The Incompetence, The Corruption, The Cronyism - October 5, 2005 edition

After awhile, the three categories run together. It's hard to decide which story goes where, because almost all stories contain all three -- the Bush Administration trifecta, incompetence, corruption and cronyism. Well, here goes.

The Incompetence

Back to FEMA, the disaster of an agency. They bought $100 million dollars worth of ice, but it never made to the Gulf Coast.

Stumbling Storm-Aid Effort Put Tons of Ice on Trips to Nowhere

[T]he odyssey of the ice.

Ninety-one thousand tons of ice cubes, that is, intended to cool food, medicine and sweltering victims of the storm. It would cost taxpayers more than $100 million, and most of it would never be delivered.

More FEMA f**kups:

FEMA suspends Phoenix rescuers over arms

PHOENIX - The Phoenix Fire Department's Urban Search and Rescue team has been suspended by a federal agency because it brought armed police officers for protection on hurricane relief missions. []

The team was credited with plucking more than 400 Katrina survivors from rooftops and freeway overpasses in flooded sections of New Orleans.

Tale of the forbidden pillow offers insights into FEMA work

Parish president: FEMA still fumbling

FEMA still struggling to find interim housing

FEMA and Charity


The Corruption

Mad cow disease, coming to a restaurant near you, courtesy of Bush's incompetent and corporate-protecting FDA. It will be hard to eat meat from anywhere but a farm after learning that calves can be fed chicken shit:

FDA Unveils Proposal to Fight Mad Cow

Contrary to FDA's previous plan, the new proposal does not ban cattle blood, often fed to calves as a milk replacer, or restaurant leftovers from cattle feed. It also doesn't ban chicken litter, which includes spilled feed as well as chicken manure, which scientists believe could contain mad-cow disease if the chickens had ingested tainted protein.

The feed rules are important because the only way cattle are known to get mad cow disease is from eating feed containing contaminated cattle remains.

Of course, the FDA's current acting head is a Bush crony:

Acting FDA Head Drops Other Duty
He Bows to Conflict-of-Interest Concerns

Andrew von Eschenbach....the Texas urologist and longtime Bush family friend....

The Cronyism

It would be too easy to use Harriet Miers here two days in a row (but google "Miers crony" and see the hundreds of articles generated since her nomination). No, we'll go to one of the uncovered stories of the Bush Administration: their corporate cronies. And can't we all agree that the last place we want incompetent cronies is in nucular plants? Check out the many links embedded within the original post:

Crony Capitalism at our Nuclear Facilities

What could be worse than our nation's hurricane response being left in the hands of incompetent Bush cronies?

How about the safety of our nuclear plants handed over to an incompetent GOP corporate crony, a company which has repeatedly botched security drills and lied about it to cover up its incompetence.

This is Wackenhut, the foreign-owned security firm that guards many army bases and US nuclear facilities, a company that has:

- botched security drills at the Nevada nuclear test site

- cheated on security drills at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee

- illegally violated whistleblower laws by punishing employees who revealed safety problems at South Texas nuclear facilities

- and generally has been found to violate safety standards or failed tests repeatedly.

So why does Wackenhut keep getting these security contracts?