Bye-bye Brownie!
 

Well, one head has rolled, anyhow. TIME for a few more, too. I wonder if Brown is the only sacrificial lamb the Repubs are willing to offer up?

I don't think the head has quite rolled yet, officially. He's reassigned back to the desk, to let someone else manage the onsite operations.

In effect, it's a good thing, but there may be some reluctance to actually fire "Heckuva Job Brownie".

Yeah, word has it that he'll ultimately resign, but who knows? I imagine that there will be insider pressure for him to just bow out, rather than force Jr. to fire him which would be an embarrassment of major order for W. The fact that Brown has lied about his professional background sure doesn't help matters. :eyebrow:

For once your language is restrained, Marichiko. This is a good thing.

Here's the real test, though: who would you pick as Brown's replacement?

After all, if carping and abusing Republicans is all you ever do, that is the kind of reputation that will cling to you as stubbornly as dried pitch. Actually coming up with something constructive -- ah, there's the brain-work.

Let's open this to everyone; no reason Marichiko has to do all the work.

Does it really matter after the barn has completely burned to the ground? Its a given that he could only continue to obstruct the clearing of burned timbers; that around Monday, someone else was clearly running the show.

Well, if Bush really wanted competency over absolute loyatly, he could rehire James Lee Witt. The only problem is that Witt used to work for Clinton. He was responsible for instituting real preventative measures to forestall future disasters.

Another problem is that he has a very good private practice, and I doubt he has much respect for Bush. Why would someone want to end up like Colin Powell, trotted out as proof that competent people exist in the administration but marginalized to the point where his advice goes completely unheeded?

Bush's two choices are to pick another political yes-man or someone competent. Unfortunately, picking anyone competent runs the risk of embarrassment when the adminstration does something stupid again, like reshuffle funding away while noone is looking. The only solution is to pick an active duty military officer who cannot legally challenge the president or a former officer like Powell who still maintains the practice.

Competent people know a bad situation when they see one, and right now getting someone really good for the job will be a challenge.

P.S. Well speak of the devil.. I didn't see this until after I posted this message.

Ah hemm! Just what are you smoking, Sir?

Drinking rooibos-herbal-blend tea, actually. Didn't know the effect was that visible. :D

Well, it gives Bush something other than the heckuva job he did as grounds for firing.

I'll do it. I'm not busy Tuesday.

I hope you all appreciate the irony of what wolf has just posted. Her credentials for the job are even better than Brownies's - the still current Director of FEMA.

So, UG we agree on two things.

1) Brown was a very bad choice.
2) Rooibos-blend tea. I buy mine from Trader Joe's.

You have asked a very good question of us liberals, but of course the question is academic. Our conservative president is the one who has the real choice, after failing miserably the first time. Where will he find someone with the conservative credentials he seems to require, with the compassion to have chosen public service in the past, with the individualism and command presence needed to organize effective relief, but who will not challenge presidential authority when the President or someone else in the adminstration tries to do something stupid again?

Clinton had a very effective FEMA chief. Bush Sr. had one who ran into a little trouble with Andrew, but nowhere near as f**ked up as Brown.

Maybe you should direct your questions to the White House.

The choice and promotion of Brown is the worst failure of the administration IMO.

If it is to be a CEO administration, judge it by the response of those people who have been delegated to do the actual heavy lifting.

Well, it is the CEO administration. Unfortunately, the CEO's that come to mind are Kenneth Lay, Bernard Ebbers, and Richard Scrushy.

Too bad I don't have a VCR, a time machine, and a ticket to the Kerry-Bush debates.

Do they have Numi brand there? I don't get out to whole foods enough to keep a good supply anymore. I prefer Honeybush, but like Rooibos (blend? why?) for variety

WOLFIE! WOLFIE! WOLFIE!

I pick Wolf! I think she'd be great!

I keep it at work, so I'll have to check. The name doesn't ring a bell. It might even be a house brand. It's an orange-yellow box with red writing.

I think Wolf would be a perfect choice for the job. After all, Bush is so big on faith-based initiatives and I think Pagans are severely underrepresented in the recovery work right now. They have the right and the duty to care for "their people" in NO :D

Brown's job is not to manage disasters.

