Earlier today we noted Michael Chertoff's laughable claim that there was no way the government could have foreseen two natural disasters, one right upon the other -- i.e., a hurricane followed by a flood. This is sort of like the earthquake followed by the building collapse. But CNN, to my surprise, truly skewers Chertoff in this piece up on their site.
--Josh Marshall
Knight-Ridder adds some nice color to the Michael Brown debacle ...
Brown's ticket to FEMA was Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and an old friend of Brown's in Oklahoma. When Bush ran for president in 2000, Brown was ending a rocky tenure at the horse association.Brown told several association officials that if Bush were elected, he'd be in line for a good job. When Allbaugh, who managed Bush's campaign, took over FEMA in 2001, he took Brown with him as general counsel.
"He's known Joe Allbaugh for quite some time," said Andrew Lester, an Oklahoma lawyer who's been a friend of Brown's for more than 20 years. "I think they know each other from school days. I think they did some debate type of things against each other, and worked on some Republican politics together."
And some morsels about the horse years ...
From 1991 until 2000, Brown earned about $100,000 a year as the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian horse association.He was known as "The Czar" for the breadth of his power and the enthusiasm with which he wielded it, said Mary Anne Grimmell, a former association president.
...
Brown's old friend Lester said the progression from horse shows to hurricanes was natural.
"A lot of what he had to do was stand in the breach in difficult, controversial situations," Lester said. "Which I think would well prepare him for his work at FEMA."
The article also says Brown made an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1988.
So let me see if I understand this. <$NoAd$>Brown's a Republican from the southwest. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress when he was thirty-three. Then he bounced from job to job, finally getting into the sports business in mid-life, before getting canned. And then he used connections to land himself a high-powered position in the federal government for which he had no apparent experience at all.
How could such a fellow possibly be in the Bush administration?
--Josh Marshall
I too saw the Chertoff press conference Jon Cohn notes over at TPMCafe, or at least the part of it in which Chertoff trotted out what I guess is going to be the 'double-up justification' for the slow federal response to Katrina.
As Jon wrote: "Chertoff says this was a unique, unpredictable one-two punch -- of a hurricane *and* a flood from a breached levee -- that nobody anticipated."
I actually thought I heard him parse it into three events. But I was writing as I listened; and press reports bear out Jon's recollection.
But in any case, same difference: this is truly a parse for the ages.
The one snippet of the transcript I was able to find online has Chertoff saying: "We were prepared for one catastrophe. The second catastrophe, frankly, added a level of challenge that no one has seen before.”
Clearly, clearly, the hurricane and the flood were part of the same natural disaster. This isn't like a tornado being followed up by an earthquake. The flooding is part of the hurricane. It's almost surreal to even have to argue this point it's so obvious. But there it is.
Clearly, the White House is pulling out every stop to argue for the impossibility of predicting what happened. But remember, everyone seems to agree that a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane would have created a storm surge that overtopped the levees. I want to go back and check all the details on this. But my understanding is that Katrina -- which was coming into Louisiana as a Cat 5 -- ratchetted down in final hours and actually hit NOLA as a Cat 3. This is part of what created that brief period in which it seemed that the city emerged more or less intact. The immediate storm surge didn't overtop the levees. But then levees failed and/or some were overtopped.
Whatever the details on that point, whether levees failed or were overtopped, the feds and everyone else had every reason to believe over the weekend that the city was going to be flooded. This scenario was not only predictable, but actively predicted as a likely scenario.
One other point: at Chertoff's press conference, he introduced someone as Deputy Director of FEMA. I assume it was this guy noted by Al Kamen in the Post's Inside the Loop column back on August 1st ...
Michael D. Brown , who runs the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, sent around a memo a couple of weeks ago saying "effective immediately," his chief of staff, Patrick Rhode , was the acting deputy director.This caused some head-scratching, because there is no official deputy director position at FEMA, because there is no official director. The last person to hold such a post was Brown, before FEMA got folded into DHS. (Brown is now officially DHS undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response.)
A recent strategic review called for naming a deputy director, but Congress hasn't approved that plan and agencies don't usually go ahead without congressional blessing. Even more curious, it's not clear whether DHS or the White House, which approves such personnel moves, had signed off on Brown's move. FEMA says its general counsel approved the action.
Brown is widely expected to be leaving soon, and there has been some FEMA speculation that this is his way of trying to pave the way for a successor. Rhode had been associate administrator of the Small Business Administration.
(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader PR for the catch.)
--Josh Marshall
In afternoon press conference, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff fibs big time about Katrina disaster. Jon Cohn has the details at TPMCafe.
--Josh Marshall
I'm getting unconfirmed reports that Louisiana Gov. Blanco is now announcing that she's hired James Lee Witt as state reconstruction czar. Apparently, she beat the feds to him.
Late Update: I've yet to get any confirmation on this. And this post from the Times-Picayune on Blanco's press conference makes no mention of Witt. So this remains very much unconfirmed.
Later Update: Now confirmed.
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JS checks in ...
[James Lee] Witt actually oversaw the recovering from flooding in Arkansas 15 or so years ago. I was there, I know. As head of FEMA, he had an impeccable record of responding well and the best ever to disasters. He drew bipartisan support including from Bush. So why are Democrats and others not demanding that HE not Rudy who has no experience with flooding and hurricanes _ but WITT BE PUT IN CHARGE OF THIS?!!! He has experience, the qualifications and the proven record. No one in this administration or Rudy has that.
