Never Forget

Hullabaloo: 1836 Americans Started To Die While These Assholes Partied

AP: Almost half of Katrina’s dead were over 75

McCain Jokes About Katrina: September 21, 2005

How could anyone vote for this fool?

More DoubleTalk From McCain

John McCain, the man who stood next to George W. Bush as New Orleans was drowning and didn't do anything, now says he'd respond promptly to a massive natural disaster. Watch the video below for his lies and prevarications on this subject.

Blogtopia* Roundup, Monday, March 12, 2007

Must view post of the day: Welcome to Pottersville with a series of screencaps of the FoxNewsMachine's fairly unbalanced news coverage. They are serial liars and should never be trusted. (It also reminded me of these pictures which someone photoshopped a few years ago.)

Digby on Russert and the craven corporate media as revealed by the Libby trial. I had forgotten that James Carville and Tim Russert's son have a sports radio program together. No wonder Mary Matalin could tell Scooter Libby that Russert hated Chris Matthews. Pillow talk!

salon.com exposes the Army for sending injured soldiers back to Iraq. (Send the twins, I say.) See, also, Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, who says the only way to support these troops is to demand impeachment.

And while you're at salon.com, head over and read Glenn Greenwald's piece Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity with a couple of hilarious pictures of manly wingnuts as an added bonus.

ThinkProgress reports that Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) has called on VA Secretary Jim Nicholson to resign. You go girl.

MCCASKILL: [] And with all due respect to the head of the Veterans Administration, this is a man that was chairman of the Republican National Committee. The appearance isn’t right. You know, this looks like a Brownie situation. Let’s put somebody…

SCHIEFFER: Brownie as in FEMA.

MCCASKILL: As in FEMA. You know, this is a political appointment. This is somebody who has spent a whole lot of the last few years defending everything about the White House. Really, that’s not the right person to be leading the agency that’s supposed to protect our veterans.

And I really think it’s time we put somebody in charge of the Veterans Administration whose first priority are the veterans and not the politics surrounding the agency.

Talking Points Memo is following the fired US Attorney story most closely. NYTimes called for Abu Gonzales to resign in an editorial yesterday.

*yes, skippy! coined that phrase.

Privatizing Walter Reed: Rich Get Richer, Veterans Get Screwed

I've never understood the premise of privatization. Why does adding a profit motive to a third party improve government services? Answer: It doesn't. It just allows private companies to pay workers less and give them poorer benefits to do the same job, then transfers the cost savings into the pockets of the owners of the private company. And some of those companies also cut the numbers of workers doing the work. Like IAP Worldwide, which has replaced 300 federal support services workers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with 50 private employees. The result? Dan Quayle, John Snow and Al Neffgen get richer. Who got poorer? The workers who now work for IAP don't make the wages of federal workers, and don't have equivalent benefits. But most horrifying, the maimed and brain-damaged soldiers at Walter Reed are suffering because our government chose to put money into the pockets of their rich friends rather than put money into caring for the veterans injured in their immoral, illegal war. Sickening.

Metrowest Daily News (Framingham, MA): Editorial: Privatizing Walter Reed

As a letter from the House committee investigating Walter Reed stated, "it would be reprehensible if the deplorable conditions were caused or aggravated by an ideological commitment to privatize government services regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the consequences for wounded soldiers.

The thread of privatization and cronyism runs through this administration's disasters: from Abu Ghraib, where private contractors had a role in intelligence-gathering, to New Orleans, where a major city paid the price after political appointees replaced experienced emergency service professionals at FEMA.

Palm Beach (FL) Post editorial: Failures at Walter Reed expose VA system failure

Incredibly, despite the rising numbers of those who will need care, the White House is proposing a VA budget that is essentially flat from last year. The administration wants to cut money for prosthetic research and provide inadequate financing for the backlog of cases that only will grow. Yet on Tuesday, Mr. Bush called on Congress to "fund our war fighters." Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, whose "qualification" was running the Republican National Committee, has compounded the administration's indifference with insulting rhetoric. Asked about the 200,000-plus who have tried to get care, Mr. Nicholson says, "A lot of them come in for dental problems."

YahooNews: Deborah Burger, HuffPo: We're All at Walter Reed

It starts with brutally substandard care and abandonment of tens of thousands of veterans, not just at Walter Reed, but at VA hospitals and clinics around the country, as the Washington Post has revealed in ghastly detail.

Second, starving the VA. Since 2001, as Paul Krugman reported in the New York Times, federal allocations for veterans medical care lag behind overall healthcare spending, rather stunning when you consider we have sent 1.5 million of our young men and women to Iraq and Afghanistan and over 184,000 have sought VA care after serving.

There's more. Due to funding cuts, some 263,257 veterans were denied enrollment for Veterans Administration health coverage in 2005. To cut costs, enrollment has been suspended for those deemed not having service-related injuries or illnesses. So much for the guarantee of lifetime healthcare. And, if all the other indignities were not enough, some Walter Reed patients had to buy their own meals.