It is his job to manage a huge corporation whose job it is to manage disasters.

Neither of which is he qualified for.

Which is why the top man must have experience in managing disasters? Business school philosophy says Brownie needs no disaster experience to "manage an organization that manages disasters". Ironic. George Jr is a graduate of that education. Damning coincidence - or also why other disasters such as the NE Blackout two years ago, the Challenger, and Three Mile Island all have those same symptoms. Top management had no experience with the organization's product.

According to business school concepts, an acceptable manager of a mental health facility would be a realtor or a bank auditor - especially if he has no medical or science training.

I'm pretty sure the CEO of IBM can't build a computer, and probably has trouble turning one on.

That was when IBM was losing money everywhere. Let us look at what Bill Gates found on CEO Aker's desk and on the desk of everyone else in IBM corporate in early 1990s. IBM XTs with CGA monitors. IOW when the top man could not even use a computer, then IBM's own corporate office was using computers that could not execute any software sold in computer stores.

Then Gerstner arrived bring with him some MBAs. IBM still lost employees, sales, etc. Then Gerstner promoted five long time IBM employees - all with product experience - to top positions. Today we now see the so productive response. Meanwhile Gerstner could also use a computer.

You don't have to know how to build a computer to meet the criteria defined. Just like a hospital administration need not have performed surgery. But that hospital administrator better have some kind of medical experience. It’s called 'having dirt under the fingernails'.

Correctly stated - Wolf's credentials are better than Brownie's for a job as Director of FEMA. That does not say Wolf is qualified for the job. It does explain the obvious - why Brown is so bad - not anywhere near as qualified as Wolf. Brown was more than that bad - a classic example of a political appointee or how a classic MBA selects subordinates. It's no accident that FEMA had a massive brain drain about 4 fours ago.

Both Michael Brown and his boss Chertoff are lawyers. Both have no experience in disaster management. So as Michael Brown was outrightly lying and impeding assistance to the victims, Michael Chertoff was saying Brown was doing a good job. Notice that lies and inventing reality are what lawyers do and other lawyers approve of. Michael Chertoff had no idea of the job Brown was doing because Chertoff was only a lawyer.

And then it gets worse. Both men answer to an MBA who in turn says, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." One need only look at the resumes to appreciate that Wolf is far more qualified for a disaster management job. The resumes along say, "More than 85% of problems are directly traceable to these top managers." People died as a result.

Who elected these people anyway? Notice they are the ones now so silent.

Another small step in the right direction - Brown is officially out, according to Daily Kos.

Question:

From the Bush Administration's perspective, which scenario offers the best spin? Fire Michael Brown, or accept his resignation?

I would have thought there would be points (maybe poll points) to be earned by acknowledging his poor performance and firing him. I know this administration, and GWB in particular, value loyalty very highly. Perhaps they thought that firing him would diminish that reputation. Certainly they don't think that they're expecting to shed any responsibility for Brown's (in)actions by meekly accepting his resignation?

Or, worse, don't think that he should leave the post at all?

Here's a real article.

Another link on Brown's resignation.

My favorite excerpt:
Oops. Tee-hee.
:lol2::lol::lol2:

Assistant to the City Manager
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffic...ain_gareth.jpg

Bigger question, slightly off topic:

Why, oh why, would you lie on your resume? I mean, really. Don't you think the stakes are a little high? And with an interested party (your employer) with whom you're hoping to have a long term relationship. I don't get it.

If true, too bad for IBM. I'll give you an example on a far smaller scale. When I was on the library faculty at Ft. Lewis College, our director had a degree in administration, NOT library science.

His policies made first the professional librarians hate him, then the rest of the faculty, then every student down to the first year freshmen.

Without adequate funding, he decided to automate the library. This was back in the day when you still found card catalogs in libraries, NOT computer terminals. He wanted to be first on the block, so to speak.

Now this was a worthy desire with much merit, but if you ain't got the funding, you ain't got the funding.

The library faculty and this director had many a stormy session where we librarians pleaded with him to apply for grants and automate the library over time. He would have none of it. Instead, he took the library's entire book and serials budget for THREE years and threw it all into the automation project.

