Re: ADT Security Canada

[J. Sloud <jsloud@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 07 Sep 2005 15:12:34 -0400, Robert L Bass
<sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


>
>Same as New Orleans.  FEMA knew this could happen but they did
>nothing to prepare.  The same was true of the mayor, the state
>government and virtually everyone who *should* have been more
>prepared.


Accountability.  It should start here:

Explaining Michael Brown

The idea that someone like Michael Brown could possibly get a job as
director of FEMA belongs in parody. We're talking about a guy who had
spent a decade running horse shows before being fired for supervision
failures in 2001, when Bush crony Joe Allbaugh was hired as FEMA
director. Brown had never managed a natural disaster, but his
experience as Allbaugh's old college roommate got him the deputy
director's job. After Allbaugh left to consult for companies seeking
contracts in Iraq, Brown took over the agency. When Katrina hit, Brown
spent his time denying the facts about what was going on in New
Orleans, in a transparent attempt to fool people into thinking the
situation was under control. Now Brown's FEMA is expending lots of
effort in blocking incoming aid. Even Michelle Malkin wants Brown
fired.

The difference between this and the stellar performance of James Lee
Witt's FEMA during the Clinton administration is like night and day.
When the manager of the Des Moines Water Works called local officials
shortly after midnight on July 11, 1993 to say that flooding was going
to shut down the city's water supply, FEMA set up 29 water
distribution points in town by that evening. While floods rendered the
Water Works inoperable for two and a half weeks, the city had all the
water it needed. Five hours and three minutes after the Oklahoma city
bombing -- an event that occurred with no warning whatsoever -- FEMA's
advance team was on the scene to assess the damage, and James Lee Witt
himself had arrived within 12 hours.

Why did James Lee Witt and the disaster-relief commandos of the
Clinton Administration suddenly give way to Michael Brown and the
incompetents of the Bush Administration? It would seem that there
would be plenty for an administration to gain in hiring effective
disaster-relief people, given the political fallout that accompanies
mismanaged disasters.

A look at Kevin Drum's timeline suggests one answer. The
Allbaugh/Brown regime saw FEMA chopped apart and folded into the
Department of Homeland Security. One of the benefits of hiring
clueless but loyal hacks to head government agencies is that they
won't complain when you dismember their agencies or privatize
essential functions in order to satisfy your anti-government
preferences. If you actually hire somebody with genuine competence in
doing things that the agency is supposed to do, you might get some
angry complaints and defense of turf when mission-critical functions
are compromised by your agenda.

There's also a reason that lies deeper in Republican psychology.
Republicans don't really want to see government succeed in doing
things right. Sure, when they're running the country, they want to get
the political advantages of success, if such advantages are to be had.
But this desire is in tension with a desire to see government fail, to
see it held up to public scorn for its incompetence and
ineffectiveness. So they're not going to go all-out to hire the
absolute best people, especially if their buddies just got fired from