JS must be responding <$Ad$> to Newt Gingrich's call to put Rudy Giuliani in charge of reconstruction.
First, though, let's remember that Rudy's moments of greatness were during the attacks and their immediate aftermath. His record in work that is comparable to what's on offer here is decidely more mixed. Do we want Bernie Kerik retooling the gambling boats down on the Delta? Maybe the bars on Bourbon Street?
In truth, though, I'm not sure even appointing an eminently qualified guy like Witt as Bush's Delta Czar will be enough to insulate the operation from the administration's endemic cronyism and graft. Maybe we need to be thinking of something more along the lines of the RTC, a time-limited government-chartered corporation run by non-partisan professionals. Can we really afford to blow another $100 billion? Think about it. Haven't we already seen the Baghdad version of this movie?
--Josh Marshall
Today's Times devotes a whole article to the criticism of FEMA chief Michael Brown. ("Leader of Federal Effort Feels the Heat")
Here's the treatment of his professional background ...
Mr. Brown, 50, is a Republican lawyer who worked for the International Arabian Horse Association before joining FEMA in 2001 as general counsel. This week he has become the public face of an agency that critics say has lost focus and clout since it was absorbed in 2003 by the new Department of Homeland Security.
If you don't know why that reporting sounds a tad thin, read the post below.
--Josh Marshall
Yesterday the Houston Chronicle reported that Halliburton has been hired by the Navy to repair its damaged facilities in Mississippi and perform initial damage assessments of facilities in New Orleans.
The work was assigned, reported the Chronicle, "under a 'construction capabilities' contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process." But it raises a question it is not at all too early to ask. The egg is pretty much cooked on the relief operation. But in the coming days and weeks we will move into a recovery phase in which, no doubt, tens of billions of dollars will be spent cleaning up and rebuilding not just New Orleans but big sections of the Gulf Coast.
Does anyone believe that the Bush administration can handle that money and that task without widespread waste, fraud and cronyism?
That's not just a question for partisan Democrats. I would think that there are a lot of Republicans up for reelection next year who are probably giving that question some serious thought. They may not want to attack the president. They may even want their own seat on the gravy train. But they know the record as well as anyone. And they may not want to be carrying the president's water a year from now when the news stories are filling the papers.
The news out today about FEMA Director Michael Brown tells the ugly tale. So let's just review what we now know -- with key new details first from a diarist at DailyKos and now confirmed in more depth in this morning's Boston Herald.
Michael Brown is a lawyer and GOP party activist. Before he came to FEMA in 2001, he had a full-time job overseeing horse-shows as the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. He started with them in 1991. But he was eventually fired because of what the Herald describes as "after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures." (The Kos diary has some more details.)
But the stars were shining on Brown because President Bush had just been elected. And he appointed his chief political fixer Joe Allbaugh to replace James Lee Witt as head of FEMA.
That was a good break for the recently-canned Brown, because, as we learn from the Herald, he and Allbaugh were college roommates. He hired Brown as his General Counsel at FEMA in February. And then, by the end of the year, he promoted him to Deputy Director.
Then, little more than a year later, Allbaugh left FEMA to set up New Bridge Strategies, a consultancy to cash in on the Iraqi contracts bonanza. On Allbaugh's departure from FEMA, Brown became Director, in charge of federal domestic emergency management in the United States.
So, just to recap, Brown had no experience whatsoever in emergency management. He was fired from his last job for incompetence. He was hired because he was the new director's college roommate. And after the director -- who himself got the job because he was a political fixer for the president -- left, he became top dog. And President Bush said yesterday that he thinks Brown is "doing a helluva job".
Tens of billions of federal dollars are going to be spent on reconstruction, though the first allotment is only $10.5 billion. Does anybody think Bush administration has the competence or honesty to manage that money? Does anybody think it won't be handled with the efficiency, expertise and integrity of the Iraqi reconstruction?
--Josh Marshall
Earlier we asked who would track down the story about FEMA Chief Michael Brown's apparent firing from his last <$NoAd$> pre-FEMA employment.
The Boston Herald is on the case. The lede from this morning's piece by Brett Arends ...
The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.
The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.
The agency, run by Brown since 2003, is now at the center of a growing fury over the handling of the New Orleans disaster.
A bit further down, there's this ...
Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.``He was asked to resign,'' Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.
Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign.
Takes your breath away, doesn't it?
Late Update: Here's Brown's work bio at the DHS website: "Prior to joining FEMA he practiced law in Colorado and Oklahoma, where he served as a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court. He had been appointed as a special prosecutor in police disciplinary matters. While attending law school he was appointed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee of the Oklahoma Legislature as the Finance Committee Staff Director, where he oversaw state fiscal issues. His background in state and local government also includes serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight and as a city councilman."
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question that needs a reporter to report it out.
Over at DailyKos there's a diary entry which suggests that FEMA Chief Michael Brown was fired from his last pre-FEMA job as a commissioner with the now-defunct International Arabian Horse Association. A White House press release announcing Brown's appointment as Deputy Director of FEMA in December 2001 states simply that: "From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the national governing organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee."
