Current Affairs

by hilzoy

I have to write this quickly: I just checked Amygdala, and Gary hasn’t posted on this yet!!! I can scarcely believe it: if I type very quickly, I might possibly get it up first. But you should visit his site anyways.

There’s yet another story about Michael Brown, this one from Time. Apparently he padded even more of his already dubious resume. Excerpts:

“Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA’s website, was “serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight.” The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 “overseeing the emergency services division.” In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an “assistant to the city manager” from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. “The assistant is more like an intern,” she told TIME. “Department heads did not report to him.” Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. “Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University,” recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. “Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I’d ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt.”

In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA’s office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an “assistant city manager” with a distinguished record of service. “According to Mike Brown,” she says, “a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate.””

I saw an interview with one of the reporters who filed this story on CNN, and she said that the municipal records of Edmonds show him as an assistant to the city manager for the entire time he worked there.

“Brown’s lack of experience in emergency management isn’t the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the “honors and awards” section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists “Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University”. However, Brown “wasn’t a professor here, he was only a student here,” says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). “He may have been an adjunct instructor,” says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of “professor.” Carl Reherman, a former political science professor at the University through the ’70s and ’80s, says that Brown “was not on the faculty.” As for the honor of “Outstanding Political Science Professor,” Johnson says, “I spoke with the department chair yesterday and he’s not aware of it.” Johnson could not confirm that Brown made the Dean’s list or was an “Outstanding Political Science Senior,” as is stated on his online profile.

Speaking for Brown, Andrews says that Brown has never claimed to be a political science professor, in spite of what his profile in FindLaw indicates. “He was named the outstanding political science senior at Central State, and was an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City School of Law.””

Outstanding Senior, Outstanding Professor: what’s the difference?

“Under the heading of “Professional Associations and Memberships” on FindLaw, Brown states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond. But an administrator with the Home, told TIME that Brown is “not a person that anyone here is familiar with.” She says there was a board of directors until a couple of years ago, but she couldn’t find anyone who recalled him being on it. According to FEMA’s Andrews, Brown said “he’s never claimed to be the director of the home. He was on the board of directors, or governors of the nursing home.” However, a veteran employee at the center since 1981 says Brown “was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here.” (…)

Brown’s FindLaw profile lists a wide range of areas of legal practice, from estate planning to family law to sports. However, one former colleague does not remember Brown’s work as sterling. Stephen Jones, a prominent Oklahoma lawyer who was lead defense attorney on the Timothy McVeigh case, was Brown’s boss for two-and-a-half years in the early ’80s. “He did mainly transactional work, not litigation,” says Jones. “There was a feeling that he was not serious and somewhat shallow.” Jones says when his law firm split, Brown was one of two staffers who was let go.”

When the reporters get through fact-checking Brown’s background, I suspect it will turn out that he spent his entire adult life huddled in a tiny room somewhere, pacing around and around, muttering: ‘I am the Outstanding Political Science Professor! I can practice family law! I am the Director of an obscure nursing home! It’s just that God and I are keeping it all our little secret for now. But one day everyone will have to listen to me for a change!’

*** Update below the fold.
*** And another update as well.

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by hilzoy

Via TPM: It turns out that Michael Brown’s background is even less substantial than we thought — and that’s saying something. From The New Republic:

“The real story of Brown’s meteoric rise from obscurity is far more disturbing, as well as a good deal more farcical. It’s clear that hiring Brown to run FEMA was an act of gross recklessness, given his utter lack of qualifications for the job. What’s less clear is the answer to the question of exactly what, given Brown’s real biography, he is qualified to do. “

More below the fold.

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by Edward

The debate as to who is politicizing Katrina more, the GOP or Dems, (as if politicizing a tragedy were something brand new or unique to either party…I mean, seriously folks…let’s check in with reality here) will rage on, mostly because it gives folks license to unleash either direction under cover of righteousness. SSDD.

In addition to helping the folks still in harm’s way in the Gulf Coast, however, there remains a very important issue that continues to keep me up at night. Andrew Sullivan boiled it down it best:

Would you want Michael Brown to be FEMA head if al Qaeda attacked a major city with chemical weapons? This isn’t about politics. It’s about a functional government in wartime.

Red, Blue, and Purple all be damned. Seriously. Brown must go. Who replaces Brown becomes infinitely more important than who replaces Sandra Day O’Connor in real, immediate terms, and deserves the entire administration’s best efforts. For the record, though, as CMatt pointed out in the "At All Levels" bloodletting thread:

Unfortunately, on the fire-Brown-now front, it appears the next two people in line to lead FEMA are even less qualified than Brown.

