Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Brown needs to go

I join with all the others calling for Mike Brown to be fired. The man hired to be in charge of an agency who will be the final backstop in case of natural disaster and terrorist attack has shown himself to be, and I'm going to be nice here, far over his head.

No one could have been perfect in the New Orleans disaster. Let's take that as a given. However, Mike Brown didn't come close. From outright lies (the people in the Convention Center and Superdome getting two hot meals a day from FEMA), to incomprehensible errors (waiting two days to call for help and making that call a low key one), to bungled planning (not being prepared for an event apparently everyone in the United States knew about except the agency who would be tasked with helping to recover from the event!), to halfhearted and crippled rescue efforts when they finally did get going on (having firefighters be FEMA reps instead of going to New Orleans to help), the man has pretty much ran the table on errors and screw ups.

To keep him in office would not only be a blow to national confidence, it would be a classic sign that Bush doesn't care about competency, but loyalty. I'd much rather have someone who could do the job rather than someone who is loyal, and in FEMA the ability has to trump the loyalty. We deserve someone in there who can do a "heckuva job." Let's go and find him, before the next disaster hits.

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