So Long, Dumbass.

"You're doin' a heckuva job, Brownie!"

--GWB 

Michael Brown's accountability moment

Salon editorial fellow Aaron Kinney reacts to the news of Michael Brown's departure from the Gulf Coast.

On a Friday marked by a flurry of news reports detailing the agency's shortcomings and dissecting his résumé, FEMA Director Michael Brown was relieved of his duties overseeing the Hurricane Katrina recovery and sent back to Washington. He was replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who had been overseeing New Orleans rescue efforts, according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff

Has the Bush administration finally fired someone for not doing his job? Not quite. He has been shelved, not fired, though the AP reported that his departure may be imminent.

An AP reporter asked Brown if he felt like he was being made a scapegoat for the failures of the relief effort. The AP reported that after a long pause, he said, "By the press, yes. By the president, no."

So it appears that Brown's ego defense shields are operational, then, which is good news for him, because he's going to need them as more information about FEMA's dysfunction comes to light. It was evident from the start that Brown would make a handy fall guy for the federal government's blundering response to Katrina. The risk for the administration now, however, is that critics in government and the media may shift their focus up the ladder to Chertoff and the president himself.

-- Aaron Kinney

2:53:43 PM    comment []  

Take That, Kayne West!!!

Yo, FEMA raps!

Salon editorial fellow rhymes along with FEMA.

Hey, kids! Worried about a disaster? Don't worry, because the Federal Emergency Management Agency has a comforting bulletin just for you:

"Disaster ... it can happen anywhere,
But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared
For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,
You've got to be ready -- so your heart don't break."

That's the beginning of the "FEMA Rap for Kidz," available for a listen on FEMA's Web site, and it's totally fresh! OK, the meter is shaky, and we're not sure that taxpayer dollars ought to be going to faulty grammar, but it's the message that counts.

In other FEMA news, it turns out that director Michael Brown's experience as an assistant city manager with "emergency services oversight" in Edmond, Okla., was even less impressive than we'd imagined, according to the latest report from Time magazine. Claudia Deakins, public relations director for the city of Edmond, told Time that Brown was really an assistant to the city manager, "more like an intern," during his stint there, which took place from 1977 to 1980 while Brown was a student at Central State University.

Bill Dashner, the city manager at the time, told the magazine that Brown helped with details and wrote the occasional speech. "He was very loyal," Dashner said. "He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

-- Aaron Kinney, Salon.com

2:51:04 PM    comment []  

The "Stop Global Warming Virtual March" 

Their latest e-mail, with a link to join:

Dear Fellow Marcher,

Before we arrive at our stop this week, we must acknowledge the tragic events brought by Hurricane Katrina. The devastation is heartbreaking and it is painful to hear officials admit that more should have been done to heed the warnings. This is not the first time we have heard this, but will it be the last? That is why we are marching -- to wake up the country and demand that our government heed the decade long warning that the burning of fossil fuels is heating up our oceans and altering our climate in potentially catastrophic ways. Now more than ever, we must urge all Americans to join the March and help us get so big that this problem can no longer be ignored.

As inspiration, we have already surpassed the 100,000 mark! That is over 105,000 marchers from every state in the country raising their voices. I urge you to take this opportunity to reach out to friends, relatives, colleagues, and schoolmates to join us at www.stopglobalwarming.org today.

It's a theme we've seen throughout our march. The campaign to fight global warming is creating new jobs and new sources of income all across America: solar farms are sprouting on Native American reservations, farmers are receiving a new lease on life making fuel from corn, and now, in Iowa, creative American ingenuity is helping turn cow patties into kilowatts. Read about it at http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/march/westgate.

Keep on marching.

Laurie David
Founder

1:59:34 PM    comment []  

Katrinagate: Don't Let 'em Forget!

Here's an e-mail I just received. Spread the word:

Ten days after Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans is still mostly underwater and hundreds of thousands of people are homeless, yet NBC Nightly News reported last night that FEMA's portable housing remains hundreds of miles away unused. It is now obvious that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina is a national scandal that requires a proper investigation. But Republicans in Congress have proposed an investigation that would be run by them. Democrats are insisting on an independent commission with its own independent investigators and subpoena authority—modeled after the 9/11 Commission.

So far the media isn't exposing that the Republican leadership is trying to cover over the Bush administration's failure to keep us safe. We need to make sure the media get on the case. One easy way to do that is on the Letters to the Editor page of newspapers. We've set up an online tool that makes submitting a letter easy. You write your letter, choose where you want it to go, and click to send. Will you write a letter to the editor? Click below to get started.