Links provided in the original post, as well as comments from Kos readers who were members of the IAHA, strongly suggest there's something to this story. But we need more facts, more details, interviews with people in a position to know the key facts.
If the story checks out, it should be much more widely known. But it will never get picked up until someone does the basic reporting. Who will do it?
--Josh Marshall
Atrios has a string of posts up today pointing to a common global explanation of what happened last week, a failure not of resources and capacity but coordination and executive leadership.
An article in the Post suggests the US military was ready to begin emergency food drops into New Orleans much earlier in the week. But they were waiting on a request from FEMA.
Lousiana Gov. Blanco accepted an offer of state National Guard troops from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday, just before the storm hit. But the paperwork from Washington, allowing the troops to deploy, didn't come until Thursday.
--Josh Marshall
Andrew Sullivan has posted a lengthy reader email which gives some good insight and play-by-play of the already-escalating circling of the wagons around President Bush. The reader makes an obvious yet easy to overlook and very key point: the Army Corps of Engineers is, after all, part of the United States Army. It's commanders and senior officers work for the commander-in-chief. And they're not likely, at least publicly, to contradict the 'nobody-coulda-predicted' line coming down from the White House.
Perhaps, it's not too soon to start laying down some good natured bets on the scope of future investigations and angles of attack from the White House. Presidential commission to examine Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco? Investigation into what the Army Corps of Engineers failed to tell the president? New Orleans doomed because of French roots of original design?
--Josh Marshall
Trent Lott is fed up ... with the complaining media.
According to David Pleasant, the former Senate Majority Leader unloaded on CNN's Anderson Cooper, telling him that the government's response has been just fine and that complaints to the contrary are only coming from the media.
Of course, Sen. Lott got a personal, on-air guarantee from the president that his house would be rebuilt. So maybe he has a different perspective.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question several readers have now asked me.
Where's Dick Cheney? I think it's a genuinely good question. And not just a leading one. (This article says that he's confirmed for a visit to Canada on the 9th of the month to visit this oil facility. He's hosting a fundraiser in for Sen. Jim Talent on the 19th.)
Most people who've written in are I think getting at why he hasn't made some public statement or visit to the affected regions.
But even beyond that, the more basic question: where is he?
It's like he's disappeared.
--Josh Marshall
Disaster sociology according to Bill O'Reilly. Or, Two views on who didn't get out.
From today's Times: "Brian Wolshon, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University who served as a consultant on the state's evacuation plan, said little attention was paid to moving out New Orleans's 'low-mobility" population - the elderly, the infirm and the poor without cars or other means of fleeing the city, about 100,000 people.'"
O'Reilly, on his show last night: "A lot of the people -- a lot of the people who stayed wanted to do this destruction. They figured it out. And that's -- I'm not surprised."
--Josh Marshall
Here are some things to consider as we go through the day. But first, an excerpt from an exchange FEMA chief Michael Brown had yesterday with Wolf Blitzer ...
BLITZER: Knowing what you know now, Michael Brown -- and obviously all of us are a lot smarter with hindsight -- what would FEMA -- what should FEMA have done differently in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina to save people's lives in New Orleans? Because as you know, we're getting reports from the governor, from the mayor, that perhaps the death toll will go into the thousands.BROWN: Well, I think the death toll may go into the thousands. And unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the evacuation warnings. And I don't make judgments about why people choose not to evacuate.
But, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. And to find people still there is just heart wrenching to me because the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there. And so we've got to figure out some way to convince people that when evacuation warnings go out, it's for their own good. Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them.
One might note as an aside that the administration is putting a lot of weight on the claim that it simply wasn't foreseeable how bad things were going to be, even though people knew there was going to be a major storm. And yet a similar lack of foresight apparently leaves many of the victims with primary responsibility for their own deaths.
I'll let the logicians pick that one apart. But let's note that, as we mentioned yesterday, a not-insubstantial number of people who did not evacuate did not do so because they didn't have the cash on hand to do so. Several papers mention this this morning. Others were sick or invalids. And, yes, there were some who probably just figured they'd get lucky and paid a big price.
But anybody with any serious experience even watching disaster relief, let alone managing it, knows that public authorities are supposed to plan in advance to manage and alleviate the suffering, death and property destruction of anticipatable events. And all these events were anticipated. Not everybody can make it out in a 36 hour evacuation. Not everyone can; not everyone will. Brown might be bucking for a promotion to manager of human nature and/or wealth inequality; but for now, he's just in charge of disaster relief. So it's distressing to see his quick effort to blame the victims of this disaster for what were in many cases flawed actions on his watch.
But more specifically, and going back to what I said at the beginning, I'm pretty sure there was publicly available information on hand (from the Mayor, I think) before the storm even hit that a substantial minority of the population had not left the city. Whatever their moral culpability may be in Borwn's eyes, he knew those people were there. And yet, as I think we'll see over the course of the day, there's a concerted effort to say these facts were not known or were perhaps unknowable.
Watch for the rewriting of the history and more efforts to blame the disaster on its victims.
--Josh Marshall
Annals of egregious Bumillerism ...
Over the last few days a lot of folks have noted the fact that President Bush went about his normal political schedule as usual until well after New Orleans had sunk, literally and figuratively, into disaster. Many have linked to the picture of the president giving a strum to a guitar emblazoned with a presidential seal on Tuesday, with country music star in the background.
In her piece today Bumiller sets the record straight ...
