Posted
by Patrick Quinn
September 5, 2005 at 11:48 a.m.
Our unsecure homeland
There is one lesson here that no thinking person can dispute: the "Department of Homeland Security" has to go under the locomotive.I reluctantly concede that at least a bare majority of adults in this country are honestly ignorant of the fact that unrestrained spying on the citizenry by the government is unAmerican. Some of them were apparently taught to believe that God will look out for our historic civil liberties, the rest were seemingly taught to put their trust in the Rainbow Coalition; in any case there aren't many Americans left who understand that the Patriot Act is the foundation document for a police state and the "Department of Homeland Security" is that state's evil instrument.The specific government tools who sat around with their thumbs up their collective ass while the storm rolled in were the fine folks at that same "Department of Homeland Security," who are tasked with responding to national emergencies, but apparently only after they've finished crawling every American's hard drive and making a copy of their library records for the files. After that, and after they've opened new files on anyone they think might be a Democrat or a "terrorist" (the most misused word of the new century, hands down), well, then maybe they'll clear some meetings from the schedule and see about opening investigations into the possibility that "terrorists" are infiltrating the refugee camps in Texas and Mississippi. But they clearly can't be bothered with actually responding to the emergency--not when our borders are beset with hundreds of thousands of bomb-laden Islamists and the population is riddled with millions of disloyal Americans eager to turn the White House over to Osama bin Laden.... But fear not! The hundreds of thousands of bomb-laden Islamists shall not pass! Osama will not conquer our great country! Ever-vigilant are the heroes at Homeland Security! ....so, was there a storm or something?Contrast Homeland Security's response to Katrina with New York City's response to 9/11. Hell, contrast Homeland Security's response to Katrina with the federal government's initial response to 9/11: There's no comparison at all. New York and the feds did just fine without any goddam $100 billion "Department of Homeland Security." Uncounted billions of dollars have been pissed away while clowns and morons have indulged in preposterously protracted metaphysical arguments about patdowns and library cards, and in virtually every case reached precisely the wrong conclusion. "Terrorists" are regularly arrested and then released or go uncharged because its immediately apparent the arrestee is not a "terrorist," although some arrestees are sent on planes to be tortured at the hands of client state thugs; these torture sessions have yet to result in a single iota of useful intelligence, but the "Department of Homeland Security" will jail the whole American population before it willingly gives up the right to arrest and torture whomever it pleases. Alas, this heavy work distracts from the Department's ability to respond to natural disasters, so tough shit New Orleans, by the way just what have you been reading lately?Inquiring minds want to know.(Officials at the "Department of Homeland Security" would angrily protest that they themselves do not torture anyone. Neither did the Dominicans during the Inquisition actually burn anyone at the stake. The Dominicans merely conducted the preliminary investigation--they were torturers, too--announced a verdict and then turned the condemned over to the "secular arm," the state, with a prayer for mercy. Pigs is pigs.)The federal response to Katrina was doomed because the "Department of Homeland Security" is not, in fact, an accountable, rationally organized federal agency. Instead it is a sprawling, uncoordinated, uncontrolled government bureaucracy with limitless powers and a fuzzy presidential mandate that permits considerable sinning. It has so far demonstrated itself to be little more than a reflection of the President's ego; when an issue catches his attention, the way airline security and the Florida hurricanes did, the Department swings into action, but issues that don't catch the President's attention, like televangelists calling for assassinations and Katrina, get blown off with a soundbite or two, usually from a flunky. But not always from a flunky."You're doing a great job, Brownie."Actually Brownie is stinking up the joint. FEMA wasn't of much use when it was launched under Jimmy Carter and deteriorated under Reagan and Bush, but Clinton put professionals in charge and it improved dramatically. It has since dumbed down and has completely bungled its response to Katrina. Sunday's Los Angeles Times contains [Why FEMA went missing][1], an excellent piece by Peter G. Gosselin and Alan C. Miller that dissects the collapse of FEMA under the Bush administration. A taste:But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, FEMA lost its Cabinet-level status as it was folded into the giant new Department of Homeland Security. And in recent years it has suffered budget cuts, the elimination or reduction of key programs and an exodus of experienced staffers.The agency's core budget, which includes disaster preparedness and mitigation, has been cut each year since it was absorbed by the Homeland Security Department in 