So this is going to take some real competence in choosing. We’re told constantly that we’re at war. Vanity appointments like Brown are unforgivable during wartime. Start the search to replace him, now, please, for the sake of the people living in the places most likely to be attacked (like my city).

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Lapses in planning, funding and rescue efforts have abounded in New Orleans, revealed at the federal, state and local levels.  In terms of planning, relevant details are found in this emergency preparedness document:

(Multiple updates and additions below the fold)

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by hilzoy

I am still feeling more or less flattened by the devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. However, in odd moments, I have begun reading the articles about the background story: the defunding of FEMA, the excuses of various officials, the general cluelessness of the people who were supposedly in charge, and the offers of aid delayed for days by paperwork or even turned down. In anticipation of the time when I can write about this, I want to say this:

Criticizing the administration’s response to this or any other disaster is not ‘politicizing’ it. There are, I think, two ways of politicizing something. One is to drag politics into a discussion where it does not belong. Thus, if I decided to make a big issue out of Laura Bush’s birthday party, that would be ‘politicizing’ it. I can’t imagine in what possible world criticism of the administration’s response to a catastrophe would count as ‘politicizing’ in this sense.

The other way is to use something to score cheap political points. Criticism of the administration’s response to Katrina only counts as ‘politicizing’ if that criticism is motivated by partisanship, rather than by genuine outrage. Criticism of people as ‘politicizing’ the disaster is, fundamentally, a criticism of their character: it means either that they have allowed partisanship to skew their judgment, so that they overstate their criticisms, or that their motives are not grief, outrage, and anger, but a desire to score political points.

This is important. If all criticism of the administration were out of bounds, we would have no way of registering any of its failures. And people who dismiss all criticism as scoring political points prevent themselves from any serious examination of this administration’s record. By conflating people who believe the administration has fallen short because they take every opportunity to slam George Bush with people who hold the same belief because they have examined the evidence and concluded that it is true, they spare themselves the trouble of actually thinking about George Bush’s record, or about the possibility that some of his critics might be right.

Below the fold: one of the things that prompted this.

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by Charles

My memory is muddy what’s this river that I’m in?
New Orleans is sinking man and I don’t wanna swim
—Tragically Hip, 1989

I’ve said it before, I’m saying it now, and I’ll probably say it again when he utters something stupid (and he will):  Dennis Hastert is a Speaker of the House who should not speak in public.

It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that’s seven feet under sea level, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.

Although he later corrected himself, Dennis Hastert is a fool, and George Friedman’s words could not make the foolishness clearer:  New Orleans is a geopolitical prize.  Some excerpts:

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by hilzoy

Glug, glug, glug.

(Sorry; couldn’t resist.)

I have not been thinking about who, if anyone, is responsible for the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Whenever I find myself on a web page that has anything to do with those questions, I save the link and move on. I just can’t begin to think about that yet.

However, I did follow a link in comments to this post by Thomas at RedState. Since he is from Louisiana, I’ll give him a pass on the rhetoric: I don’t get bent out of shape by what people say two days after large chunks of their home state have been destroyed. But it did make me think: maybe now would be a good time to lay out, in general, the kinds of criticisms I think might be in order and the kinds I don’t, precisely because I haven’t read any of the relevant articles and I really don’t know what they contain, other than what one can glean from the headlines. I have no idea at all what the facts are (which is why, at various points in this post, I’ll probably find myself saying: I don’t know if this is true, but suppose it is… — I really don’t know. This is not disingenuous at all.) Because I have no idea which criticisms, if any, I will end up thinking have some merit, I can’t really skew things one way or the other.

First of all, while of course no one should slant their assessment for political purposes, it can’t be inappropriate for anyone ever to criticize the government’s preparedness or response to this catastrophe. The possibility that exactly this sort of catastrophe would strike New Orleans was not exactly unforeseen. I first read about it years ago, and have been hoping against hope that someone, somewhere, was looking out for New Orleans: shoring up the levees, starting to replenish the wetlands, and so forth. And if I, who am not responsible for emergency preparedness, knew about this, surely someone in the federal government knew as well.