Bloggers also circulated a picture of Mr. Bush playing a guitar at an event in California on Tuesday to imply that he was fiddling while New Orleans drowned. In fact, the picture was taken when the country singer Mark Wills presented Mr. Bush with a guitar backstage at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado, Calif., after Mr. Bush gave a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II.Later that day, as floodwaters poured into New Orleans, Mr. Bush returned to his ranch in Texas, then left from his ranch for Washington on Wednesday morning.
This is good stuff. You mean to tell <$Ad$> me that the president wasn't actually photographed in the midst of an impromptu jam session on the San Diego trip like we were all led to believe?
Suddenly everything seems different.
This really is an example of how some instances of special pleading are too grasping and silly for the White House to use themselves. So they pass it off to a compliant White House reporter.
Let's stipulate that the president did not give a guitar performance or rock out on Tuesday. The point of those who've showcased the picture is that it demonstrates (in quite a damaging way, the White House seems to think) that the president was business as usual well after everyone else in the country knew we had an historic disaster on our hands.
Sometimes images give a misleading impression of the underlying reality. This doesn't seem to be one of those cases.
--Josh Marshall
What's that proverb? Every crisis is an opportunity? AP this morning: "President Bush has used a constitutional provision to bypass the Senate and fill a top Justice Department slot with an official whose nomination stalled over tactics at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility."
--Josh Marshall
Another article, this one from Scientific American, from October 2001. The synopsis: "A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city."
--Josh Marshall
One of those images you won't soon forget, from the front page of the LA Times website late Thursday evening. In case you click through after they take down the image, see the image itself here.
--Josh Marshall
Sploid.com noted something odd earlier today on the FEMA page which lists reputable disaster relief organizations for Katrina-related giving.
After the American Red Cross, which is listed first and, I guess, by common consent the primary domestic disaster relief organization, comes Operation Blessing.
And if you don't know, Operation<$Ad$> Blessing is the relief organization run by professional wingnut Pat Robertson.
After that on the list came America's Second Harvest.
And then below that, everyone else, in alphabetical order.
The apparent rationale for the two-tiered set up is that the first three are places to "Donate Cash" and the rest are to "Donate Cash and/or Volunteer". I'm not sure whether arranging them in that way makes a great deal of sense. But judge that for yourself.
Yet, apparently, someone pointed out that giving Operation Blessing higher billing than the reality-based alphabetical system might not look so good. So as of today Operation Blessing has been bumped down to #3.
Now, call me suspicious. But the whole two-tiered set up itself struck me as quite likely a strained way of giving Robertson the big disaster relief shout-out. But I have no way of knowing or proving that. Again, you judge for yourself.
Now, how legit is Operation Blessing? CharityNavigator.com, which rates charities, gives them four stars (their highest rating) across the board. They report giving fully 99.4% of their income to program expenses and trivial amounts to administration and fundraising.
On the other hand, Robertson has repeatedly been criticized for commingling his overseas charitable operations -- specifically, Operation Blessing -- with his personal for-profit ventures into precious metals and diamond extraction, particularly with some of your better-known human rights pariahs and genocidal dictators. Zaire's Mobutu with blood diamonds, Liberia's Charles Taylor with gold mines. He's well diversified.
So, on balance, you might say the picture is mixed.
In any case, looking over the list, one other thing occured to me. Beneath the big three, there are eighteen other organizations listed -- with a number of extremely respected organizations including the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, B'nai B'rith and others. And the selection seems fairly ecumenical. But as nearly as I can tell, not one non-religious organization is listed. The one exception is another government agency, the Corporation for National & Community Service.
Now, I know as well as anyone the huge role that sectarian-affiliated charitable organizations play in disaster relief and other sorts of charitable work. I don't know the precise breakdown. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that most or even the overwhelming amount of this kind of work is done by these groups. But surely there are some secular relief and aid organizations, right? Even a few that might have made the list?
Just by way of example, earlier today we were contacted by a group called MercyCorps. They asked if we would be willing to contribute ad space for Katrina-related disaster relief fundraising. And since I had wanted to do something like this, once we'd done some basic due diligence on their reputation in the field (which out to be very good), we were happy to oblige.
(Just to be clear, I don't think I knew anything about this group before today. They just got to us first, etc.)
Why isn't MercyCorps on the list? Surely, there are many other qualified groups that aren't tied to a religious denomination. Can this exclusion really be accidental?
(ed.note: The details noted above prompt me to mention a few more details about our ad policy. Our rates are the same for everyone. We do not give discounts to non-profits; nor do we give discounts or free ad space to advertisers, organizations or candidates we support or agree with. There is a firm division between the business and editorial sides of our operation. We also do not reject ads on the basis of political content (see details here). We made exceptions to the rule during last year's Asian Tsunami crisis, when we ran free ads for a few different groups, and now with Katrina because we believed both were extraordinary events where the need for giving was acute.)
--Josh Marshall
In times of such stress and grief as these, it is reassuring to know we can rely on some immutables never to change.
Like Pat Robertson being a shameless nutcase, for instance.
I heard today (courtesy of this web site) that Robertson told 700 Club viewers last week that God would bring judgment on Israel for leaving Gaza.
Here's the ADL's condemnation.
--Josh Marshall
Another September '04 article out of New Orleans. The lede ...
