[edit]FEMA's "Bungled Response" to Hurricane Katrina
FEMA's response to one of the greatest natural disasters in American history was serious hampered by its failure to prepare, in spite of the recent "Hurricane Pam" simulation, and relief spending experience in pre-Election Florida 2004.
"The breakdown in management and communications was so execrable that the president learned about the 25,000 desperate, trapped people at the New Orleans convention center not from [FEMA director Michael Brown] ..., who didn't know himself, but from a wire story carried into the Oval Office by an aide on Thursday, 24 hours after the victims had been pleading and crying for help on every channel," Maureen Dowd wrote September 10, 2005.
The "lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina revealed to everyone that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which earned universal praise during the Clinton years, is a shell of its former self," Paul Krugman wrote September 12, 2005.
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Michael Brown, who resigned September 12, 2005, as FEMA's director, "has become a symbol of cronyism," Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times.
Brown "didn't know the difference between a tropical depression and an anxiety attack when President Bush charged him with life-and-death decisions," Maureen Dowd wrote in the Times.
"W. trusted Brownie simply because he was a friend of a friend," Dowd said. "He was a college buddy of Joe Allbaugh, who worked as W.'s chief of staff when he was Texas governor and as his 2000 presidential campaign manager."
When FEMA was "reorganized under Homeland Security, stripping it of authority," Allbaugh left the agency to become a lobbyist for companies like Halliburton, leaving behind "an eviscerated FEMA" with "his friend Brown in charge," Dowd said.
Spencer S. Hsu wrote in the September 9, 2005, Washington Post that "Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative."
"Meanwhile," Hsu reported, "veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials."
"Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina," Spencer S. Hsu wrote September 9, 2005.
[edit]FEMA's "Bungled Response" to Hurricane Katrina
FEMA's response to one of the greatest natural disasters in American history was serious hampered by its failure to prepare, in spite of the recent "Hurricane Pam" simulation, and relief spending experience in pre-Election Florida 2004.
"The breakdown in management and communications was so execrable that the president learned about the 25,000 desperate, trapped people at the New Orleans convention center not from [FEMA director Michael Brown] ..., who didn't know himself, but from a wire story carried into the Oval Office by an aide on Thursday, 24 hours after the victims had been pleading and crying for help on every channel," Maureen Dowd wrote September 10, 2005.
The "lethally inept response to Hurricane Katrina revealed to everyone that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which earned universal praise during the Clinton years, is a shell of its former self," Paul Krugman wrote September 12, 2005.
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