On Thu, 8 Sep 2005 14:27:50 -0500, John Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I'm beginning to realize that every problem in the world is traceable to
>George Bush.  Sorry it's taken me so long.

John,

George is supposed to be in charge and this all happened while he's been
president.
==> he's ultimately responsible.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/washpost/20050909/pl_washpost/leaders_lacking_disast
er_experience

Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to
their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead
an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically
since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff
Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived
with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance
operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are
filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S.
Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meanwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and
World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P.
Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness,
respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state
emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-
related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an
acting capacity, agency officials said.

Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to
Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is
emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as
investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a
bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

"FEMA requires strong leadership and experience because state and local
governments rely on them," said Trina Sheets, executive director of the
National Emergency Management Association. "When you don't have trained,
qualified people in those positions, the program suffers as a whole."

Last week's greatest foe was, of course, a storm of such magnitude that
it "overwhelmed" all levels of government, according to Sen. Susan Collins
(R-Maine). And several top FEMA officials are well-regarded by state and
private counterparts in disaster preparedness and response.

They include Edward G. Buikema, acting director of response since February,
and Kenneth O. Burris, acting chief of operations, a career firefighter and
former Marietta, Ga., fire chief.

But scorching criticism has been aimed at FEMA, and it starts at the top
with Brown, who has admitted to errors in responding to Hurricane Katrina
and the flooding in New Orleans. The Oklahoma native, 50, was hired to the
agency after a rocky tenure as commissioner of a horse sporting group by
former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, the 2000 Bush campaign manager and a
college friend of Brown's.

Rhode, Brown's chief of staff, is a former television reporter who came to
Washington as advance deputy director for Bush's Austin-based 2000 campaign
and then the White House. He joined FEMA in April 2003 after stints at the
Commerce Department and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Altshuler is a former presidential advance man. His predecessor, Scott
Morris, was a media strategist for Bush with the Austin firm Maverick Media.

David I. Maurstad, who stepped down as Nebraska lieutenant governor in 2001
to join FEMA, has served asacting director for risk reduction and federal
insurance administrator since June 2004. Daniel A. Craig, a onetime
political fundraiser and campaign adviser, came to FEMA in 2001 from the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he directed the eastern regional office,
after working as a lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative
Association.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown has
managed more than 160 natural disasters as FEMA general counsel and deputy
director since 2001, "hands-on experience [that] cannot be understated.
Other leadership at FEMA brings particular skill sets -- policy management
leadership, for example."

The agency has a deep bench of career professionals, said FEMA spokeswoman
Nicol Andrews, including two dozen senior field coordinators and Gil
Jamieson, director of the National Incident Management System. "Simply
because folks who have left the agency have a disagreement with how it's
being run doesn't necessarily indicate that there is a lack of experience
leading it," she said.

Andrews said the "acting" designation for regional officials is a
designation that signifies that they are FEMA civil servants -- not
political appointees.

Touring the wrecked Gulf Coast with Secretary of Homeland Security
Michael Chertoff yesterday, Vice President Cheney also defended FEMA
leaders, saying, "We're always trying to strike the right balance" between
political appointees and "career professionals that fill the jobs
underneath them."

But experts inside and out of government said a "brain drain" of
experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the
appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has
weakened the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters. Some
security experts and congressional critics say the exodus was fueled by a
bureaucratic reshuffling in Washington in 2003, when FEMA was stripped of
its independent Cabinet-level status and folded into the Department of
Homeland Security.

Emergency preparedness has atrophied as a result, some analysts said,
extending from Washington to localities.

FEMA "has gone downhill within the department, drained of resources and
leadership," said I.M. "Mac" Destler, a professor at the University of
Maryland School of Public Policy. "The crippling of FEMA was one important
reason why it failed."

Richard A. Andrews, former emergency services director for the state of
California and a member of the president's Homeland Security Advisory
Council, said state and local failures were critical in the Katrina
response, but competence, funding and political will in Washington were
also lacking.

"I do not think fundamentally this is an organizational issue," Andrews
said. "You need people in there who have both experience and the confidence
of the president, who are able to fight and articulate what FEMA's mission
and role is, and who understand how emergency management works."

The agency's troubles are no secret. The Partnership for Public Service, a
nonprofit group that promotes careers in federal government, ranked FEMA
last of 28 agencies studied in 2003.

In its list of best places to work in the government, a 2004 survey by the
American Federation of Government Employees found that of 84 career FEMA
professionals who responded, only 10 people ranked agency leaders excellent
or good.

An additional 28 said the leadership was fair and 33 called it poor.

More than 50 said they would move to another agency if they could remain at
the same pay grade, and 67 ranked the agency as poorer since its merger
into the Department of Homeland Security.

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