Hey Joe, Zip It.
ArchPundit
If Lieberman complains about Brown, please tell him to zip it after this. When you push for a Department of Homeland Security, you are actually partially responsible to oversee the political appointee hiring.
September 2005
Please Stop By My House and Put a Cushion Between My Head and the Wall
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 anda U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.
Meanwhile, 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.
Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.
I have no illusions that many agencies have twits running them regardless of the administration, I’d just like to think that the ones that involve immediate life and limb dangers are professionalized.
Damning with Faint Praise
Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA’s website, was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight.” The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 “overseeing the emergency services division.” In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an “assistant to the city manager” from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. “The assistant is more like an intern,” she told TIME. “Department heads did not report to him.” Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. “Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University,” recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. “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.”
Emphasis mine, just in case anyone was curious.
Read the whole thing, it only gets worse.
A Small, Small Bit of Good News
Tipitina’s survived pretty much untouched.
Two days after Katrina passed, Tipitina’s, the city’s flagship music club, largely was unscathed on its swath of high, dry ground along the Mississippi River. A few blocks away, the only damage to Art Neville’s meticulously restored home was to the wooden fence that surrounds it.
But many others weren’t so lucky.
Iconic jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain lost homes in New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, Miss., as well as Casino Magic, which had become his primary venue. Fountain rode out the storm in a Mississippi Day’s Inn, and he has since sought shelter in Winnsboro.
Go here to help Musicians who lost everything in the storm No–not like Aaron Neville, but those guys who aren’t rich and famous, but make New Orleans what it is .
And Ruffins is in Baton Rouge for those other Kermit Ruffins fans out there.
Interesting Vilsack Comments
Rep. John Fritchey comments on a conference call led by Tom Vilsack, the Governor of Iowa.
Of Other Trainwrecks
Can someone, anyone explain why Sandy Berger can theoretically get access to classified documents ever again? I know that if someone who wasn’t that high level of a former official did the same thing, he would have his security clearance revoked never to be seen again.
Oh. My. God. Mike. Brown. Is. A. Bigger. Idiot. Than. I. Could. Imagine.
Who needs the Onion anymore (TNR–Subscription required)
To understand the Mike Brown saga, one has to know something about the intricacies of the legal profession, beginning with the status of the law school he attended. Brown’s biography on fema’s website reports that he’s a graduate of the Oklahoma City University School of Law. This is not, to put it charitably, a well-known institution. For example, I’ve been a law professor for the past 15 years and have never heard of it. Of more relevance is the fact that, until 2003, the school was not even a member of the Association of American Law Schools (aals)–the organization that, along with the American Bar Association, accredits the nation’s law schools. Most prospective law students won’t even consider applying to a non-aals law school unless they have no other option, because many employers have a policy of not considering graduates of non-aals institutions. So it’s fair to say that Brown embarked on his prospective legal career from the bottom of the profession’s hierarchy.
So what did Brown, who received his J.D. in 1981, do with his non-aals law degree? In 1985, Brown joined the firm of Long, Ford, Lester & Brown in Enid, Oklahoma. When I spoke to one of its former members, Andrew Lester (the firm no longer exists), he recalled that Brown was with the firm for only “about 18 months.” Lester, who is a longtime friend of Brown, believes that Brown spent most of his time in the first few years after law school pursuing his own legal practice and representing the interests of a prominent local family.
And more (I know it’s over fair use, but it’s just too juicy)
What, then, are we to make of the claim in Brown’s fema biography that, prior to joining the Agency, he had spent most of his professional career practicing law in Colorado? Normally, an attorney practicing law in a state for ten years would have left a record of his experience in public documents. But just about the only evidence of Brown’s Colorado legal career is the Web page he submitted to Findlaw.com, an Internet site for people seeking legal representation. There, he lists himself as a member of the “International Arabian Horse Association Legal Dept.” and claims to be competent to practice law across a dizzying spectrum of specialties–estate planning, family law, employment law for both plaintiffs and defendants, real-estate law, sports law, labor law, and legislative practice. With all this expertise, it’s all the more striking that one can’t find any other evidence of Brown’s legal career in Colorado.
So what legal work did Mike Brown perform before his stunning reversal of fortune? According to his fema biography, “[H]e served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court.” Translation: In Oklahoma, he graded answers to bar exam questions, and, in Colorado, he volunteered to serve on the local attorney disciplinary board.
When Brown left the iaha four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer–a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn’t attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the iaha, he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of fema.
Embarrassing Admission of the Day
I cried at Oprah the other day. Probably the first time I’ve watched in 10 years.
Maureen Ryan reviews the episodes and I wholeheartedly agree.
I’m Guessing a Drowning Person Wouldn’t Mind a Little Sexual Harrassment
I love bureaucracies and think they are often the whiping boy of politicians who don’t wan to make tough decisions. Sometimes though, they veer out of control to the point that one seriously cannot tell the difference between parody and reality:
In a document that went out from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the agency asked for firefighters with very specific skills and who were capable of working in austere conditions. When they got to a center in Atlanta, they found out their jobs would be public relations.
“Our job was to advertise a phone number for FEMA,” said Portage Assistant Fire Chief Bill Lundy. “We were going to be given shirts and hats with a phone number on it and flyers, and sent to shelters, and we were going to pass out flyers.”
Lundy and Calhoun said they don’t want to bash FEMA or its mission, Rogers reported. They said they only want to help, and that there were plenty of other firefighters in the room who felt the same way.
“There was almost a fight,” said Portage Assistant Fire Chief Joe Calhoun. “There was probably 700 firefighters sitting in the room getting this training, and it dawned on them what we were going to be doing. And then it got bad from there.”
Lundy and Calhoun’s first task was an eight-hour course on sexual harassment and equal opportunity employment procedures, Rogers reported. Neither firefighter would be involved in technical rescues of trapped people or any of their other specialties.
NPR On Evacuation Limitations
Mark Schleifstein, who wrote several of the articles I linked to in this piece was on NPR explaining the limitations on New Orleans in evacuating individuals.