{"id":1859,"date":"2005-09-27T14:19:08","date_gmt":"2005-09-27T21:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/09\/27\/return-of-the-unconstitutional-partial-birth-abortion-ban-law\/"},"modified":"2005-09-27T14:19:08","modified_gmt":"2005-09-27T21:19:08","slug":"1859","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1859","title":{"rendered":""Louisiana was dysfunctional"–Michael Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former head of FEMA, Michael Brown, testified today on issues surrounding FEMA’s handling of the Katrina<\/em> disaster, and blamed local officials for the poor response.<\/strong><\/a> Surprised?<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The former head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, who resigned under a hail of criticism about the slow response to Hurricane Katrina, on Tuesday blamed local officials and said his agency had done a good job.<\/p>\n

“My biggest mistake was not recognizing, by Saturday (before the storm made landfall), that Louisiana was dysfunctional,” Michael Brown told a House of Representatives panel looking into the aftermath of the catastrophic storm.<\/p>\n

“I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade (Louisiana) Governor (Kathleen) Blanco and (New Orleans) Mayor (Ray) Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together,” he said. “I just couldn’t pull that off.”<\/p>\n

[…]He refused to concede FEMA made serious mistakes and rejected reports that he had been unqualified for his job.<\/p>\n

“I have overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I am doing. And I think I do a pretty darn good job of it,” he said.<\/p>\n

[…]”I find it absolutely stunning that this hearing would start out with you, Mr. Brown, laying the blame for FEMA’s failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans,” Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) said.<\/p>\n

[…]Brown said the response to Katrina, which killed more than 1,000 people and inundated New Orleans, went more smoothly in Alabama and Mississippi, which have Republican governors, than in Louisiana. Gov. Blanco is a Democrat.<\/p>\n

“It’s my belief that FEMA did a good job in the Gulf states,” Brown said. He said most of the problems were due to a failure of state and local officials to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans earlier than Sunday, the day before the storm hit land.<\/p>\n

Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation order on Saturday before the storm and made it mandatory the next day.[…]<\/p>\n

The inquiry has been marked by partisan bickering. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California has refused to name members to the Republican-led panel saying it would not undertake an honest investigation of the Republican White House.<\/p>\n

Pelosi on Tuesday said Brown’s testimony underscored the need for a non-partisan independent commission investigation of the federal response to the hurricane.<\/p>\n

“Surprise, surprise, surprise. The administration sends over their crony to testify and whitewash the committee that it wasn’t their (the Bush administration’s) fault,” she told reporters.<\/p>\n

Committee Chairman Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, said in a statement that the committee will conduct a “tough and thorough” investigation.”[…] <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh jeez. As for this committee or commission investigation (whatever they’re going to call it) into ‘what went wrong,’ will we truly get any honest answers from them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former head of FEMA, Michael Brown, testified today on issues surrounding FEMA’s handling of the Katrina disaster, and blamed local officials for the poor response. Surprised? WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The former head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics","category-katrina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}