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=875&;zip=19144&id=5973-4090685-I2NhYCbD9451W698E7MrrQ&t=3

An effective letter to the editor is short—just a couple of paragraphs. The goal is to show your local media, your neighbors and even our elected leaders that people want an independent investigation of what happened, and apparently what continues to happen, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Letters to the Editor page is often the most-read page in a newspaper.

Your letter will be very timely. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is introducing legislation that would establish the independent Katrina Commission. According to Sen. Clinton's website: "The Katrina Commission would be charged with providing a comprehensive and unbiased evaluation of what could and should have been done to avoid the extraordinary damage, the loss of life, the evacuation problems and the inadequate relief efforts that have exacerbated the dislocation and suffering of thousands of Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina."

But while Sen. Clinton's proposal is exactly what we need to do, many in the media are reporting on this as a squabble between Democrats and Republicans. Your letter can send a signal to the media that the public wants an independent commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission that is widely respected and viewed as the right way to look into failures by our government. Please write a letter today.

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=875&;zip=19144&id=5973-4090685-I2NhYCbD9451W698E7MrrQ&t=4

This wouldn't be the first time the Republicans tried to stack the deck in an investigation. After September 11, they tried to push a phony investigation and only after 9/11 widows insisted on an independent investigation did they pass legislation to establish the 9/11 Commission.

The heads of that commission are now speaking openly about the failures they saw during Katrina. We need those independent voices.

We need to insist the media reports this right by making it clear that people want an independent commission much like the 9/11 Commission—a Katrina Commission.

Please write a letter today. Thanks for all you do.

—Tom, Justin, Wes, Micayla and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
  Friday, September 9th, 2005

P.S. More information:

Details on the Katrina Commission from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=245265&;&

"9/11 commission heads see repeat failures with Katrina," Reuters, Sept. 8, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=876

"Sen. Hillary Clinton Calls for Independent FEMA Probe," ABC News, Sept. 7, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=877

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

1:50:29 PM    comment []  

Brownie and the gang

Salon editorial fellow J.J. Helland surveys the political patronage that crippled FEMA.

War Room reported yesterday on FEMA Director Michael Brown's dubious professional credentials -- specifically his record as a failed lawyer; a fallout with his previous employer, the International Arabian Horse Association, over charges of impropriety; and the patronage that landed him his plum assignments with FEMA. A new report on the Time magazine Web site delves deeper into Brown's lack of qualifications for his post.

Brown isn't the only senior official at the federal agency with little experience in dealing with natural disasters, and more evidence has emerged indicating that the agency's ability to adequately respond to disasters like Katrina has been totally undermined by political cronyism. The Los Angeles Times reports that Brown "is just one of at least five senior FEMA officials appointed under President Bush whose backgrounds showed few qualifications."

For example, Brown's acting deputy director, Patrick James Rhode, got his start in the television news industry before moving on to public relations work in Texas. After working as the deputy director of national advance operations for Bush's 2000 campaign and later as a special assistant to the president, Rhode was tapped for FEMA in 2003.

Meanwhile, before becoming director of FEMA's Recovery Division, Daniel Craig worked for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he "was responsible for Chamber-related legislative, political, and media initiatives in New England and the Atlantic Coast." Craig's professional experience also includes previous work as a lobbyist, campaign advisor and political fundraiser.

The Times article goes on to note that as recently as a year ago, the "head of a labor union representing FEMA workers sent a letter to members of Congress charging that 'emergency managers at FEMA have been supplanted on the job by politically connected contractors and by novice employees with little background or knowledge' of disaster management."

The letter offered the prescient warning that "as ... professionalism diminishes, FEMA is gradually losing its ability to function and to help disaster victims."

That sentiment was echoed in a report today in the Washington Post, in which experts referred to a "brain drain" when discussing FEMA's lack of experienced managers familiar with emergency management. According to I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor from the University of Maryland, FEMA "has gone downhill within the department, drained of its resources and leadership ... The crippling of FEMA was one important reason why it [the federal response to Katrina] failed."

Considering the Bush administration's woefully inept response to the devastation wrought by Katrina, it's clear that Bush administration patronage has hobbled FEMA -- with fatal consequences for the people affected by the hurricane.

But of course you wouldn't know that from listening to Vice President Dick Cheney. He defended Bush's FEMA appointees yesterday, saying, "You've got to have people at the top who respond to and are selected by presidents, and you pick the best people you can to do the jobs that need to be done ... We've also got some great career professionals, an absolute and vital part of the operation — couldn't do it without them."

Of course we couldn't have done it without them. That's the problem.

-- J.J. Helland

1:34:52 PM    comment []  

The "death tax" lives

Salon editorial fellow Aaron Kinney takes another look at the estate tax.