The Federal Emergency Management Agency shook up its way of distributing disaster preparedness money when it introduced its Pre-Disaster Mitigation (PDM) grant program in 2002. Given the program's criteria, Louisiana appeared to have been a shoo-in for federal dollars for 2003, the first year the program began awarding money. Instead, Louisiana got nothing.
See the rest.
--Josh Marshall
Ken Mehlman on the case! or GOP values on Parade!
Ohioans got an email from RNC Chair Ken Mehlman today asking for their help in an urgent effort -- calling Sen. Voinovich and demanding he repeal the estate tax.
--Josh Marshall
Moveon launches hurricanehousing.org.
Simple as it sounds: connecting people who have spare housing or even a spare bed or couch with people who desparately need it.
--Josh Marshall
Wes Clark has just posted a piece at TPMCafe about Katrina, leadership and President Bush.
--Josh Marshall
The accountablity free moment continues<$NoAd$>. From this morning's White House briefing ...
REPORTER: There’s a lot of discussion going on about the funding of projects prior to this, whether projects in New Orleans in particular were underfunded because of the Iraq war or for other reasons. Do you find any of this criticism legitimate? Do you think there is any second guessing to be done now about priorities given that [a disaster in] New Orleans was sort of obvious to a lot of the experts?MCCLELLAN: As I have indicated, this is not a time for politics. This is a time for the nation to come together for those in the Gulf Coast region and that’s where our focus is. This is not a time for finger-pointing or politics. And I think the last thing that the people who have been displaced or the people who have been affected need is people seeking partisan gain in Washington. So if that’s what you’re talking about, that’s one thing. Now, if you’re talking about specific areas, I would be glad to talk about some of those, if that’s what you want.
Thanks to ThinkProgress for the catch.
--Josh Marshall
We mentioned earlier the quote from Mike Parker, former Republican congressman from Mississippi who briefly served as head of the Army Corps of Engineers from late 2001 to early 2002 before being canned for criticizing administration budget cuts.
He's quoted in today's Chicago Tribune saying, "I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have."
Here's a piece from March 7, 2002 from the Clarion-Ledger on the circumstances of Parker's firing. Here are the first several grafs ...
The assistant secretary of the Army, Mississippi's former U.S. Rep. Mike Parker, was forced out Wednesday after he criticized the Bush administration's proposed spending cuts on Army Corps of Engineers' water projects, members of Congress said."Apparently he was asked to resign," said U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a member of the House Appropriations Committee's energy and water development subcommittee that oversees the corps' budget.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, also said Parker was dismissed.
Parker's nomination to head the corps drew heavy criticism last year from environmental groups pushing to downsize the agency, calling its flood control projects too costly and destructive.
Parker earned the ire of administration officials when he questioned Bush's planned budget cuts for the corps, including two controversial Mississippi projects.
"I think he was fired for being too honest and not loyal enough to the president," said lobbyist Colin Bell, who represents communities with corps-funded projects.
Bell said Parker resigned about noon after being given about 30 minutes to choose between resigning or being fired.
Pretty much the Bush administration in a nutshell.
--Josh Marshall
For those who are interested, this article by Joe Elliston in the Independent from September 2004 is clearly one of the key pieces on the deconstruction, privatization and crony-fication of FEMA.
Read it and weep.
--Josh Marshall
A TPM Reader checks in ...
Josh,I have a question that no one has raised so far. Wouldn’t part of any homeland security preparation be the handling of refugees? Virtually any serious terrorist attack (explosion, nuclear, biological) would entail a large number of displaced persons. Wasn’t anything done along these lines? I would have thought we would have pre-positioned refugee resources (tents, MRE's, water purification, generators, emergency medical care) near major population centers in the event of mass exodus. Am I crazy?
JY
Sounds like a good question.
--Josh Marshall
Much was made at the time and since about the fact that James Lee Witt was the first head of FEMA who had a professional background in emergency and disaster management.
No one seems to dispute the fact that prior to 1993, the agency was a dumping ground for patronage hires. (The change was also furthered by a devastating 1992 GAO report.)
President Bush replaced Witt with Joe Allbaugh, whose main qualification was that he was one of the president's main political fixers from Texas.
When Allbaugh left FEMA in 2003 to cash in on the Iraqi contracts bonanza, he was replaced by Michael Brown. Allbaugh originally brought Brown to FEMA as General Counsel. His qualification was that they were college buddies.
When Allbaugh bailed, he apparently gave the top job to Brown.
--Josh Marshall
Then there's this piece in the Chicago Tribune. First three grafs ...
Despite continuous warnings that a catastrophic hurricane could hit New Orleans, the Bush administration and Congress in recent years have repeatedly denied full funding for hurricane preparation and flood control.That has delayed construction of levees around the city and stymied an ambitious project to improve drainage in New Orleans' neighborhoods.
For instance, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for this fiscal year to pay for hurricane-protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain. The Bush administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provided $5.7 million, according to figures provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).
And further down in the piece there's this ...
"I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have," said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps' budget.
Clearly Parker is yet another Bush-basher.
But this raises an important point.
As I've mentioned a number of <$Ad$>times over recent months, I used to be the worst sort of cable news junky. But over the last couple years I've slowly gone from that to watching almost no TV news at all. And last night, for the first time, I sat down and watched maybe an hour of coverage (on NBC, I think) of the devastation. For what it's worth, their coverage seemed quite good.