The final piece of this unholy troika is privatization. As the Army Times notes, Walter Reed handed a five-year $120 million contract to a private company run by an ex-Halliburton executive. The contracting out of support services was followed by a mass exodus of support personnel.

Christian Science Monitor: How decay overtook Walter Reed
The problems at the US Army hospital show how strained military resources have become.

Operation Photo Op, Katrina Edition, Day 362

U.S. President George W. Bush speaks beside Hurricane Katrina survivor Rockey Vaccarella at the White House August 23, 2006. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES)

Cake eating, guitar strumming President Bush is continuing to fight Hurricane Katrina with.....more and more powerfully staged photo ops.

Will Bunch at Attytode deconstructs the latest fakery.

"Rockey I": If it sounds too good to be true...

The good news is that CNN seems to have finally stop obsessing over John Mark Karr. Instead, they've found a new soap opera to go ga-ga over, Katrina survivor Rockey Vaccarella, who drove his FEMA trailer from his home in ravaged St. Bernard Parish to Washington with "the hope" of convincing President Bush to meet with him.

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And, whaddya know? Turns out that the earthy Vaccarella -- a highly successful businessman in the fast-food industry -- is indeed a Republican pol, having run unsuccessfully under the GOP banner for a seat on the St. Bernard Parish commission back in 1999.

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And in fact, Vaccarella seemed very confident that he would be meeting with Bush when he left home, to the point where he had a date scheduled and everything:

Dinner with the President is planned for the evening of August 22nd

Couldn't they just spend the money on the victims? I guess not.

Rockey even got a swag bag! Karl thinks of everything.
Rockey Vaccarella shows off some of the gifts given to him by President Bush, Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2006, after meeting with Bush at the White House in Washington. Vaccarella, 41, of Mereaux, La., said he wanted to thank Bush for the federally provided trailers that have provided temporary housing to many in the region who lost homes, but also to keep the pressure on. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

Second Coming of My Computer

For some reason the old gal was resurrected tonight. How can you have no hard drive one day, and boot up fine the next? Techier minds than me must know. I'm still getting a new machine. 5 years is 100 years in computer years.

Another in our series of great faux political ads: I saw this at firedoglake. You Connecticut voters, get out there on August 18th! I hope Lamont has the sense to run a Katrina ad right before the vote. Lieberman sped Arabian horse's ass Michael Brown's nomination to head FEMA through his committee in 42 minutes. Thanks, Joe.

The Incompetence, The Corruption, The Cronyism: April 28, 2006 edition

I think Paul Krugman should have titled his column today "The Incompetence, the Corruption, and the Cronyism", but he called it The Crony Fairy (behind the TimesSelect wall; Middle Earth Journal has the column here.)

On the other hand, the history of the Bush administration, from the botched reconstruction of Iraq to the botched start-up of the prescription drug program, shows that a president who isn't serious about governing, who prizes loyalty and personal connections over competence, can quickly reduce the government of the world's most powerful nation to third-world levels of ineffectiveness.

And bear in mind that Mr. Bush's pattern of cronyism didn't change after Katrina. For example, he appointed Julie Myers, the inexperienced niece of Gen. Richard Myers, to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement — an agency that, like FEMA, is supposed to protect us against terrorism as well as other threats. Even at the C.I.A., the administration seems more interested in purging Democrats than in improving the quality of intelligence.

So let's skip the name change for FEMA, O.K.? The United States will regain effective government if and when it gets a president who cares more about serving the nation than about rewarding his friends and scoring political points. That's at least a thousand days away. Meanwhile, don't count on FEMA, or on any other government agency, to do its job.

I see the Bush MO for destroying government as follows:

The Corruption: Lie about your political aims (Compassionate Conservatism, Against Nation Building); cheat to get into office (Florida 2000; Ohio 2004)

The Cronyism: Reward friends and bagmen (Pioneers) with appointments (Michael Brown, Harriet Miers, Tom Ridge) to jobs they can screw up.

The Incompetence: Run federal agencies into the ground (FEMA, Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, OSHA).

Declare war and go home to reap the profits (probably to be employed in Iraq very soon.): Proclaim that government doesn't work, get lame members of Congress to support abolishing government agencies.


In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. H.L. Mencken

FEMA: Still a Disaster

WaPo: Waste in Katrina Response Is Cited
Housing Aid Called Inefficient in Audits

Nearly eight months after Hurricane Katrina triggered the nation's largest housing crisis since the Second World War, a hastily improvised $10 billion effort by the federal government has produced vast sums of waste and misspent funds, an array of government audits and outside analysts have concluded.

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency wraps up the initial phase of its temporary housing program -- ending reliance on cruise ships and hotels for people sent fleeing by the Aug. 29 storm -- the toll of false starts and missed opportunities appears likely to top $1 billion and perhaps much more, according to a series of after-action studies and Department of Homeland Security reports, including one due for release today.