Scott McClellan and a reporter from the White House press corps had an exchange yesterday on whether the Republican leadership is justified in continuing to seek the repeal of the estate tax in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which is already estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion. Unfortunately, the reporter referred to making the estate tax repeal "permanent," apparently confusing the estate tax with the tax cuts the president enacted earlier in his presidency, which allowed McClellan even more room for obfuscation on the issue. Still, the question the reporter raised is important.

Reporter: "I'm going to yield the floor, but I just have one more question. Why does the president believe it is morally justified, why is it the right thing to give some of the richest people on the planet a huge tax cut right now?"

McClellan: "It's not a fair -- "

Reporter: W"ell, that's what the estate tax cut repeal, making it permanent, is, isn't it? There are some people who want to hand on billions -- hundreds of millions of dollars to their -- "

McClellan: "No, no. The tax cut you're talking about -- I don't know of any that are expiring this year. They expire in later years."

Reporter: "Right. But why at this point in our history is it justified, morally right, to do that?"

McClellan: "First of all, I'd have to dispute your characterization because all Americans receive tax cuts. We went through a very difficult time, economically, and our national economy is really a lifeline for that region that has been hit by this hurricane. We must continue to keep our national economy growing and creating jobs. The latest unemployment numbers are down to 4.9 percent last week, more than 4 million jobs created since May of 2003. We've made tremendous progress to keep our economy growing and get people -- and create jobs."

Reporter: "And there's no way to ask the richest people in America to sacrifice?"

McClellan: "And the economy -- keeping our economy growing stronger -- is important to helping with the rebuilding and recovery efforts on the ground. The last thing we want to do is take more money from lower-income Americans that have been affected by this and that have received significant help from those -- from those tax cuts."

Reporter: "That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about taking money from higher-income Americans."

McClellan: "And we're going to remain focused right now on our highest priority. Well, again, these tax cuts you're talking about, many of them expire in later years. I don't know of any that are expiring this year. But it's important to keep our economy growing and keep jobs being created."

Of course, what this reporter was talking about had nothing to do with tax cuts for "lower-income Americans." McClellan's gobbledygook on promoting economic growth is worthy of attention because it's precisely the kind of rhetoric we're going to hear in coming weeks and months as the GOP attempts to reassert control over the domestic agenda.

In its lead editorial on Sept. 6, the Wall Street Journal urged President Bush to "take steps to keep the U.S. economy growing."

According to the Journal: "Economic leadership also means instructing Americans on the link between tax cutting and the economic vitality needed to fund both Katrina relief and the war on terror. Predictably, the Bush tax cuts are under attack for denying revenue to the government and because they don't require 'sacrifice' in wartime. But the truth is that federal revenues are rising by an estimated $262 billion -- or roughly 14 percent -- this year thanks to the growth that followed the 2003 tax cuts. Republicans have been far too defensive on tax cuts, and Katrina is an opening to explain their necessity and to push for making them permanent."

But what the Journal won't say is that the increased revenue this year came not from tax-cut-driven growth but rather from an array of factors including the expiration of one of Bush's tax cuts, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As for the rosy economic outlook posited by the Journal -- not so much.

The tenacious adherence by the president and other prominent members of the Republican leadership to the ideology of tax cuts in the face of a national emergency is causing consternation outside the White House briefing room as well.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a neoliberal and prominent supporter of the war in Iraq, was aroused from his slumber by Hurricane Katrina, and in his column earlier this week he went medieval on influential and "toweringly selfish" tax-cut zealot Grover Norquist, who has been quoted as saying he'd like to shrink the federal government until he can drown it in a bathtub:

"Mr. Norquist is the only person about whom I would say this: I hope he owns property around the New Orleans levee that was never properly finished because of a lack of tax dollars. I hope his basement got flooded. And I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town."

-- Aaron Kinney

1:20:25 PM    comment []  

Quote of the Day:

"Go fuck yourself!"

--a bystander to Vice-President Dick Cheney, during a live television interview

 in Gulfport, Mississippi  

12:07:10 PM    comment []  

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:

Word of the Day: skank (skngk)

1. (n.) Originally associated with a bad smell and/or scummy or dirty surface, it has come to refer to someone who is either or both physically repugnant for their filth and morally or socially repugnant for their behavior and demeanor, most often sexually.

 2. (n.) filth: any substance considered disgustingly foul or unpleasant

Coulter: New York Firefighters aren't really New Yorkers

 Copyright © 2004-2005 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved.

