Federal Emergency Management Agency Quotes

Most recent American Presidents have appointed their most senior officials who were of their own political party although FDR, Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama appointed members of the opposition party to several important posts. However, in the Soviet Union, the senior officials would appoint no one to even a minor post who they did not perceive was politically reliable—was a dedicated communist and supported the views and programs of the Russian Communist Party leadership. However, rarely in America has there been any criteria of political or ideological doctrine in the hiring of staff. The George W, Bush Administration was a dramatic exception. Being a loyal Republican was totally insufficient. New officials had to be politically and philosophically consonant with the very conservative wing of the Republican party. This was bad enough but by following the same approach as the Russians and other ideological countries, the Bush administration had many of the same problems. One dramatic one was the hiring of people with no professional experience or qualifications but were ideologically perfect and totally loyal. One very dramatic example was the man appointed to head the Federal Emergency Management Administration. His experience consisted of managing horse shows and he had never had anything to do with natural disasters or any other kinds of emergencies nor did he have any experience with first responders. Another is the man appointed to set up the Stock Exchange for Iraq after we occupied that country and were involved in nation building. The appointee’s only job experience had been as a White House intern and not only knew nothing about Stock Exchanges or Economics, but had no business experience as he never held any other job. There were many such examples. No other administration in modern times—Democratic or Republican—went to such lengths as the Soviets to maintain ideological purity.

FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. President Bush appointed Mike Brown as the agency director, and after the agency debacle of New Orleans, he had to resign. Bush was not the only President who appointed people to federal jobs with little or no qualifications, however usually those are not the critical, front line jobs. However, the Senate confirmed Brown overwhelmingly, even with his lack of qualifications.

The new director was faced with 2,600 personnel vacancies in this critical office and the jobs were not getting filled quickly. Many people who are appointed to high Federal Office and come from the private sector or state and local government, are appalled at the extensive and cumbersome bureaucracy that makes the hiring of Federal employees so tedious and slow.

Unlike terrorism and natural disasters like earthquakes, a hurricane is known about a week in advance and can be tracked as it makes landfall. So his view was that the prime failure of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security occurred the week earlier. In addition a few weeks before Katrina, Leibersbach lead a delegation of State Homeland Security Directors to meet with Secretary Chertoff of Homeland Security. Their message was that the reorganization of DHS has so downgraded FEMA that the nation’s capacity to deal with national disaster had been diminished as a result of the reorganizations.

This quotation shows the naivety of the Islamic terrorists about America. They assumed that because the Federal Government did not send help to New Orleans and other communities hit by the hurricane, it was because there was a shortage of military personnel to send and they took credit for tying down all the troops. They just could not accept the possibility that some American administrations were totally incompetent and were not be prepared or that an American President could appoint someone with no real qualification. Ironically, they would believe that of the Arab countries in the Middle East, but not the vaunted USA. The terrible response to Katrina had nothing to do with the shortage of troops and civilian first line responders. There were more than enough. They just were never prepared and never deployed on time.