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Only 71 percent of the 141,000 trailers that FEMA estimates are needed are being occupied.

Meanwhile, the trailer program consumes more than 60 percent of funds FEMA is spending on housing aid -- even though it benefits about 10 percent of the approximately 1 million households getting help, according to agency data and the Brookings Institution, which tracks recovery progress.

By contrast, a rental assistance program is serving 800,000 families, or 80 percent of households, at about one-third the total cost, or more than $3 billion. []

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Neither FEMA nor its predecessors had ever housed hundreds of thousands of disaster victims for a prolonged period, and the collapse of its initial trailer strategy is part of what Dennis S. Mileti, former director of the National Hazards Center in Colorado, called "the largest disaster-response failure in the history of our country."

I guess since Bushco has wasted more than a billion dollars in their disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, it's time for another tax cut for millionaires.

Katrina Aftermath, Still a Struggle Against Incompetence and Corruption

Dead bodies are still being recovered in New Orleans, seven months later:

NYTimes: In Attics and Rubble, More Bodies and Questions

The bodies of storm victims are still being discovered in New Orleans — in March alone there were nine, along with one skull. Skeletonized or half-eaten by animals, with leathery, hardened skin or missing limbs, the bodies are lodged in piles of rubble, dangling from rafters or lying face down, arms outstretched on parlor floors. Many of them, like Ms. Blanchard, were overlooked in initial searches.

A landlord in the Lakeview section put a "for sale" sign outside a house, unaware that his tenant's body was in the attic. Two weeks ago, searchers in the Lower Ninth Ward found a girl, believed to be about 6, wearing a blue backpack. Nearby, they found part of a man who the authorities believe might have been trying to save her.

[On Friday, contractors found a body in the attic of a home in the Gentilly neighborhood that had been searched twice before, officials said.]

In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, there were grotesque images of bodies left in plain sight. Officials in Louisiana recovered more than 1,200 bodies, but the process, hamstrung by money shortages and red tape, never really ended.

In the Lower Ninth Ward, where unstable houses make searching dangerous, a plan to use cadaver dogs alongside demolition crews was delayed by lawsuits and community protests against the bulldozing. In the rest of the city, the absence of neighbors and social networks meant that some residents languished and died unnoticed. Many of the families of the missing were far from home, rendered helpless by distance and preoccupied with their own survival.

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In October and November, the special operations team of the New Orleans Fire Department searched the Lower Ninth Ward for remains until they ran out of overtime money.

Half a dozen officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency rebuffed requests to pay the bill, said Chief Steve Glynn, the team commander. When reporters inquired, FEMA officials said the required paperwork had not been filed.

While FEMA couldn't find the money to find and bury the dead, they made sure to pad the coffers of rich contractors:

Times-Picayune: Senators grill corps, FEMA
Hearing details waste in relief spending

Testimony at a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing Monday in New Orleans showed that in the matter of the Katrina cleanup, taxpayers got taken to the cleaners.

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[T]he hearing also revealed in stark terms how the poor level of federal preparation and response carried more than an economic punch. As the questions from the elected officials gained momentum, it became clear that two themes especially bothered the Louisiana contingent. One was that, for all of the state's storied corruption and the defense its officials had to mount that relief money would not be squandered in Louisiana, the lion's share of waste occurred under the federal watch.

The second theme is that tens of millions of dollars were frittered away in layers of subcontractors. What Washington and the nation need to realize, the Louisiana contingent argued, is the totals bandied about as earmarked for relief are, in fact, grotesquely inflated by misspending.

Insurance companies are also preying on the weak and defenseless. Tort reform advocate Trent Lott is using the tort system he so hates to prove insurance companies are cheating homeowners in the hurricane zone:

AP: Lott Lawyer: State Farm Destroying Papers

Zach Scruggs, one of Lott's attorneys, says his client has a "good faith belief" that several State Farm employees in Biloxi are destroying engineering reports that gave conflicting conclusions about whether wind or water was responsible for storm damage.

Like thousands of Gulf Coast homeowners, Lott's claim was denied because State Farm concluded that Katrina's flood water demolished his beach-front Pascagoula home. State Farm says its policies do not cover damage from rising water, including wind-driven water.

But lawyers for the Mississippi Republican claim Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm has routinely pressured its engineers to alter "favorable" reports that initially blamed damage on hurricane's wind, which the company's policies cover.

A State Farm spokesman said Monday he couldn't immediately comment on Scruggs' allegations.

Lott's allegations come on the heels of a lawsuit filed by Kiln, Miss., couple who claimed they had obtained copies of conflicting reports prepared by State Farm's engineers on what damaged their home. They said one report traced the destruction to Katrina's winds while a later report said flooding was the culprit.

In response, State Farm spokesman Phil Supple had said the second report was the only one the engineering firm sent to State Farm's claims office.