2003. Depending on what the final numbers end up being for next fiscal year, the cuts will have been between about 2% and 18%.The agency's staff has been reduced by 500 positions to 4,735. Among the results, FEMA has had to cut one of its three emergency management teams, which are charged with overseeing relief efforts in a disaster. Where it once had "red," "white" and "blue" teams, it now has only red and white.Three out of every four dollars the agency provides in local preparedness and first-responder grants go to terrorism-related activities, even though a recent Government Accountability Office report quotes local officials as saying what they really need is money to prepare for natural disasters and accidents."They've taken emergency management away from the emergency managers," complained Morrie Goodman, who was FEMA's chief spokesman during the Clinton administration. "These operations are being run by people who are amateurs at what they are doing."__Richard W. Krimm, a former senior FEMA official for several administrations, agreed. "It was a terrible mistake to take disaster response and recovery : and disaster preparedness and mitigation, and put them in Homeland Security," he said._In the world as it was before the coming to power of this wretched gaggle of overprivileged trust-fund revolutionaries, Michael Chertoff, the "Homeland Security Secretary" (shudder) would be fired, because we've just seen demonstrated how well he and his agency respond to natural disaster: They suck. For any thinking American outside the President's base, none of this is acceptable and both Chetoff and Brown must go.And so should the "Department of Homeland Security."But the President probably won't fire anyone; competence is not among the professional qualifications required of his appointees, as Secretary Rumsfeld has repeatedly demonstrated. And secret police agencies have considerable skill at self-preservation. Chertoff is already attempting to pass the buck to the states of Louisiana and Mississippi, saying Sunday on television that the federal government's responsibilities were secondary and subsidiary. This is a black lie, and Chertoff knows it's a black lie. Katrina was explicitly a federal responsibility from the moment the President declared a federal emergency on the Gulf Coast at the time storm made landfall. (It was not exclusively a federal responsibility, and no one is suggesting that the feds and only the feds were negligent. A great many heads must roll, and not all of them are in service of the President.)But it has been the President himself, and Chertoff and his predecessor as "Homeland Security Secretary" (shudder), who assured the population that _now things are different from disasters of the past. Now the feds will show up like an army of avenging angels to make everything better, to protect us and the things that we love, and in return for that safety and security all we have to do is flush our basic constitutional liberties and oh by the way--turn over a substantial fraction of the Gross National Product to the President's pals, 'cause they know best and they're real American patriots.So did somebody say something about a storm?Once again: We were perfectly capable of managing a rational response to attack or catastrophe in the pre-9/11 world, as the attacks themselves demonstrated. It is only since our national instruments have fallen into the hands of corrupt cronies of the White House and morons mad with ideology that we have found it necessary to pay untold billions of dollars for lethal incompetence from partisan authoritarian second-raters who in the final analysis would rather be rummaging through our desks than responding to a hurricane. The situation we find ourselves in is unacceptable and must be instantly corrected. How to do that?Throw the "Department of Homeland Security" under a train.Sometime this week--count on it--someone will suggest as a "compromise" solution that the nation's agencies tasked with response to natural disaster--agencies like FEMA--be separated from the "Department of Homeland Security," thereby allowing the "Department of Homeland Security" to return to its core mission of spying on Americans and shipping people to concentration camps and just generally, y'know, fighting terror and stuff. Unacceptable. The whole crooked incompetent structure has go, every last stinking one of them, all of them back on the moron job market. We don't need them, they cost way too much and they suck at what they do.-----One more thing. New Orleans isn't dead. I'm getting tired of hearing that and I don't want to hear it any more. This from a letter to a friend with treasured memories of the city as it was:"I may never have been there, but I know this one thing about New Orleans: Yr beloved city will be rebuilt, and better than before, and they will dance again on Bourbon Street on Fat Tuesday. No small part of my elemental outrage at the unfolding disaster is the shocking ease w/ which the authorities have written off the city. Well, fuck those guys. Last week the mayor said the city will be without power for four to six months. I say bullshit. I used to be in that business. Right now busloads of hotshit techs and linemen are busting their ass all over Mississippi and Louisiana ("stitching shit back up," they say), and by now they've been joined by the hotshit techs and linecrew from Texas and the