None of the facts were any different from what I'd learned from reading a lot of excellent newspaper and Internet coverage and photographic reporting. But events like these are television journalism's forte. Seeing it in motion, in time, conveys the magnitude and scope, the human impact, in ways that written reporting, for all its superiority at factual detail, cannot.
You can't watch that stuff and not know that this, in that corny phrase, was the big one. And even with the best preparation, with all the organizational pistons firing, there was going to be death and dislocation and property damage on a grand scale.
But how much might have been prevented? And how much more rapid might the rescue and recovery have been?
The flooding situation in New Orleans is at least somewhat unique in natural disaster terms, since there's at least a bit of an all or nothing quality to the situation. If the levees had never been breached, or if there'd been fewer breaches, a lot of that water just never would have gotten into the city. And then the situation would be radically different.
I've still heard conflicting reports about how many of the levees were breached as opposed to overtopped, which is very different, if we're considering these issues of maintaining the levees and such. The president told Diane Sawyer this morning that: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." So clearly he has no idea what he's talking about. Or perhaps his disaster preparedness folks did his interview prep too. Or maybe he's just trying again to fool the people he's sworn to serve. Shades of Condi. Perhaps we'll get another civil engineer version of Richard Clarke coming forward.
In any case, we can understand the magnitude of this event and hold the administration to account for its lack of preparation. One doesn't cancel out the other, as much as the president and his defenders might want them to.
And one final point.
We're hearing again and again now that there just wasn't enough money for a lot of this stuff. Terrorism was our big focus. Some kinds of preparedness aren't simply a question of funds. They turn on less elastic resources. But most of what we're hearing about is dollars and planning. So when we hear, 'well, there just wasn't enough for this and terrorism', or 'we needed the money for Iraq', the real answer is 'nice try'.
The president cut taxes every year of his first term in office. He's trying to push through a major tax cut right now. So it's not terrorism that took away the money. It was tax cuts. And to a degree, same thing for Iraq.
Choices have consequences. And bad consequences require accountability.
--Josh Marshall
It seems we've got part of our answer from James Lee Witt in this article from Knight-Ridder, which a number of readers were kind enough to send in.
Here's a passage ...
Being prepared for a disaster is basic emergency management, disaster experts say.For example, in the 1990s, in planning for a New Orleans nightmare scenario, the federal government figured it would pre-deploy nearby ships with pumps to remove water from the below-sea-level city and have hospital ships nearby, said James Lee Witt, who was FEMA director under President Clinton.
Federal officials said a hospital ship would leave from Baltimore on Friday.
"These things need to be planned and prepared for; it just doesn't look like it was," said Witt, a former Arkansas disaster chief who won bipartisan praise on Capitol Hill during his tenure.
FEMA said some of its response teams were prepared.
Some were prepared.
--Josh Marshall
A long-time reader writes in with a <$NoAd$>good suggestion ...
Josh: Per your request for reader input on FEMA's place in current national disaster policy: I have no expertise in this area. My suggestion would be to ask someone who does, namely James Lee Witt himself. His company's website is here: http://www.wittassociates.com/1205.xmlWesley Clark, incidentally, is his Vice Chairman.
I'm not a Clinton admirer as you know, but I remember what the pre-Witt FEMA was like. In terms of the difference he made to his agency, Witt was Clinton's best hire. If the changes he instituted didn't get institutionalized (for whatever reason) when the Bush people came in that's too bad, but you can't overrate the importance of having a first rate person running an agency like that. They are not easy to find.
Not a bad idea.
--Josh Marshall
A great friend of mine in graduate school was Ari Kelman. And while I was poring over the details of English settlers and Indians in 17th century New England, he was busy writing an environmental history of New Orleans. So I guess he wins the relevant knowledge prize. But then I was always a long shot.
He's got an article up tonight at Slate about just why that city was built below sea level.
I assume smart producers will be ringing his phone off the hook in coming days.
--Josh Marshall
Here's a question, and not a rhetorical one.
This column in yesterday's Post says that FEMA is being "systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security." Later it says: "This year it was announced that FEMA is to 'officially' lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission."
It's a revealing piece. So, by all means, read the whole thing. Also see this much-linked article in Editor & Publisher by Will Bunch, which explores this and related issues.
But back to my question, which is, how was the chain of command for dealing with natural disasters and the operational ability of FEMA different last week than it was exactly four years ago (not an arbitrary number, since 9/11 led to many of the institutional changes in question) or eight years ago? There's no magic of course in those four capital letters. If FEMA and its responsibilities are being replaced by something else, then let's put that in the mix too. Nor should we forget that at least the concept, if not the execution, of consolidating various agencies into a new Department of Homeland Security had broad bipartisan support.
I'm not looking for rants. I'd like to get information that is as concrete and specific as possible. If you've seen an article that lays it out well, let me know. If you have expertise in this issue, I'd very much like to hear from you.
I've set up a thread here to discuss this. But if you have specific information I'd greatly appreciate if you can contact me directly as well.
--Josh Marshall
Most all our attention is rightly, understandably focused on this disaster unfolding along the Gulf Coast. But take a moment to learn about this stampede on a bridge over the Tigris river today in which up to 1000 people died. Shi'a pilgrims were crossing the bridge when a fast-spreading rumor that a suicide bomber was about to detonate himself in the crowd led to panic and a rush to escape.