In an interview Monday, Scruggs said corporate "whistleblowers" who are cooperating with Lott's attorneys have provided evidence that State Farm employees are destroying or moving those "initial favorable" engineering reports.

White House Learned of New Orleans Levee Breach on Monday, August 29, 2005

Here's George Bush on Tuesday, August 30, 2005, fiddling while New Orleans drowned:



White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.

But Congressional investigators have now learned that an eyewitness account of the flooding from a federal emergency official reached the Homeland Security Department's headquarters starting at 9:27 p.m. the day before, and the White House itself at midnight.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency official, Marty Bahamonde, first heard of a major levee breach Monday morning [August 29th]. By late Monday afternoon, Mr. Bahamonde had hitched a ride on a Coast Guard helicopter over the breach at the 17th Street Canal to confirm the extensive flooding. He then telephoned his report to FEMA headquarters in Washington, which notified the Homeland Security Department.

"FYI from FEMA," said an e-mail message from the agency's public affairs staff describing the helicopter flight, sent Monday night at 9:27 to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and recently unearthed by investigators. Conditions, the message said, "are far more serious than media reports are currently reflecting. Finding extensive flooding and more stranded people than they had thought — also a number of fires."

Michael D. Brown, who was the director of FEMA until he resigned under pressure on Sept. 12, said in a telephone interview Thursday that he personally notified the White House of this news that night, though he declined to identify the official he spoke to.

White House officials have confirmed to Congressional investigators that the report of the levee break arrived there at midnight, and Trent Duffy, the White House spokesman, acknowledged as much in an interview this week, though he said it was surrounded with conflicting reports.

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Eyewitness to Devastation

As his helicopter approached the site, Mr. Bahamonde testified in October, there was no mistaking what had happened: large sections of the levee had fallen over, leaving the section of the city on the collapsed side entirely submerged, but the neighborhood on the other side relatively dry. He snapped a picture of the scene with a small camera.

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[I]nvestigators have found the e-mail message referring to Mr. Bahamonde's helicopter survey that was sent to John F. Wood, chief of staff to Secretary Chertoff at 9:27 p.m. They have also found a summary of Mr. Bahamonde's observations that was issued at 10:30 p.m. and an 11:05 p.m. e-mail message to Michael Jackson, the deputy secretary of homeland security. Each message describes in detail the extensive flooding that was taking place in New Orleans after the levee collapse.

Given this chain of events, investigators have repeatedly questioned why Mr. Bush and Mr. Chertoff stated in the days after the storm that the levee break did not happen until Tuesday, as they made an effort to explain why they initially thought the storm had passed without the catastrophe that some had feared.

Picture caption: A photo taken by a federal emergency official the day Hurricane Katrina arrived [Monday, August 29, 2005] showed the broken 17th Street Canal levee in New Orleans.

Heckuva Job Brownie: The Backstory

via Surburban Guerilla:

Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

and the full text version:

Unholy Trinity: Katrina, Allbaugh and Brown

Michael Brown will forever remain the poster child for federal incompetence. And the central question has yet to be answered: who was Michael Brown, and how did he end up at the helm of the Federal Emergency Management Agency? Indeed, how did he and his predecessor and mentor, Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh, manage to turn FEMA, a once proud and effective agency, into a national laughingstock?

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But why Michael Brown? [] When pressed, the taciturn Allbaugh tersely replied that Brown was a lifelong friend in whom he had confidence. To this moment, that has remained the official, indeed only, explanation of how and why Michael Brown was running FEMA when Hurricane Katrina struck.

The truth, RealNews has learned, is that the relationship between the two is a decades-long hidden partnership designed to advance both men's business and personal interests. By all appearances, that relationship encompassed Allbaugh's decision to ask Bush to let him run FEMA, and then his decision to turn the place over to Brown so he could profit from their ties.

Indeed, as soon as Allbaugh left the agency, he began cashing in. Today, both Allbaugh and Brown are consultants, making money off their connections at FEMA and in the administration—tattered and tarnished though their legacies may be. And now FEMA is staffed by others put into position by the two men and run by David Paulison, best known for having advised Americans to stock up on duct tape as protection against future terrorist attacks.

Is this really just about incompetence as a byproduct of a deeply ideological presidency? Or has a debilitating "culture of corruption" become deeply embedded in agencies like FEMA on which we literally rely for our lives? And just how far into the Bush White House does this dismaying story reach?

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

In Germany, they called these concentration camps. From BusinessWire, via Guerilla News:

Homeland Security To Build Detention Camps In The United States

ARLINGTON, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jan. 24, 2006–KBR announced today that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component has awarded KBR an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contingency contract to support ICE facilities in the event of an emergency. KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton (NYSE:HAL).

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The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing for ICE personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of relief efforts.