Carolinas and Florida and Alabama and Georgia, and they are all stitching shit up.I worked w/ some of those boys down at Duke Power and Florida Power and Light, and I am here to tell you, they do not fuck around. These guys are stone closers, they go and go and go and go like the Energizer Bunny, they just need cable and a place to put it and they will handle the rest. There will be electric power in some part of New Orleans in one month, and the city will be more or less wired up again by next spring, anyway there will be significant power in New Orleans by spring.And once the lights are back on things won't look quite so bleak, and the people will start to come back, and the (no doubt long and rancorous) debate will get going about how best to protect the city in the future, but eventually they will listen to the engineers and give the city the flood protection system that will be a marvel of the world, and while all the arguing is going on more and more people will come back, and soon (it won't be long, a few months) they'll begin to muck out the stores and the shops and the houses and the hotels and the clubs and the whorehouses and everything else, and New Orleans will be back in business.We're Americans. The fucking hurricane ain't been made that can lick us. One day you'll be showing me around the French Quarter."I respectfully suggest to the people of New Orleans and Louisiana and Mississippi that if you are burdened with mayors and governors that have already thrown their hands in the air and are looking for skirts to hide behind, p'haps you need new mayors and governors. [1]: http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050905/ts_latimes/whyfemawasmissinginaction
and 3 others
Comments
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cfdxprt (anonymous) says…
Well said.
cwrist (Chris Wristen) says…
Well, now that Rove and Bush are back from their vacations, Rove has begun his strategy of blaming the officials in Louisiana (democrats) for the late arrival of federal assistance. Read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/nat...
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
You know they've decided to go negative when they unleash Turd Blossom....
Another blog--I regret I don't have the URL at hand--offers a Rush Limbaugh pastiche based on what Limbaugh would be saying right now if Kerry were President. It's easy enough to imagine.
That these people call themselves "conservatives"... none of these uneducated fucks know the first thing about traditional American conservatism, which stands for minimal government, fiscal prudence and individual rights, which is to say everything the Bush Administration is dedicated to destroying, and vy largely has destroyed. Compared to the radicals now running the country, Bill Clinton was Grover Cleveland.
Anyway now they're whining about the "blame game"--this from the swine who all but accused every adult who opposed Bush of being partly responsible for 9/11. Blame game my ass. The GOP is dead as a coffin nail, and yet again, "Bush" enters the American political lexicon as a synonym for "overpriveliged loser." I _cannot wait_ for the midterms, this lazy, incompetent, ignorant President and his hateful incompetent party of sheep are going to be flushed.
cvillehawk (anonymous) says…
"I _cannot wait_ for the midterms, this lazy, incompetent, ignorant President and his hateful incompetent party of sheep are going to be flushed."
God I hope you're right. I have been waiting too long for judgment day on these guys. I never thought such rampant incompetence and thuggery would go unnoticed and unmolested by the American electorate.
bwoodard (Bill Woodard) says…
Nothing done by the jackbooted, pious thugs in "Homeland Security" should surprise us, but that said, I shit you not, the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild is under investigation by Homeland Security.
According to their latest newsletter, the organization's assets have been frozen ever since their treasurer resigned after 20 years and passed the Guild's miniscule nestegg to a new bank account a few months ago. The bank apologizes but legally can't do anything until Homeland Security determines this group of puppet fans and professionals is not planning to attack our country.
Here's a link to the topic on the Guild's site:
http://www.sfbapg.org/archives/000450...
This is the Guild where Jim Henson met a young Frank Oz and Jerry Juhl back in the 1960's. Now our government thinks it's gone from making muppets to harboring terrorists. I guess this is what you get when you put a human sock puppet in charge of the country.
Meanwhile, the South treads water. Film at 11.
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
Now the horrid little man is announcing that HE will lead an "investigation" into "what went wrong" w/ the gov't's response to Katrina. That's the last you'll hear about any sort of investigation.
A friend wrote me the other day noting that the loathsome Dennis Hastert, a lifer sergeant in the Moron Army, called a congressional investigation into whether or not the previous President rec'd a blowjob. Hastert would chew off his own leg before he called an investigation into Katrina, because of course Hastert is an satanic moron who hates America, but there's a slim chance that one of the corrupt toads in Congress will see this as an opportunity and call for hearings.
