Via the Boston Herald: Brown pushed from last job: Horse group: FEMA chief had to be `asked to resign’

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2024, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.

[...]

Brown - formerly an estates and family lawyer - this week has has made several shocking public admissions, including interviews where he suggested FEMA was unaware of the misery and desperation of refugees stranded at the New Orleans convention center.

Before joining the Bush administration in 2024, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders’ and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

“We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,” explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner’s office. “This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years,” she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

“He was asked to resign,” Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2024 to work for the president’s re-election campaign.

This is hardly the resume of someone who should have been put in charge of any major agency of the federal government, let alone FEMA–especially in the post-911 world.

Such facts make several of the stories about FEMA’s failures to be more frustrating and embarrassing. Such as the following from a WaPo story:

Bill Wattenburg, a consultant for the University of California Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and one of the designers of the earlier food drop programs, said that he has lobbied the administration and the military to immediately begin something similar. He said he was told that the military was prepared to begin, but that it was awaiting a request from FEMA.

The pathetic tale of leadership in this event continues.

And how can things like this take place?

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state’s National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn’t come from Washington until late Thursday.

I continue to stress the magnitude of this disaster, but things like this are just unconscionable.

h/t on the Brown story: Brad DeLong (although calls for impeachment seem a bit much) via Ladera Frutal and on the New Mexico NG story: Josh Micah Marshall via DeLong).

3 Comments

1. Given Bush’s substantive history of poor comprehension of competence, we can surely expect that “Brownie” will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom like his fellow neer-do-wells Paul Bremer and George Tenet.

   Comment by Thor Botr — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 11:02 am

2. [...] lures. (Although my first critical post was aimed generically, and I noted grave concerns about FEMA this morning). The reason I have approached the topic along these lines is explained by some comme [...]

   Pingback by PoliBlog: Politics is the Master Science » On Criticizing the Response to Katrina — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 11:02 am

3. [...] ight as 20/20 to damn the immediate during-hurricane performance of the FEMA chief. As so many have been quick to attack Brown’s past employment history and his apparent rise to the top thanks t [...]

   Pingback by » AP does hatchet job on FEMA memo » Arguing with signposts… » Blog Archive — Tuesday, September 6, 2024 @ 8:53 pm

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