If any criticism of government preparedness for a disaster is forever out of bounds once the disaster happens, then we can never figure out what our mistakes are and learn from them. Obviously, this would be awful: the last thing on earth we should do is doom ourself to ignorance on the crucial question: what can we do to minimize the possibility that anything like this will ever happen again? Moreover, it makes no more sense to me to say that our government’s success or failure at preparing for an entirely predictable catastrophe is somehow not an appropriate topic of conversation than it would make sense to rule out discussion of an administration’s foreign policy or environmental record. This is exactly the sort of thing we should think about in assessing an administration’s record. If we were as well prepared as we should have been, obviously whoever is responsible for that deserves credit. And if not, whoever is responsible for that deserves blame, absent some compelling story about other, even more urgent priorities, which, just now, I have a hard time imagining.

On the other hand…

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by hilzoy

I’ve been out and about all weekend, doing things other than watching the news, so I only just realized that what was a minor hurricane the last time I checked now has all the makings of a major catastrophe. From the NOAA:

“DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE…INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY…A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD…AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.”

StormTrack puts it more concisely:

“I am going to make this very simple. If you are in Mississippi or Lousiana near or below sea level, GET OUT!!!”

*** Update: here’s a link to donate to the Red Cross. (End Update; more or the original post below the fold.)

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by hilzoy

From the NYTimes:

“Iran removed United Nations seals on uranium processing equipment at its Isfahan nuclear site on Wednesday, making the plant fully operational, as envoys to the United Nations nuclear agency in Vienna continued to pursue consensus on the wording of a resolution calling for the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program. The removal of the seals took place under the supervision of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, after the agency had installed surveillance cameras intended to ensure that no uranium would be diverted.

The Iranians’ move was criticized by the United States, which with Britain, France and Germany is pressing Iran to resume its voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment. The nuclear agency, based in Vienna, confirmed that Iran had removed the seals at the Isfahan plant, where a first phase of uranium conversion had begun on Monday. (…)

Signers of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have the right to process and enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The European Union and the United States say they are suspicious of Iran’s nuclear activities because Iran hid its nuclear program for 18 years, in violation of international law. Its existence was disclosed by an Iranian opposition group in 2002. Since then, Iran has remained in compliance with the treaty and has worked in full cooperation with United Nations inspectors, who have installed cameras in its nuclear plants and make regular visits and reports.

But the nuclear agency’s board adopted a resolution in September 2004 saying that it “considers it necessary to promote confidence that Iran immediately suspend all enrichment related activities.” The removal of the United Nations seals allows Iran to resume the second phase of the uranium conversion process, which Iran says it is pursuing for its civilian nuclear program. Production remains suspended on the more sensitive part of its nuclear fuel program, the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. (…)

The removal of the seals was part of Iran’s tough stance on its nuclear program under the conservative new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office this week. The daily newspaper Keyhan warned Wednesday in its lead editorial that Iran would withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty if its case was sent to the United Nations Security Council. The newspaper is close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. European leaders have threatened to take Iran to the Security Council, but such a move is not on the table at the Vienna talks. Mr. Ahmadinejad has defended the resumption of work but said Iran wanted to maintain its negotiations with Europe. He also said his government would make its own proposal to end the standoff.”

Great. First North Korea, now Iran. And at this very moment, the Bush administration has notified Congress that it plans to eliminate most State Department arms control offices. Maybe they’re just thinking ahead: if things keep going the way they’re going now, by the time Bush leaves office, dozens of countries will have nuclear weapons, and we’ll be left with the much more tractable task of keeping them out of the hands of Sierra Leone.

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by hilzoy

If you’re like me (oh, stop laughing) (and stop sighing with relief, too), you sometimes find yourself thinking: Gee, there must be a bunch of really good bills in Congress, bills that (if passed) would really do some good, but which are doomed to fail because the problem they address isn’t at the top of anyone’s priority list. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would tell me about them, so that I could support them? And wouldn’t it be nice to support something that wasn’t at the center of a political fight, too? Luckily, I have found such a worthy bill, so I’m going to take advantage of my position of awesome media power and ask both of the the millions of readers who hang on my every word to support it. (If any other bloggers want to use their awesome linking powers to help, feel free. This one might die of neglect.)

H.R. 1329 and S. 1509, both known as ‘The Captive Primate Safety Act’, would make it illegal to transport primates across state lines to be kept as pets. (More exactly: it would add non-human primates to a list of “prohibited wildlife species” which it is illegal to “import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce“, except under certain circumstances that don’t include pet ownership. Click the link and look for subsection e if you’re curious.) This is a very, very good idea, on several counts.

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