The christo-fascists are making more end runs to end reproductive freedom in this country. From WaPo:

Health Workers' Choice Debated
Proposals Back Right Not to Treat

More than a dozen states are considering new laws to protect health workers who do not want to provide care that conflicts with their personal beliefs, a surge of legislation that reflects the intensifying tension between asserting individual religious values and defending patients' rights.

About half of the proposals would shield pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and "morning-after" pills because they believe the drugs cause abortions. But many are far broader measures that would shelter a doctor, nurse, aide, technician or other employee who objects to any therapy. That might include in-vitro fertilization, physician-assisted suicide, embryonic stem cells and perhaps even providing treatment to gays and lesbians.

60 Minutes ran a story last night about another incompetent Bushco crony, former Amtrak lawyer Stewart Simonson, who is Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. From No More Apples:

ANOTHER MICHAEL BROWN ENDANGERS US ALL

To sum up: We have a drug, tested and approved by the Pentagon, that would save people from radiation exposure []. The HHS has ordered only 100,000 doses instead of the minimum 10 million recommended by the 9/11 Commission, because the guy in charge of Project Bioshield is another Bush political appointee in the mold of Michael Brown. In other words, Bush is at it again, making us "safer" by installing unqualified cretins in the most sensitive of posts. Who in their right minds trusts this guy to protect us?

And Heckuva Job Brownie and FEMA's incompetence are still news, from WaPo:

Interior Offered Extensive Katrina Aid
FEMA Ignored Proposals or Didn't Use Resources Effectively, Department Says

And in the unimportant, but interesting category: Who knew? Country singer Toby Keith is actually a Democrat. From Preemptive Karma:
Toby Keith is a registered Democrat

DumBush's 2005 Lowlights

From about.com. Click on the link for the photo and audio links:

Top Ten Bushisms of 2005

The Dumbest Things President Bush Said in 2005

10) "It's totally wiped out. ... It's devastating, it's got to be doubly devastating on the ground." --turning to his aides while surveying Hurricane Katrina flood damage from Air Force One, Aug. 31, 2005

9) "I'm occasionally reading, I want you to know, in the second term." --Washington, D.C., March 16, 2005

8) "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table." --Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 22, 2005

7) "I'm going to spend a lot of time on Social Security. I enjoy it. I enjoy taking on the issue. I guess, it's the mother in me." --Washington D.C., April 14, 2005

6) "Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers.
For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled." --explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

5) "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?" --in a note to to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a U.N. Security Council meeting, September 14, 2005 (View photo)

4) "We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (Laughter) --touring hurricane damage, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005

3) "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." --Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 (Listen to audio)

2) "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." --to FEMA director Michael Brown, who resigned 10 days later amid criticism over his handling of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, Mobile, Ala., Sept. 2, 2005 (Listen to audio)

1) "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." --to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005 (Listen to audio)

The Incompetence, The Corruption, The Cronyism: November 4, 2005 edition

The Incompetence:

Heckuva Job Brownie, aka Mike Brown, late Director of FEMA, who is still on the federal payroll, is back in the news. Even this kind of breathtaking stupidity can't get the breathtakingly stupid President to just fire your ass.

In Katrina's aftermath, FEMA chief mused about his future

On Aug. 31, two days after the storm flooded the city, a FEMA regional director sent Brown an urgent e-mail about patients dying "within hours," a lack of food and water, hundreds of rescues and a situation "past critical."

Brown's response? "Thanks for update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?"

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E-mails released last month by Collins' committee showed that Brown and his press secretary, Sharon Worthy, were concerned about time for dinner at a Baton Rouge, La., restaurant and an upcoming TV interview while a FEMA regional director, Marty Bahamonde, warned of the desperate situation at the New Orleans Superdome.

Wednesday's release added further insight into their concerns, with one showing Worthy advising Brown to roll up his sleeves to "just below the elbow" the way President Bush did: "In this crisis and on TV you just need to look more hard-working ... ROLL UP THE SLEEVES."

The Corruption:

A 62-year-old Republican state legislator from Hawaii was convicted of sexually molesting a 27 year old woman on an airline flight. Ewwwww. The incident happened on a flight to California, so that's where the trial took place. He didn't even reveal he had been charged until he was convicted.

Testimony against legislator includes details of molestation

The 27-year-old woman who accused state Rep. Galen Fox of sexually molesting her on a United Airlines flight testified that she awoke to find his hand inside her jeans and rubbing her crotch.

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In her statement, the woman, identified only as Jane Doe in court documents, told the FBI that she had taken a sleeping pill because she wanted to rest and fell asleep holding a folded airline blanket on her lap, her arms crossed over her blanket.

She said she awoke to a warm sensation pressing against her crotch. Lifting her blanket, she saw Fox's right hand rubbing her crotch, according to a statement of probable cause filed by Special Agent Rodney G. Fung of the FBI's Los Angeles International Airport Office.