We were forced to drop subscriptions for professional journals and the library didn't get a single new book in three years. As a result, the chemistry department lost its accreditation through ACS (American Chemical Society). My best student assistant who was also a chem major was turned down for admission to the prestigous program in graduate study he had wanted to attend (kid had a 4.0 and 800's on GRE's). The college damn near lost its accredidation through North Central, as well.

The President of the college ended up giving this guy with his MBA a glowing recommendation for a job elsewhere, just to get rid of him. The next library director had an MLS (Master of Library Science) among his credentials, needless to say.

Sure, good management is good management across the board, but it sure as hell helps to know what the heck you are managing. :eyebrow:

Regarding lies on Mr. Brown's resume- when your best pals are in power you maybe feel you're "taken care of" and it was. Its the illusion of credentials. Lieberman lost (more) big points with me not screening this guy better on the intake.

And I doubt that Brownie is just the one bad apple.

Exactly. If most of the top people at FEMA are unqualified patronage appointments, who's in charge now that Brown's officially out?

I just found UTs links to the rest of the stellar bunch. Ugh. Shame.

Can we have an independent commission look into the federal management of the war on terror, too?

No.

Awwwwwwww man.

Being in the minority party, what exactly could he have done? In hindsight, he should have had his staff vet every department head, but noone has the resources. In this case the conventional wisdom on promotion within a department is to trust the department head.

Well, his replacement will be a FEMA official with 30 years.

How do you like that? Smack someone across the head with a two by four, and they actually do better on the second try.

Of course, in some areas you only get one chance. I have this picture of Bush looking over the devastated landscape of the United States and saying "Boy, I'm not going to do that again!"

I guess I was hoping that Lieberman would not be so trusting of political appointees and so conventional in his wisdom. I wish he would have hired another intern with a laptop to help check references. I wish he was a bit more independent in his actions.

What about The Press? Shouldn't they be looking into that kind of stuff? The Washington Post put together their piece about the unqualified apointees in FEMA in just a couple of days after the storm hit. I think the press should start doing its job and scrutinize the government. The press has the resources needed for such scrutiny.

Oh, right. The "liberal media" owned by Rupert Murdoch. No one listened to the press before. Why would they start now?

Heh, it's the Duct Tape Guy...

I think TJ's is where I got the rooibos-blend too -- the rooibos-vanilla from Celestial Seasonings with that... really happy lion on the box. Like most blends, its flavor really comes out best with a bit of sweetening -- surely tastes much better than New Orleans standing water [nods to thread topic]. It's not quite the full-on, steep-half-an-hour, capital-R rooibos experience you get from something else TJ's has: the Red Tea Original organic Rooibos, but it's still plenty tasty. http://www.africanredtea.com Celestial Seasonings always offers good stuff, though. I wish they'd bring back their Earl Greyest, a double-strength Earl Grey -- wowie zowie.

Celestial Seasonings needs to go back to their original recipe for Bengal Spice. I haven't bought any of their teas since the reformulation (mostly because there are a lot of better brands of tea out there, like Stash and Republic of Tea, which has the coolest catalog. There are more tea accessories out there than you've ever dreamed of ...)

He's baa-aaack...

Ahhhhh! the "consulting" gig for $70 per hour. May I suggest that we be given the legal power to pay him less than the prevailing wage...

Actually, a "consulting" job would have been the perfect patronage job for him before the disaster. Especially if everyone was under strict instructions not to actually consult him. But it ought to be too late for that now.

It just goes to show that the only ethic the Republican leadership recognizes is loyalty, and the only loyalty they recognize is to the Republican leadership.

For $70/hr, we get this: Not my fault.

As a Louisianian who has first hand accounts of the thievery and ineffectiveness of FEMA I can say only one thing.

Fuck FEMA.

Seems like I saw a lot of Mississippians without timely federal support as well.

Yeah, works great in places that didn't have levees that the Federal Government refused to repair. Uhmm hmmm

FEMA - In case of emergency, its not our department.

So, Wolfie, when you taking up the reins of power? This country NEEDS you!