Late Update: A late report puts the number at a staggring 965 dead.
--Josh Marshall
I'm sorry. I know we're supposed to be observing an accountability free moment for the president. But there are just too many examples out there of the ways in which his policies have contributed to and accentuated this crisis: systematic cuts in levee and pump construction around New Orleans (second article here), phasing out FEMA and the apparently the whole concept of national coordination of the response to natural disasters. That's a great idea, isn't it? Similar failings are discussed by Bruce W. Jentleson and Juliette Kayyem at TPMCafe. And, of course, example after example of cronies running critical agencies. Anyone want to give a buzz to Joe Allbaugh over at New Bridge Strategies?
The scene of any natural disaster, especially one of such grave magnitude, will invariably be chaotic. Much won't go according to plan. But a lot of people seem to have been caught unprepared in this mess, a lot of preparedness agencies appear to have missed a few beats in getting on top of it.
Yes, let's save everyone and everything we can. People on the scene and in the surrounding region are pulling together in amazing ways. But no more letting this man's failures become his own argument against accountability. It's always been a live-for-today presidency.
--Josh Marshall
Like you I've been watching the escalating scale of the destruction down along the Gulf Coast. Rather than giving my own reactions or not-particularly-well-informed views of what's happening, I've put together a series of emails I've received over the last forty-eight hours from TPM Readers in the path of the storm. I've posted them here at TPMCafe.
--Josh Marshall
No doubt, you remember that a couple weeks back The Washington Post published a story on Jack Abramoff which included unrebutted claims from DeLay surrogates that the Majority Leader had cut all ties to Abramoff way back in early February 2001, just after one of Abramoff's erstwhile business associates, Gus Boulis, was murdered in a gangland hit in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
As the Post related it ...
Earlier this year, DeLay told a group of conservative supporters at a private meeting that sometime shortly after SunCruz Casinos founder Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis was gunned down in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Feb. 6, 2001, he confronted Abramoff over his SunCruz involvement, according to people in attendance."Immediately, he had Abramoff called in and told him, 'I want no more dealings with you,' " said conservative activist Paul M. Weyrich, a longtime DeLay friend, recounting a speech DeLay gave to a conservative group earlier this year. "I think he felt blindsided by Abramoff" over the SunCruz affair, Weyrich said.
To the best of my knowledge, the Post has yet to follow up on or rebut this palpably ludicrous claim. So I've continued to keep an eye out for examples which show just how clearly untrue the claims are.
And I think I have another.
Fully two years after the alleged DeLay-Abramoff smackdown, that is, in early February 2003, the DeLays (Tom and Christine) and the Abramoffs (Jack and Pam) joined Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin and his wife Irene for a private dinner in the Washington area. Apparently, everyone really hit it off. And, needless to say, the gathering was arranged by Jack Abramoff.
Now, before going any further, let's stipulate that little schmooze-fests like these happen all the time in Washington. And I have no reason to believe that anything untoward was discussed or transacted. My understanding is that conversation turned on the normal mix of politics and fundraising -- in this case, apparently, fundraising for one of DeLay's charities. My only reason for noting it is to demonstrate (which I think it does pretty handily) the close professional and personal relationship the DeLays continued to have with Abramoff at least until early 2003.
Someday maybe even the Post will revisit this part of the story.
When asked about details of the meeting, Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum declined comment. Calls to DeLay's press office were not returned.
--Josh Marshall
Amazing. This is a newsflash from a local TV station in New Orleans, about Jefferson parish (emphasis in the original): "Jeff Parish President. Residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. You will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month."
Late Update: Here, from the Times-Picayune, is a piece with much more detail on the recovery plan for Jefferson parish.
--Josh Marshall
"Mideast analyst Kenneth Pollack is one of two U.S. government officials referenced in the indictment against two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee" says JTA.
The reference he is to the two unnamed US government officials who were referenced in the AIPAC/Larry Franklin indictments that came down early this month. Pollack says he thinks he was "USG0-1".
I'm a bit surprised this hasn't gotten more play.
--Josh Marshall
Far be it from me to come to the defense of Jack Abramoff. But I think the direction of the story, for the foreseeable future, will largely be a matter of how well various of the DC GOP's power-players will be able to distance themselves from Abramoff. As I've said before, this whole tangle of transactions was an organized operation that went way beyond Jack Abramoff. It was a slush fund, part of a patronage operation that helped run the DC Republican machine. (As we wrote a few days ago, just what were California and Mississippi Indian tribes doing maxing out to the New Hampshire Republican party just a few days before the 2002 election?)
So now, with Abramoff pinned down under multiple different federal investigations, we can watch the big players in that machine try to retrospectively cut themselves off from all connections to Jack and cauterize the resulting wound as best they can.
So who are the players to watch?
First, of course, Tom DeLay. Then Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed (on a quixotic run for state-wide office in Georgia), Karl Rove (a central part of the whole operation), Bob Ney, Conrad Burns, all the members of Congress who were sending those messages to Abramoff begging for yet more access to the SunCruz-funded skyboxes, the mid-level cabinet appointees Abramoff owned.
This is where to watch.
--Josh Marshall
An end to the Likud? Reuters has a piece out this morning reporting that the perrenial opportunist and bad-actor Benjamin Netanyahu has just launched a bid to replace Ariel Sharon as head of the Likud.
The Gaza pullout has had strong majority support in Israel, albeit with a sizeable and extremely vocal minority against it. But as this article points out, Sharon would almost certainly lose a primary battle with Netanyahu for control of the Likud -- at least if it were held today. So rumors are now circulating that Sharon might leave the Likud and form a new center-right or centrist party or bloc to contest the next general election, which he seems to be in commanding position to win.
--Josh Marshall
Whamo!
Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) of Kentucky and a slew of people from his adminsitration have been embroiled for some time now in a big government personnel scandal. And he just called a press conference and basically pardoned everybody.
I think this is what Republicans call decisive leadership.
Fletcher says he'll appear before the grand jury himself tomorrow; but he won't talk.
Have thoughts you want to share on this? We just set up this discussion thread over at the Republicans discussion table. Particularly interested in hearing from Kentuckians who've been watching this unfold up close.
Late Update: This turns out to be a bit more complicated than it looked on first glance. The BlueGrassReport has the running details.
--Josh Marshall
Ohio tends to get top billing these days when it comes to ethics-imploding GOP state political machines. But Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) of Kentucky seems unwilling to let his state take second place to the folks north of the border.
Fletcher has been wrangling for a while over the terms under which he'll appear before the grand jury in his own scandal. And a story just out from the Herald-Leader has this snippet about a press conference the governor has scheduled to 6 PM local time (emphasis added)...
The grand jury so far has indicted nine current or former Fletcher officials for violating state personnel laws. Under those laws, decisions about merit jobs cannot be based solely on politics.Fletcher has scheduled a 6 p.m. news conference in the Capitol Rotunda to talk about the grand jury investigation. Television station WHAS in Louisville is reporting the governor will issue pardons to those already indicted, but the report couldn't be verified.
We'll let you know more when we hear it.
--Josh Marshall
It's been a slow day here at TPM. I've been busy on some Abramoff-related reporting. Actually, a lot of Abramoff-related reporting. More soon. If you're hankering for a GOP corruption fix, don't miss this piece in today's Times about a twenty-year army contracting official who was just demoted after questioning pricey no-bid contracts for Halliburton.
--Josh Marshall
Wes Clark just did his first post for the week over at TPMCafe on Iraq, Darfur and presidential leadership. He hopped on a plane after posting apparently. But he says he'll be responding to questions and comments down in the comments section later today after he lands. Check it out.
--Josh Marshall
I have to confess that I was off in my own little world this last week. And it wasn't until I got back home this afternoon that I realized that this storm bearing down on New Orleans wasn't just one of these big hurricanes we hear about every year to two. Hopefully all the predictions will prove to be in some measure over blown. But we're only hours away from the predicted landfall and the predictions, with all the most current data, really do sound catastrophic, as overused as that word can be.
First, if you're anywhere near what's coming tomorrow morning, good luck and be safe.
If you've already evacuated and are fortunate enough to have good shelter and a passable Internet connection, let us know what's happening, what you saw, what you're hearing.
For those at a distance just looking to find out more, here's the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune and here are a few of their live-on-the-scene webcams, for the curious at heart.
--Josh Marshall
Department of small worlds.
Many of you know that for years, I've been following the November 2002 New Hampshire election-tampering case, in which the state Republican party hired folks to sabotage Democratic and union phone-banks. So recently I looked at a copy of the NHGOP's funding receipts in the week or so before election day, mainly to get some angle on how the money for the scam was funnelled to the state party.
But look who sent in $5000 checks the week before election day: the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.
What interest exactly did these Jack Abramoff clients from Mississippi and California have in this election?
--Josh Marshall
Most of the Jack Abramoff story we've heard has been tied to lobbying for Indian casino interests and garment manufacturers in US Pacific island protectorates. But there's an overseas portfolio only starting to get attention. And along those lines, some details that could use some more attention...
Things started to go bad for Jack Abramoff in early 2004. He got fired or 'resigned' (take your pick) from Greenberg Traurig in March. And from there he went from high-voltage influence peddler to corruption coverboy in the Post, the Times and other news outlets.
But Abramoff did more than start readying his defense after he left Greenberg Traurig. He immediately signed up with Cassidy & Associates. And if you're not familiar with them, Cassidy is one of the glitz names in the foregin lobbying business in Washington.
Then in July, he left Cassidy. Everybody put out gracious press releases. But you figure that by the summer Abramoff was even too hot to handle for them.
But he still wasn't quite done. Upon leaving Cassidy Abramoff set up his own company, Middle Gate Ventures.
As near as I can figure there's only one mention of the firm that ever appeared in the US press -- a short piece in the Washington Post's 'Special Interests' column on July 8th, 2004.
You can find other references to it Middle Gate with a google search. But they all seem to cite back to this little squib in the Post. And the Post said that Middle Gate would be Abramoff's "vehicle for pursuing such business opportunities as energy projects, real estate development and motion picture production."
Abramoff made pretty clear that his bridges were burned in the DC lobbying game. So what remained were his overseas contacts and opportunities.
I hear that pretty much immediately after setting up Middle Gate he was using the company to get deeply involved in some 'energy projects' on the west coast of Africa.
I'm trying to put together different pieces of this puzzle. But if you have any more pieces, I'd love to hear from you.
--Josh Marshall
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