According to the affidavit, the woman jumped up and said, "What the ---- are you doing?" to which Fox allegedly replied, "I touched you, I'm sorry I touched you." The woman alerted her parents who sat across the aisle from her and then notified flight attendants, who moved them to other seats.

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The woman testified that Fox apparently unfastened the button and zipper of her jeans, and she awoke to find his hand inside her jeans and groping her, Goswami said.

The Cronyism:

So, former baseball owners and Republican fundraisers are experts on intelligence? President La La La, I Can't Hear You thinks so:

In the Company of Friends
Bush may be besieged by charges of cronyism, but they don’t seem to have affected his picks for a panel assessing intelligence matters.

President Bush last week appointed nine campaign contributors, including three longtime fund-raisers, to his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a 16-member panel of individuals from the private sector who advise the president on the quality and effectiveness of U.S. intelligence efforts. After watching the fate of Michael Brown as head of FEMA and Harriet Miers as Supreme Court nominee, you might think the president would be wary about the appearance of cronyism—especially with a critical national-security issue such as intelligence. Instead, Bush reappointed William DeWitt, an Ohio businessman who has raised more than $300,000 for the president’s campaigns, for a third two-year term on the panel. Originally appointed in 2001, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, DeWitt, who was also a top fund-raiser for Bush’s 2004 Inaugural committee, was a partner with Bush in the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Other appointees included former Commerce secretary Don Evans, a longtime Bush friend; Texas oilman Ray Hunt; Netscape founder Jim Barksdale, and former congressman and 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton. Like DeWitt, Evans and Hunt have also been longtime Bush fund-raisers, raising more than $100,000 apiece for the president’s campaigns. Barksdale and five other appointees—incoming chairman Stephen Friedman, former Reagan adviser Arthur Culvahouse, retired admiral David Jeremiah, Martin Faga and John L. Morrison—were contributors to the president’s 2004 re-election effort. Friedman also served a year on the intelligence board under President Bill Clinton, who appointed chairmen with very different profiles from Bush's Pioneers: former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. William Crowe, former Defense secretary Les Aspin, former House speaker Tom Foley and former GOP senator Warren Rudman. (Clinton did also appoint two donors who gave $100,000 apiece to the Democratic National Committee: New York investment banker Stan Shuman and Texas real estate magnate Richard Bloch.)

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H. L. Mencken

FEMA: Let Them Eat Beanie Weenies From Florida

Louisianans get few post-Katrina contracts

A Department of Homeland Security official tasked with helping local businesses get post-Hurricane Katrina contracts resigned in frustration last week because he could not secure catering work for local vendors.

Doug Doan, a business liaison at DHS, lined up a group of Louisiana chefs and restaurants to provide 26,000 meals a day in St. Tammany Parish to people without power and unable to cook for themselves.

Instead of the seafood pasta and beef with a red wine mushroom reduction that Doan arranged, box lunches and military rations known as meals-ready-to-eat, or MREs, from outside Louisiana are being served.

Gulf Coast lawmakers, such as Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and other critics have complained about the federal government's failure to steer recovery dollars to businesses in the areas affected by the storm. A list of contracts awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed that as of Oct. 3, two of 140 agreements had gone to Louisiana prime contractors.

"Louisiana makes the best food in the world," Doan said Tuesday. "To be bringing in beanie weenies from Florida or peanut butter sandwiches from Ohio at a greater cost ... is an outrage."

The Incompetence, The Corruption, The Cronyism: October 13, 2005 edition

The Incompetence:

We could make this all FEMA, all the time:

DIY Disaster Relief

Don’t let anybody kid you. The government response to Hurricane Katrina was not only a disaster when the storm first hit. It’s still a disaster now.

I’ve been talking to medical professionals who have been to the Gulf Coast in the past couple of weeks, and this is what they have told me.

First, FEMA continues to be next to useless. It is not providing relief workers with the access they need to areas crying out for their help. It is not keeping up with bills for the emergency work it has authorized so far. A shockingly large number of doctors and nurses are being told that their services are not needed. Those with the guts and the initiative to go ahead regardless are finding that the exact opposite is true – thousands upon thousands of storm evacuees who have run out of their prescription medications, or require new prescriptions, or need help with a panoply of storm-induced problems, from simple cuts and bruises to infections and depression and suicidal feelings.

Secondly, FEMA and the Red Cross are not talking to each other to sort it all out. At the Cajundome in Lafayette, Louisiana – home to more than 5,000 evacuees – there was, as of a few days ago, no formal on-site medical care. That meant people had the unenviable choice of going to the emergency room of a Lafayette hospital, waiting in line for hours and hoping for the best, or somehow fending for themselves.

Thirdly, the failures of the first six weeks or so since Katrina struck are likely only to compound the problems down the road. Sanitation in the shelters is a nightmare. Some professionals don’t exclude outbreaks of tuberculosis or other diseases one might have associated, pre-Katrina, with an earlier, more backward era.