When the top man claims plenty of blame to go around, then 99% of all problems are directly traceable to top management. Two articles from ABC News on 27 Sept 2005:
A shame is that he will not be prosecuted for criminal negligence - for causing the deaths of so many people. His defense would be obvious. He was doing the best he could do. And in that, he is correct. It explains why he was trained as a lawyer, why he was so unqualified as to have only gotten his job through political influence, AND why he would be quick to blame others. These are characteristic of MBA management - either who the man is OR how his boss makes decisions.

http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=13051

(Emphasis mine - TS)

Hurricane Pam Exercise Concludes

Release Date: July 23, 2004
Release number: R6-04-093
Printer friendly version icon

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Hurricane Pam brought sustained winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain in parts of southeast Louisiana and storm surge that topped levees in the New Orleans area. More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings. Emergency officials from 50 parish, state, federal and volunteer organizations faced this scenario during a five-day exercise held this week at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge.

The exercise used realistic weather and damage information developed by the National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the LSU Hurricane Center and other state and federal agencies to help officials develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana.

"We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts," said Ron Castleman, FEMA Regional Director. "Disaster response teams developed action plans in critical areas such as search and rescue, medical care, sheltering, temporary housing, school restoration and debris management. These plans are essential for quick response to a hurricane but will also help in other emergencies."

...more...

You still fuck up after have a successful exercise.

Let me revise that ... you always fuck up after a successful exercise.

I've been to WMD and Mass Casualty exercises that go flawlessly. When the real deal happens, you lose two firetrucks in a "puddle" that turned out to be 15 feet deep.

I spent four years in the Navy, I'm well aware of that, but it's one thing to mess up an ostensibly workable plan and quite another to do what they did here.

They stole food, fuel, supplies and services from both civilians and civil authorities until they started operating under the radar or with armed guards.

And they still managed to do nothing more than sit on it.

Also find Hurricane Greg. That exercise was so ridiculous that much of what was 'learned' was disposed. But then everything in FEMA is about curing the symptoms of management mistakes.

Funny. When the George Jr administration came to power, everything was still about Cold War power positioning. Anti-terrorists were demoted or literally driven out of government. Specific terrorist warnings presented to the President were completely ignored - not read. Then Afghanistan sponsors an attack on the US. Suddenly everything is only about terrorism. And so we attack a sovereign nation on lies about terrorism. Why? To correct an earlier mistake made by the same people more than 10 years previously in Iraq.

Meanwhile hurricanes attack the US. Again, we must correct the mistake made by the same people 4 and 15 years ago. Good thing that we replaced those emergency management people with political appointed lawyers - trained in terrorism. We will solve Andrew and we will solve terrorism. FEMA drill also includes multiple terrorist attacks.

At what point do real threats take precedence over political agendas and fears of the old mistakes? At what point, when the president is told of a danger, does he address the problem rather than worry about his previous mistake? Oh. George Jr did. He said no one expected the levees to be breached. Since he took 5 days to admit a Tsunami occurred - and few complained (except me), then simply do same - take 5 days - before sending food, water and transport for LA/MS/AL.

So what do we do next? Clearly levees are the major threat to America. We must build bigger levees. We must throw even more money at the problem. Just ignore the real problem - people living where they should not be living. Top management who denies a failure until it exists - and then takes five days to make a decision (George Jr's people are reported to have made a DVD movie before George Jr would admit there was a problem in LA/MS/AL).

No problem. New forms of terrorism will be solved by Office of Fatherland Levee Construction - a new cabinet position. Are we to assume these bigger levees will also keep terrorists out? Clearly that reasoning is consistent with George Jr management decisions since 2001. Did we not attack Iran because terrorist might be hiding there too? And since Hurricanes were not a threat there, then they too would not be a threat to the levees in New Orleans.

They had to make a DVD before George Jr would admit to a problem. At what point does anyone praise the intelligence of George Jr - whose people run the Hurricane Greg drill with terrorist attacks, a nuclear power plant leak .... and did they forget to include in that drill the second coming of Christ?

They are more concerned that Katrina ruined the last three days of W's vacation. :mad:

Are you looking for a reason more sophisticated than "To get the job"?

Well, yeah, get and keep, y'know. A job is a long term deal, wouldn't you agree?

Not for the politically connected, they move from one appointment to the next at their own level of incompetence. Can you say, musical teats? :mad: