Rekjalhew

June 11, 2006

Michael Brown, the Fall Guy

by @ 12:04 am. Filed under The Truth Shall Set you Free!

Last time I posted about Michael Brown I had to backtrack on prior criticism of his work as FEMA director. After learning that he was doing his job. Now it turns out much of the information that the media and even blogs provided about his past probably was not true. Brown’s attorney Andy Lester started the defense of Brown’s reputation in a Human Event’s piece. He also points out what FEMA’s role really is in a disaster.


Be sure to read all of this. I’m just providing a little piece below.

Media Maelstrom Over Michael Brown


By federal government standards, FEMA is tiny. According to its website, FEMA has only about 2,600 full time employees.

Many believe that FEMA is responsible for rescuing people, serving as ?first responders,? taking charge of recovery efforts, even calling out the National Guard. Not so. Those jobs belong primarily to state and local officials.

In fact, many disasters don?t involve FEMA. ?FEMA is only brought in after the governor of the state requests a federal disaster designation from the President.?

This arrangement exists because it makes sense and because of long-standing notions of federalism. As Brown testified before Congress: ?Those principals of federalism should not be lost in a short-term desire to react to a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions.? Ignoring federalism will cause ?waste of taxpayer dollars at the federal level? and will destroy local decision-making regarding ?the unique needs of each community.?

What does FEMA do? Generally, it helps the states, those primarily responsible for disaster relief, conduct their business. FEMA funnels federal funds, essentially an effort to distribute the cost of emergencies throughout the country. And it acts as a federal umbrella for state disaster agencies.

What happened here? The disaster was overwhelming. The relief effort appeared slow. Someone had to pay.

I’ve even pointed out that the response was not slow when compared to other hurricane disasters. But plenty in the media and bloggers (me included) gave Michael Brown a really hard time. When the truth came out, some of us corrected the record. But regarding lies concerning Michael Brown’s career, it seems not many have said much about that. For example, Michael Brown was not a roommate with former FEMA director Joe Allbaugh. Many of the claims about positions held by Michael Brown before heading FEMA were not fully accurate. The media and even we bloggers reduced his credentials. In my own defense, I must say I had to rely on what was available at the time and have no problem setting the record straight. So be sure to read the entire piece linked above.

Now it appears that Michael Brown was very much the intended “fall guy” for attacks that were made by the media and others. He has finally released an e-mail from someone he knows that works within the office of the President. The e-mail offers a 2nd hand account of President Bush expressing a preference that the media attack Michael Brown instead of himself or Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Given Michael Brown and even the President did not deserve such attacks, if the e-mail content is accurate I do not feel that the President should have sought to encourage that Michael Brown take the heat. He started off supporting Michael Brown and should have maintained his support until all the facts were available to the public. The White House claims the content of the e-mail is an old rumor.

Brown: E-mail shows Bush glad FEMA took Katrina flak

The former emergency management chief who quit amid widespread criticism over his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina said he received an e-mail before his resignation stating President Bush was glad to see the Oval Office had dodged most of the criticism.

The September 2005 e-mail reads: “I did hear of one reference to you, at the Cabinet meeting yesterday. I wasn’t there, but I heard someone commented that the press was sure beating up on Mike Brown, to which the president replied, ‘I’d rather they beat up on him than me or Chertoff.’ ”

The sender adds, “Congratulations on doing a great job of diverting hostile fire away from the leader.”

CNN has been unable to verify the authenticity of the e-mail, but the White House designation “eop.gov” is part of the sender’s e-mail address, indicating it came from the Executive Office of the President.

While acknowledging that part of a political appointee’s job is to “take the sword” for the president, Brown said he has grown weary of Chertoff making him a scapegoat for FEMA’s failures in the wake of Katrina.

“I’m not willing to take that sword for Michael Chertoff,” Brown said.

“I’m frankly getting tired of Chertoff out there, every time he testifies, talking about how Brown didn’t do this or that,” Brown said. “As long as Chertoff continues to criticize me, I think we need to recognize that I was doing everything I needed to do down there.”

Brown also reiterated an earlier call for the resignation of Chertoff, whom he said suffers from “political tone deafness.” Brown suggested that despite announcements to the contrary, FEMA is not prepared for the 2006 hurricane season, which began June 1.

While I feel people have to take responsibility for their own safety and adhere to evacuation requests, FEMA gets plenty of our money in tax dollars. So I would like that money to be used effectively, given it is already in their hands. So if FEMA is not ready for the current hurricane season, that is not a good thing.

I mentioned before that Bush needs to fire somebody and I specified Michael Chertoff. Maybe we just need to pray for good weather. Because some individuals have proven themselves to be too irresponsible to prepare when warned and government never does much to anyone’s level of satisfaction. Of course if government was not always trying to play the role of “safety net”, than more people would do better for themselves, because they would not be able to use government as the scapegoat for their own personal failures.



3 Responses to “Michael Brown, the Fall Guy”

  1. Ron_B Says:

    Forget about this “Michael Brown”. What about the “Michael Brown” who is running for DC mayor?

    Despite the big problems with AIDs, Education and crime in the area the big recent news in the city has been over the speeding cameras in the “black areas” of the district. He worked to make this a “racial thing”.

    Some people on various message boards - REGARDLESS OF HOW “BLACK” a city is and regardless of the number of BLACK PEOPLE who decided to implement a policy will STILL CHARGE RACISM.

  2. brooklyn Says:

    Ron_B

    Democrats were just using the tried and true formula of “blame defaults to the nearest republican white male.” This has now been expanded to natural events like hurricanes as evidenced by clinton’s latest statement.

    “It is now generally recognized that while Al Gore and I were ridiculed, we were right about global warming,” Clinton said at a fundraiser for the Florida Democratic Party. “It’s a serious problem. It’s going to lead to more hurricanes.”

    Even if it were true (the Clinton administration did nothing about “Global Warming) it would have been nice if Clinton was half a dilligent about Bin-Laden as he was about global warming.

  3. IndependentConservative Says:

    brooklyn, I’m waiting for Clinton/Gore to tell us who was driving the SUV when the earth thawed from 2 previous ice ages.

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