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September 07, 2005
Lesson One: Losers and Lawyers Can't Keep America Safe
I remember when I was afraid that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would suspend the Constitution.
In the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan authorized a secret war against the government of Nicaragua, he signed executive orders giving FEMA broad powers, including the right to suspend the Constitution in a time of a national crisis, including violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition against a U.S. military invasion abroad.
My mom that told me about that executive order. We were both pretty freaked out.
Back then, Reagan, Bush Sr., and their powerful GOP, CIA, and private-sector allies seemed like a danger to our our democracy. They were, of course, but compared to the current administration, the "Reagan-Bush era" seems like walk in the park.
But anyway, eventually I forgot about the whole FEMA/Constitution issue (most likely after the 1992 election.
I forgot about it until 9/11, when I breathed a sigh of relief, figuring that if FEMA had not declared martial law then, they probably never would (the subtle erosion of Constitutional rights since then is, of course, another matter).
Little did I know that by the time 9/11 rolled around, FEMA couldn't tie its shoes, let alone take over the elected government.
After Bush took over the U.S. government, the capable disaster managers Clinton had placed at FEMA were replaced with political cronies with no emergency credentials.
In February 2001, Bush appointed Joe M. Allbaugh as director of FEMA. Allbaugh's previous job? National Campaign Manager for Bush-Cheney 2000. Before that? Chief of Staff for Texas Governor George W. Bush.
But don't worry. Allbaugh left the agency in 2003 to work on Bush's reelection campaign.
Enter Michael Brown, the current FEMA director.
Brown's last job before joining FEMA? A lawyer by training, Brown, as many a critic has crooned, spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA). Oddly this experience is absent from the resume posted on the FEMA web site.
Perhaps that is because the only disaster management experience Brown had before joining FEMA was trying to figure out what to do after the IAHA fired him for incompetence.
Brown was invited to join FEMA by his long-time friend and college roommate...former FEMA director Allbaugh. When Allbaugh stepped down to go back to campaigning for Bush, Brown became director.
Actually, Brown's official title is no longer director, but "Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response," since FEMA is now folded into the Department of Homland Defense.
The idea of the DHS, to combine various agencies like the Secret Service, FEMA, and INS under one roof, in order to streamline and coordinate their efforts protect Americans from terrorism, seemed somewhat reasonable after 9/11, when everyone was all freaked out to learn that even the NYPD and FDNY couldn't talk to each other on their radios.
Unfortunately, when the Republican-controlled Congress and President Bush actually created the DHS, instead of streamlining anything, they created a gargantuan bureacracy that clearly can't manage anything, let alone defend the homeland.
In February 2005, Bush tapped Judge Michael Chertoff, a former prosecutor and Whitewater investigation lawyer to head the DHS.
Dude. A lawyer? A lawyer can't defend me against anything except
other lawyers. What's Jerkoff...er Chertoff gonna do when terrorists strike, send them a friggin' 'Cease and Desist' letter?
In a slighly less nightmarish world, the head of DHS would be someone like New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
To be fair, Kelly does have a law degree. But he has a lot more. He's been the top cop at the NYPD under two different mayors, the Commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service (now part of DHS), and the Under Secretary for Enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department -- where he supervised the the U.S. Secret Service, the ATF, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and other agencies. Further, he also elected Vice President for the Americas of Interpol, the international police organization, served as Director of the International Police Monitors in Haiti, and is a Vietnam vet who retired as Colonel in the Marine Corps after 30 years of service. That's a fucking resume for DHS.
For that matter, much as I disliked the guy, Rudy Giuliani would have been a better candidate for DHS chief than this bone head.
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It just gets worse and worse with these people.
Posted by MJuhre at September 7, 2005 02:09 PM