Mobile Homes, Campers Wait at FEMA Sites

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- More than 9,000 mobile homes and campers meant for the victims of Hurricane Katrina are sitting unused at government staging areas while displaced families continue to live out of tents and shelters.

$11 Million a Day Spent on Hotels for Storm Relief

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 - Straining to meet President Bush's mid-October deadline to clear out shelters, the federal government has moved hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina into hotel rooms at a cost of about $11 million a night, a strategy local officials and some members of Congress criticize as incoherent and wasteful.

[]

The American Red Cross started the hotel program days after Hurricane Katrina struck, when it became clear that the shelters it had opened were not adequate to deal with the 600,000 to 700,000 families displaced by the storm, a spokeswoman, Carrie Martin, said.

The hotel program was intended to last a couple of weeks but has twice been extended by FEMA. Now Red Cross officials are saying there is no end to the initiative, which pays for 192,424 rooms in 9,606 hotels across the United States, in a range of cities as diverse as Casper, Wyo., and Anchorage, Alaska.

Congress last month appropriated a $62.3 billion for the relief effort, most of it designated for FEMA. The agency had told Congress that it expected to spend more than $2 billion to buy up to 300,000 travel trailers and mobile homes to house displaced residents. The agency also planned to give out $23.2 billion in assistance to victims for emergency needs and for temporary housing and housing repairs.

But the temporary housing program has been troubled since the start, observers say. Instead of setting up as many as 30,000 trailers and mobile homes every two weeks, as of Tuesday, just 7,308 were occupied. Even counting berths on the four ships that FEMA has leased and rooms on military bases and elsewhere, the agency has provided only 10,940 occupied housing units for victims in the three Gulf states.

The Corruption:

The law may be catching up with Senator Frist:

SEC Issues Subpoena To Frist, Sources Say
Records Sought On Sale of Stock

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has been subpoenaed to turn over personal records and documents as federal authorities step up a probe of his July sales of HCA Inc. stock, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

[]

The formal request for documents usually presages an acceleration of a federal probe. In Frist's case, regulators had to proceed with caution due to his status in Congress and their mutual desire to avoid triggering constitutional objections to the release of documents. The disclosure of the subpoena comes as Democrats blasted Frist anew for his financial and personal ties to Hospital Corporation of America, a Nashville chain founded in 1968 by his father and his brother, Thomas Frist Jr. Critics yesterday seized on a report that Frist held a substantial amount of his family's hospital stock outside of blind trusts between 1998 and 2002 -- a time when he asserted he did not know how much of the stock he owned.
The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from HCA stock in a partnership controlled by his brother, outside of the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest.

"It seems that for years, Frist may have misled his constituents and the American people about his health care industry stock holdings and the conflict of interest they created as he drafted our nation's health care policy," said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney. "This deal raises even more questions about the Republican culture of corruption in Washington, D.C."

The Cronyism:

Great article in the New Republic, outlining the 15 worst hacks in the Bush Administration. Here's just one:

Welcome to the Hackocracy

11: Patrick Rhode
Acting Deputy Director Federal Emergency Management Agency

As acting deputy director of FEMA, 36-year-old Patrick Rhode had, until recently, the unenviable job of backstopping the hapless Michael Brown, a man who needed much backstopping. Unfortunately, it's not clear that Rhode is much more qualified than Brown to be managing the nation's worst disasters. Before joining FEMA, the biggest disaster he had helped manage was the Small Business Administration (see Hector Barreto)--and even that was something of a stretch. Rhode entered federal government in 2001 as deputy director of advance operations for the Bush White House, a job he had also held for Bush's 2000 campaign. Never fear, though: Rhode has covered disasters--as a TV anchor for local network affiliates in Alabama and Arkansas, in which capacity he developed "an acute interest in what responders do in times of crises." Perhaps not acute enough. He recently said that FEMA's response to Katrina was "probably one of the most efficient and effective responses in the country's history."

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?

David Letterman's Top Ten -- Harriet Miers edition

Top Ten Signs Your Supreme Court Pick Isn't Qualified

10. "Lost 10 grand yesterday in the 'case' of Jets vs. Ravens"

9. "Spends most of her time trying to fit the gavel into her mouth"

8. "Her legal mentor: Oliver Wendell Redenbacher"

7. "Asks courtroom stenographer to, 'Quit that annoying tapping!'"

6. "Instead of Constitutional law books, consults set of 'Garfield' paperbacks"

5. "Keeps shouting, 'When does mama get to hang somebody?!'"

4. "When Scalia walks by, she pretends to cough and says, 'Rogaine'"

3. "Authored the book: 'I'm Not Qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice'"

2. "The closest thing to courtroom experience was being an extra on 'Matlock'"

1. "Glowing letter of recommendation from former FEMA director Michael Brown"

The Incompetence, The Corruption, The Cronyism: October 4, 2005 edition

The Incompetence:

This qualified for the cronyism, too, but after I read the second article, about Sen. James Imhofe (R. - Dumbf**kistan) I couldn't resist putting it here.

