[unsycophant]

The NY Daily News is about a week behind the rest of the MSM papers, which all did pieces like this around August 30, 2005.

The gist is the same no matter which article you care to read: (1) FEMA has been absorbed into Homeland Security and no longer has anyone at cabinet-level, which has weakened the agency and (2) FEMA is being run by an incompetent lawyer who is in over his head.

More of the "Blame President Bush" way of life.

[roses of sharon]

Why are the major news orgs in NY all packed with political hacks for the DNC?

Where are the profession journalists?

[Condor51]

9/8/05 Kenneth R. Bazinet, NY Daily News
"The three top jobs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Bush went to political cronies with no apparent experience coping with catastrophes, the Daily News has learned."

Fair enough Kenneth. And what exactly was your "experience" prior to becoming a (cough-cough) "journalist".

And not to be picky but how about the "experience" of...

• Hillary Clinton?
  
• Shelia Jackson Lee?
  
• Cindy 'Jihad' McKinney?
  
• Jon Corzine?
  
• Patty Murray?
  
• Maria Cantwell?
  
• etc, etc, etc.

Huh KENNETH.. what "experience" did these brainiacs have in government and/or writing laws that effect every single person in the USA prior to being elected to Congress???

[ravingnutter]

Not to defend Brown (although I do think Nagin and Blanco are the real culprits in this fiasco), but they keep citing the "private sector job", all the while failing to note that, perhaps with the exception of a policeman or fireman, there are very few private sector jobs dealing with the issues that FEMA has to deal with. If you will check his resume at the link below, it states that he also served as FEMA's Deputy Director and the agency's General Counsel prior to this position. He also served as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight while attending law school.

Michael D. Brown

Assistant city manager is not a private sector job, but did involve dealing with emergency services oversight, so to say that he had no experience at all seems a little disingenuous.

[TChris]

The hipocrisy of the Left is sickening. Is it really news that an administration hires people who more or less match their way of thinking? Is it any surprise that a President would put people he knows and trusts (commonly termed: friends) into positions of value in his administration?

This is expected! Yet the Legacy Media^TM writes as though it's the very definition of corruption. ...as though no Democrat president would ever consider hiring friends to work with him. ...as though the whole Clinton warmed-over-hippie whitehouse had never happened.

[SuziQ]

Irrelevant. The Director is usually a figure head, with the staff that stays from year to year, as in any other organization, doing the work.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

As if FEMA wasn't packed with CLINTON's pals during his two terms?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gimme a blankety-blank break!

[roses of sharon]

Faux journalists complain about political staffing?

LOL, they surely don't want to open that can of worms, let's do our own investigation of the MSM.

How many DNC staffers work in the NYT bathhouse "newsroom"?

[willyboyishere]

Although Bush has left himself WIDE OPEN for criticism in the staffing of FEMA (he might as well be McGreevy putting his Israeli lover in the Homeland Security top spot in NJ)
no one has bothered to spell out exactly WHAT the obligations and duties of FEMA exactly ARE. He has given the Dems everything they could hope for in acting guilty
over the whole mess, "taking responsibility" for stuff that was probably not his obligation in the first place.
The REAL agenda behind the criticism of FEMA/Bush and ALSO FEMA's ill-advised linkage to Homeland Security is that
the Dems want to build an even BIGGER agency and bureaucracy as only they know how. See, folks? We need BIGGER government with BIGGER agencies, that will, um, of course respond FASTER and more EFFICIENTLY to disasters like Katrina. )sarcasm off/