Brown resigning as FEMA chief?

Okay, so Michael Brown’s hold on the FEMA sachemship is now officially over. The funny thing is — though I guess maybe not to him — is that he really was planning on leaving his FEMA post before his whole racket blew up in his face and he was forced to resign in disgrace.

See this snippet blow from the Post from August 1st of this year.

Even more telling, though, note his apparent attempt to ‘pull an Allbaugh’ by handing the gig off to his manifestly unqualified deputy Patrick Rhode, one-time advance man for the Bush-Cheney campaign …

Michael D. Brown , who runs the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, sent around a memo a couple of weeks ago saying “effective immediately,” his chief of staff, Patrick Rhode , was the acting deputy director.
This caused some head-scratching, because there is no official deputy director position at FEMA, because there is no official director. The last person to hold such a post was Brown, before FEMA got folded into DHS. (Brown is now officially DHS undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response.)

A recent strategic review called for naming a deputy director, but Congress hasn’t approved that plan and agencies don’t usually go ahead without congressional blessing. Even more curious, it’s not clear whether DHS or the White House, which approves such personnel moves, had signed off on Brown’s move. FEMA says its general counsel approved the action.

Brown is widely expected to be leaving soon, and there has been some FEMA speculation that this is his way of trying to pave the way for a successor. Rhode had been associate administrator of the Small Business Administration.

Brownie <$NoAd$>…

Okay, NBC says David Paulison, Administrator of the US Fire Administration, is the new FEMA Chief.

Clearly, since they’re under the gun, they’re not going to pick a totally unqualified flunky. Here’s what appears to be the relevant part of his bio from his government website …

Before joining FEMA, Mr. Paulison, who has 30 years of fire/rescue services experience, was chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department. In that position, he oversaw 1,900 personnel with a $200 million operating budget and a $70 million capital budget. He also oversaw the Dade County Emergency Management office.

He began his career as a rescue firefighter and rose through the ranks of rescue lieutenant commander, district chief of operations, division chief, assistant chief and then deputy director for administration before becoming the Miami-Dade Fire Chief. He is a certified paramedic and, as fire chief, oversaw the Miami-Dade Urban Search and Rescue Task Force. His emergency management experience includes Hurricane Andrew and the crash of ValuJet Flight 592. He is also past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

Of course, he’s probably a known <$NoAd$> quantity since he’s from Bush-East, Miami-Dade.

Solid Waste & Recycling magazine isn’t one of the sites we usually link to. But they seem to have some news relevant to recent events …

Overlooked in many news reports about the unfolding storm disaster in the southern United States, especially in the City of New Orleans, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, is a potentially dramatic pollution issue related to a toxic landfill that sits under the flood waters right in the city’s downtown, according to map overlays of the flooded area. The situation could exacerbate the already dire threat to human health and the environment from the flood waters.

The Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) is situated on a 95-acre site in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The ASL is a federally registered Superfund site, and is on the National Priorities List of highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment. A few years ago the site, which sits underneath and beside houses and a school, was fenced and covered with clean soil. However, three feet or more of flood waters could potentially cause the landfill’s toxic contents – the result of decades of municipal and industrial waste dumping – to leach out.

Thanks to TPM Reader BD for <$NoAd$> the tip.

“U.S. Fire Administrator David Paulison said in the first 48 to 72 hours of an emergency, many Americans will likely to have to look after themselves.” CNN, Feb. 10, 2003.

Maybe he was trying to give those folks in NOLA a heads up?

Anyone out there got any more interesting info about the fundraiser Tom DeLay’s ARMPAC held at Jack Abramoff’s skybox at the MCI Center on December 14th, 2001? Basketball game, Wizards Knicks. Put together by Warren RoBold, the guy Ronnie Earle indicted down in Texas.

Far as I know, this one’s never been publicly disclosed.

Certainly comes after that big falling out between DeLay and Abramoff.

The Post has another article this morning about the very real concerns over whether FEMA can manage administering more than $50 billion of federal relief, recovery and reconstruction contracts. We’re going to rue the day on this one. Even if FEMA were a perfectly managed agency and existed in a clean administration, it is simply not an agency that is set up to handle money on this scale — certainly not in a case like this which will involve rebuilding a substantial section of the country. And of course, it’s not a well-run agency at the moment. And this administration is defined by cronyism and insider deals.

I just saw news over the wires that President Bush will address the nation tonight Thursday at 9 PM from Louisiana.

Democrats should be speaking with one voice on this one: accountability, an independent commission to investigate what went wrong and no insider deals with taxpayer money.

Shame on me!

A short while back we met Duke Cunningham’s most recent crony, Brent Wilkes. His place got hit in one of the more recent federal law enforcement raids tied to the Duke investigation.

With all those signs, I should have known there was a boat (“14.5-foot, 170-horsepower fiberglass boat”) for Duke somewhere in the mix. The San Diego Union-Tribune has the story.

Good question: Presumably some fancy set is going to be put together for the president’s address Thursday night. What’s the taxpayer price tag for the event?

Someone alert the Secret Service! Has the real President Bush been abducted and replaced by a stand-in?

President Bush: “Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government … To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility.”

I guess this is an example of that old saw, “If at first your efforts to blame everybody else don’t succeed, take responsibility yourself.”

We’ll get cracking on that four horsemen of the Apocalypse timeline.