What Can Brown Do For You?

Yesterday, former FEMA Director Mike Brown testified (under oath mind you) to a special congressional panel set up by House Republicans to investigate the disaster surrounding the Hurricane Katrina rescue and relief operations.

Oh boy, this should be fun.

And it was. Brown tried to put the best possible spin on...himself. Not taking a bullet for anyone, not saying "We were all in this together" or even giving an honest account of the events. Brown looked out for Brown.

Quick summary of what Brown said:

First, Brown did one hell of a job!

"I've overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it."

But he is not responsible for the things that went wrong.

"I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences, and work together. I just couldn't pull that off."

And this exchange between Congressman Stephen Buyer (R-Indiana) and Brown:

BUYER: I would like to ask some questions about the pre- landfall. So I'd like to know why did the president's federal emergency assistance declaration of August 27th not include the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines?
BROWN: Under the law, the governor makes the request for the declaration and the governors of the states specify what areas, what counties they want included in that declaration.
And, based upon the governor's request, that's the recommendation that we make to the president. So if a governor does not request a particular county or a particular parish, that's not included in the request.
BUYER: All right.
Orleans Parish is New Orleans. I was listening to my colleague, Mr. Jefferson's, questions about when they talked about, you know, they asked for this assistance for three days and then president responded the very next day, not the day that it was made -- the request -- but the governor of Louisiana actually excluded New Orleans from the president's federal emergency assistance declaration?
BROWN: Again, Congressman, we looked at the request. The governors make the request by...
BUYER: Let me ask this. Since you went through the exercise in Pam, was that not shocking to you that the governor would excluded New Orleans from the declaration?
BROWN: Yes.
BUYER: When that request came in excluding these three parishes, did you question it?
BROWN: We questioned it. But I made the decision that we were going to go ahead and move assets in regardless because we have the ability to add those parishes...

So Brown is a hero now? And it's all the fault of Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana.

Nevermind, this release from FEMA on August 29th. For more material regarding the matter, please look at my post, A Disaster Compounding A Disaster.

Perhaps we should give him another plush job. Because he isn't even qualified for the one he has had since his resignation, that is, on the FEMA payroll as a consultant that provides his views and experiences with his own terrible job. So he gets to investigate himself, and he can't even manage to do that well.

So while he thinks he did a wonderful job, he's not the person that's accountable for what happened. He'd be doing a better job insisting New Orleans is perfectly fine and that there was no such thing as Hurricane Katrina, levee breaks, flooding, and all the current problems that have stemmed from that disaster of a rescue effort.

So what can Brown do for us? I have an idea....GO HOME!

Quotes available from ABC News.
Transcript of the hearing can be found at The New York Times provided by CQ Transcriptions.