The Wingnut Report. . .
My daily unearthing of web articles chronicling the ongoing malevolence of the Bush
Administration, Evangelical Christendom, Corporate Fascism, Faux News, Rush
Limbaugh and His Shittoheads, and other Toadstools of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy:
The "blame game"? You can play along at home
While insisting that now is no time for playing the "blame game," the president's supporters
are busy blaming state and local officials for the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina.
They've claimed that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco didn't declare a state of emergency.
She did, on Aug. 26, when the president was still on vacation. And they've claimed that Blanco
was slow to ask for federal help. In fact, Blanco wrote a letter to the president on Aug. 28 in
which she said that an "effective response" to Katrina's destruction would be "beyond the
capabilities of the state and affected local governments" and requested federal help to "save
lives" and "protect property."
The president was on vacation then, too.
But FEMA Director Michael Brown wasn't, and he got right to work. More or less.
Internal FEMA documents show that Brown waited five hours after Katrina struck
land on Aug. 29 before he asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to
send 1,000 department employees to the Gulf Coast. And even then, he suggested that
Homeland Security employees should have a couple of days to get themselves in place.
Once in place, the Homeland Security employees would, among things, "convey a
positive image" of the government's response to the hurricane, Brown told Chertoff.
-- Tim, Grieve, Salon.com
FEMA puts firefighters to work -- as props for Bush
From all across the nation, local fire departments have sent firefighters -- many of
them trained in emergency medicine and search-and-rescue techniques -- to help the
victims of Hurricane Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency requested
the help. But when the firefighters arrived in Atlanta, loaded down with the firefighting
gear FEMA told them to bring, they were sent to a hotel to wait. Some of them have been
waiting for three or four days now. Some have been assigned to sit through an eight-hour
class on topics that included sexual harassment. And some have been dispatched to the
disaster area to work as human props behind George W. Bush as he toured the destruction.
We've said this before lately, and we'll say it again: We're not making this up.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, "Hundreds of firefighters who volunteered to help
rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina have instead been playing cards, taking classes on
the Federal Emergency Management Agency's history and lounging at an Atlanta
airport hotel for days. 'On the news every night you hear [hurricane victims say],
"How come everybody forgot us?"' said Joseph Manning, a firefighter from
Washington, Pa. 'We didn't forget. We're stuck in Atlanta drinking beer.'"
Well, not just drinking beer. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that FEMA put a team
of 50 firefighters on a flight to Louisiana Monday morning. Their mission: Stand
beside Bush as he toured the devastation -- just possibly not the best use for highly
trained emergency workers, and a job we thought was obsolete in the digital
age anyway.
FEMA defends the use -- or nonuse -- of the firefighters, saying that their chiefs
knew they were being sent to the Gulf Coast to work as community-relations
officers for FEMA. Apparently, that job entails working as human props and passing
out FEMA's phone number. "There are all of these guys with all of this training and
we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter told the
Tribune.
On Monday, the Tribune says, some firefighters began to take off their FEMA-issued
T-shirts in protest. A FEMA spokesman responded by questioning the firefighters'
willingness to help in a time of need. "I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit
his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," FEMA
spokeswoman Mary Hudak told the Tribune.
-- Tim Grieve, Salon.com
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U.S. agency blocks photos of New Orleans dead
07 Sep 2005 00:56:29 GMT
Source: Reuters
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NEW ORLEANS, Sept 6 (Reuters) - The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after
Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take photographs of the
dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans area.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the
devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected requests from journalists to accompany rescue
boats as they went out to search for storm victims.
An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats and that "the recovery
of the victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect."
"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman
said in an e-mailed response to a Reuters inquiry.
The Bush administration also has prevented the news media from photographing flag-
draped caskets of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, which has sparked criticism that the government
is trying to block images that put the war in a bad light.
The White House is under fire for its handling of the relief effort, which many
officials have charged was slow and bureacratic, contributing to the death and mayhem in
New Orleans after the storm struck on Aug. 29. (Additional reporting by Deborah Charles)
| Disaster used as political payoff
Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News |
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has done it again.
Already under fire for its woeful response to Hurricane Katrina, the federal disaster agency appears to
have turned hurricane relief donations into a political payoff - until it was challenged.
All last week, FEMA bureaucrats gave prominent placement on the agency's Web site to
Operation Blessing, the Virginia-based charity run by controversial right-wing evangelist and
Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.
For anyone wishing to donate only cash, the agency's site listed the names and phone numbers
of three groups: the Red Cross, Operation Blessing and America's Second Harvest, a national
coalition of food banks.
That first list was followed by a second, longer list of several dozen religious and nonsectarian
charities. This second list was for anyone who wanted to give either cash or noncash gifts.
Just as in an ordinary election, however, top ballot position makes it far more likely you'll
get noticed and chosen.
The same FEMA list was then disseminated by state and local governments throughout the
country. Both Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, for example, placed the same top three
FEMA charities on their Hurricane Katrina press releases and Web sites last week.
Those familiar with Robertson and his charity were flabbergasted.
Operation Blessing, with a budget of $190 million, is an integral part of the Robertson
empire. Not only is he the chairman of the board, his wife is listed on its latest financial
report as its vice president, and one of his sons is on the board of directors.
Back in 1994, during the infamous Rwandan genocide, Robertson used his 700 Club's
daily cable operation to appeal to the American public for donations to fly humanitarian
supplies into Zaire to save the Rwandan refugees.
The planes purchased by Operation Blessing did a lot more than ferry relief supplies.
An investigation conducted by the Virginia attorney general's office concluded in 1999
that the planes were mostly used to transport mining equipment for a diamond operation
run by a for-profit company called African Development Corp.
And who do you think was the principal executive and sole shareholder of the
mining company?
You guessed it, Pat Robertson himself.
Robertson had landed the mining concession from his longtime friend Mobutu Sese
Seko, then the dictator of Zaire.
Investigators concluded that Operation Blessing "willfully induced contributions from
the public through the use of misleading statements ..."
After the investigation began, Robertson placated state regulators by personally
reimbursing his own charity $400,000 and by agreeing to tighten its bookkeeping
methods.
Separating Operation Blessing from Robertson's many politically oriented endeavors
is not that easy, however.
The biggest single U.S. recipient of the charity's largess, according to its latest financial
report, was Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. It received $885,000 in the
fiscal year ended March 2004.
Robertson uses that Christian network for some markedly unchristian purposes.
A few years back, he repeatedly defended Charles Taylor, the former brutal dictator of
Liberia who is under indictment by a UN tribunal for war crimes.
As with Mobutu in the Congo, Robertson had a personal stake in the matter: He
had millions invested in a Liberian gold mine, thanks to Taylor, according to press reports.
Recently, Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Those who know Robertson's record raised such an uproar that on Sunday FEMA suddenly
rearranged its entire Web site for hurricane donations.
Gone was Operation Blessing's name and choice location. Replacing it was an alphabetical
list of nearly 50 national relief organizations.
At FEMA, they take a while to get things right.
Originally published on September 6, 2005
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