On The Radio Factor, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter opined that New York firefighters are "Americans" not New Yorkers and that citing them as an example of New Yorkers helping out victims of Hurricane Katrina is like "citing the Christian Club at Harvard." In making the claim, Coulter was defending claims she made earlier on the show to guest host Al Rantel that "I'm waiting to see if New Yorkers will run to support the suffering victims of Katrina," and that she had doubts because "New Yorkers don't consider themselves a part of the rest of America." A caller challenged her remarks as "just flat-out hateful, divisive, and contribut[ing] to the politicizing of a tragedy," adding that New York firefighters had begun sending supplies and personnel to the Gulf Coast, to "reciprocate the outpouring of support they received and aid that they received after 9-11." Coulter responded, "I mean, to be citing firemen who are from New York, no, they are Americans," and then said, "New York firemen are a completely different breed. I mean, that's like citing the Christian Club at Harvard."

From the August 31 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

RANTEL: I was telling the audience this morning, you know I don't like to compare anything to September the 11th because it was a unique thing, but I have to tell that, as I am watching the video, the television coverage of the suffering that's going on in Biloxi and Mobile and Gulfport [Mississippi], all of our great Gulf Coast cities, emotionally, I think I feel about the same way, it's frightening and it's horrible to watch this. What's your feeling about it?

COULTER: Yes. No, I know, I thought the exact same thing. And in the same way the rest of the country ran to support New York, I'm waiting to see if New Yorkers will run to support the suffering victims of Katrina.

RANTEL: Do you have doubts?

COULTER: New Yorkers don't really consider themselves a part of the rest of America.

RANTEL: [laughs] Well, I hope that's not true. We've got --

COULTER: You've heard of Manhattan?

RANTEL: I have. I have. I've been there many times. You have some doubts as to whether there'll be an outpour -- I mean do you think this is political, because these are red states?

COULTER: No. I just think New Yorkers think of themselves as their own country.

[...]

RANTEL: Let's take a call here. [Caller] is in St. Louis, Missouri. [Caller], welcome to The Radio Factor. How are you?

CALLER: I'm fine, thank you for taking my call.

RANTEL: You're welcome.

CALLER: I wanted to make a comment on Ann's comment that I think is just flat-out hateful, divisive, and contributes to the politicizing of a tragedy -- when she remarked about being surprised that New York would come to the aid of the victims of Katrina. I just watched this morning, on Fox News, they were covering the aftermath of the storm and the response to it. And they did a segment highlighting New York firefighters loading trucks preparing to send not only supplies but personnel to the affected area. And they commented that the reason they were doing it was to reciprocate the outpouring of support they received and aid that they received after 9-11. I think that it adds to the divisiveness; it adds to the extremism for her to make a remark like that --

RANTEL: All right.

CALLER: -- that's completely unfounded.

COULTER: Of course, New York firefighters, they're Americans.

RANTEL: [laugh]

CALLER: It was New York firefighters responding and your comment--

COULTER: Right, and I just said -- Of course they did. Of course they did. Surprisingly enough, eight million people are not monolithic.

RANTEL: Right, so in other words, Ann, what are you saying? You're not surprised that firefighters would help, that others would help, but you want to see --

COULTER: Yes, of course. New York firemen are a completely different breed. I mean, that's like citing the Christian Club at Harvard.

RANTEL: Right, so you want the liberals on the Upper West Side to do what?

COULTER: To respond the way people in Louisiana did when New York came under attack. I mean, there is the feeling that this isn't something that just happened to New Yorkers, and oh, well this is because you guys elected [Sen.] Hillary [Rodham] Clinton [D-NY], and that is what we're getting from liberals on the hurricane. It's because of their primitive religion. It's because of a memo [Mississippi Gov.] Haley Barbour wrote. It's the wrath of God. This isn't seen as something that has happened to their fellow Americans --

RANTEL: Let's go down south --

COULTER: -- Yeah, I mean to be citing firemen who are from New York, no, they are Americans.

— R.S.K.

An Ann Coulter speech? Thanks but no thanks

We haven't heard much from Ann Coulter in the last few days.

As Hurricane Katrina was striking the Gulf Coast, Coulter was suggesting that New Yorkers, who "don't really consider themselves a part of the rest of America," wouldn't come to the aid of its victims. But that was more than a week ago, and we haven't heard mention of Coulter since. Maybe she's still doing her regular spew and we just haven't noticed. Either way, we can't say we miss her, and it appears that we're not alone: Harding University, an Arkansas college affiliated with the Church of Christ, has disinvited her from its lecture series after learning a little more about the way in which she chooses to express herself.

In an e-mail message to faculty members, Harding's director of public relations said that the school's administration had "re-evaluated" its decision to invite Coulter to speak. "Harding and Ann Coulter are probably on the same page on many issues," the school's spokesman told Inside Higher Ed. But he said school officials had grown "concerned with the manner in which she presents her ideas. We believe that some of her comments are very controversial and confrontational, and we just weren’t comfortable with that."

-- Tim Grieve, Salon.com