The Environment Is Doomed

Earlier this year, President Bush appointed 66-year-old Sam Bodman to serve as Secretary of Energy, a guy who for more than a decade ran a Texas-based chemical company that spent years on the top-five lists of the country's worst polluters.

And what action will our incompetent Republican Party take to protect the environment? Have the eternally dumb Imhofe (dumber than a bag of hammers and half as useful) have hearings featuring witness Michael Crichton, writer of fiction, testify about it (yes, truth IS stranger than fiction).

Michael Crichton, Novelist, Becomes Senate Witness

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 - His last book, "State of Fear," was published more than nine months ago, but the reviews were still pouring in on Wednesday, even as Michael Crichton folded his 6-foot-9-inch frame into a seat to testify before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

"More silly than scary," the flier dropped off by the Natural Resources Defense Council said.

"Notable mainly for its nuttiness," an analysis from the Brookings Institution said.

"Does not reflect scientific fact," the Union of Concerned Scientists said.

[]

His is an unpopular and contrary stance when measured against the judgment of groups like the National Academy of Sciences. But it was not those organizations that asked Mr. Crichton to Washington to counsel Congress on how to consider diverse scientific opinion when making policy. It was the committee chairman, Senator James M. Inhofe, a plainspoken* Oklahoma Republican who has unabashedly pronounced global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

In Mr. Crichton, a Harvard medical school graduate who never practiced medicine, he had found a kindred spirit - and a star witness for his committee.

* "Plainspoken" is apparently NYTimesSpeak for "stupid".


The Corruption:

Tom Delay get indicted again, by a different grand jury, for the same conduct, but this time there are two indictments. The man is just a walking ham sandwich. Oh, and this time, if convicted, he could get a life term. And in Texas, life means life.

I Love Me Some Texas Justice


The Cronyism:

Of course, today's crony is Harriet Miers,

a woman who has excelled in endeavors that require networking and shoulder-rubbing and no actual proof of legal expertise. (General counsel? Lest we forget, Mike Brown's first job at FEMA was as general counsel.) (Amy Sullivan)

Even the wingnuts are crying "crony, crony!"

What Julie Myers is to the Department of Homeland Security, Harriet Miers is to the Supreme Court. It's not just that Miers has zero judicial experience. It's that she's so transparently a crony/"diversity" pick while so many other vastly more qualified and impressive candidates went to waste. If this is President Bush's bright idea to buck up his sagging popularity--among conservatives as well as the nation at large--one wonders whom he would have picked in rosier times. Shudder. (Michelle Magalong)

Just talked to a very pro-Bush legal type who says he is ashamed and embarrassed this morning. Says Miers was with an undistinguished law firm; never practiced constitutional law; never argued any big cases; never was on law review; has never written on any of the important legal issues. Says she's not even second rate, but is third rate. Dozens and dozens of women would have been better qualified. Says a crony at FEMA is one thing, but on the high court is something else entirely. Her long history of activity with ABA is not encouraging from a conservative perspective--few conservatives would spend their time that way. In short, he says the pick is “deplorable.” There may be an element of venting here, but thought I'd pass along for what it's worth. It's certainly indicative of the mood right now...(Rich Lowry, National Review Online)

And, really, she's just your average, run-of-the-mill, crooked corporate lawyer:

Miers Led Law Firm Repeatedly Forced to Pay Damages For Defrauding Investors

In case anyone thought Harriet Miers wasn't a corporate-shill-in-White-House-clothing, take a gander at how Miers did her best Ken Lay impression while heading a major Texas corporate law firm. That's right, according to the 5/1/00 newsletter Class Action Reporter, Miers headed Locke, Liddell & Sapp at the time the firm was forced to pay $22 million to settle a suit asserting that "it aided a client in defrauding investors."

The details of the case are both nauseating and highly troubling, considering President Bush is considering putting Miers at the top of America's legal system. Under Miers' leadership, the firm represented the head of a "foreign currency trading company [that] was allegedly a Ponzi scheme." The law-firm admitted that it "knew in March 1998 that $ 8 million in [the company's] losses hadn't been reported to investors" but didn't tell regulators.

This wasn't an isolated incident, either. The Austin American-Statesman reported in 2001 that Miers' lawfirm was forced to pay another $8 million for a similar scheme to defraud investors. The suit, which dealt with actions the firm took under Miers in the late 1990s, was again quite troubling. As the 9/20/00 Texas Lawyer reported, Miers' firm helped a now-convicted con man "defraud investors and allowed the firm's [bank] account to be used as a 'conduit.'" The suit said "money from investors that went into the firm's trust account was deposited into [the con man's] bank accounts and was used to pay for his 'expensive toys.'"

If you think Miers wasn't involved in any of this -- think again. Miers wasn't just any old lawyer at the firm. She was the Managing Partner -- the big cheese.