Hearings could bring down the administration. I don't expect that to happen, of course--i don't expect hearings to be held--but it's a pleasant thought.
In the meantime, his Highness is sending Dick Cheney(!) to the Gulf Coast to look into things. All this means is that their oil company masters have demanded a meeting; Cheney will no doubt soon launch a "recovery initiative" for the oil companies that involves substantial additional public subsidies: That's all Cheney is for.
It's astounding that Warren Harding has the evil reputation he has based on a handful of peccadilloes. Harding would jail or hang the whole Bush administration and call it a job well done.
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
A puppet theater, sheesh.
So _that's_ what they were doing when the storm surge hit....
If Chertoff and Brown had an ounce of human dignity they'd shoot themselves.
lazz (anonymous) says…
At least Condi has new shoes...
lazz (anonymous) says…
Bob Herbert, New York Times columnist, is a black man, so presumably he will be ignored by those members of the Bush White House who are done with their summer vacations and now pretending to work.
However, for the rest of America, this column -- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/opi... --
is required reading.
Included are these courageous lines:
For days the president of the United States didn't seem to notice.
He would have noticed if the majority of these stricken folks had been white and prosperous. But they weren't. Most were black and poor, and thus, to the George W. Bush administration, still invisible....
Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a president during a dire national emergency.
...
Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Mr. Bush has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his ineptitude. But this is not about politics. It's about competence.
rednekbuddha (Kelly Powell) says…
You got to keep a eye out for them damm puppet folks....mimes to.
rednekbuddha (Kelly Powell) says…
As for the race thing.....N.O is a major arterial of the country. The country needs it to survive......This whole dog and pony show is a act of stupidity not racism/classism. If the whole fuckup in iraq wasnt happening they would of had the equipment and people to of efficiently evacuate the city. Please people, do not muddy up the allready shit stained water until we get the situation under control.....Then go for it.
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
rednekbuddha:
I agree that there is less racism here than incompetence, but it isn't at all clear to me that the war has much to do w/ it. I think it quite likely that the abilities of the Louisiana Guard to respond to natural disaster were attenuated by the Guard's committment overseas--that seems reasonably self-evident, an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of disasters in wartime.
However the war in Iraq does not explain why Michael Brown, a man whose chief professional experience came from running an association of Arabian horsebreeders, was named the director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration. The war is not the reason that the "Department of Homeland Security" ignored the storm until faced with the possibility of being lynched. The war is not the reason that the President and his lickspittle flunkies like Rove are furiously spinning this story 24/7, pumping lie after lie after lie into the ether: That's not Saddam's fault.
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
A nauseating but weirdly fascinating peek into the nuts and bolts operation of the Bush administration can be found in Ted Bridis' AP story providing a timeline of the administration's response to the storm. Among other things, it demonstrates that every word coming out of Rove's mouth is a damned lie:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050906/a...
It turns out Brownie sauntered out a memo to Chertoff several hours after Katrina's landfall suggesting that 1,000 Homeland Security personnel be sent to the Gulf Coast within 48 hours. The best part:
"Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public.""
You just can't make this stuff up.
"The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts."
This guy is a moron's moron; the GOP might run him for President. He's a lawyer whose "job" was ensuring judging standards for an Arabian horse association:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html...
Zero experience. Zero qualifications. Zero competence. A lot like the moron who hired him.
I'm scared to look into Chertoff, but he can't be as useless as Brown. Maybe he was the chancellor of a clown college or something...
cwrist (Chris Wristen) says…
actually, a Haliburton subsidiary already is contracted for the cleanup of environmental disasters. The Bush Administration took care of that back when they hooked up Cheney's boys for the Iraq deal. So the folks in the administration are going to profit off the hurricane too.
Also, came across this yesterday, but in case George ever again says "who could've seen it coming"...
http://www.americaswetland.com/articl...
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
wrist--
Nice link. I think the President's handlers realize that he worsens their numbers every time he opens his mouth. Iit's unlikely we'll be hearing any more White House pronouncements of what we should or shouldn't have seen coming.
--
In the original posting above, I referred to Homeland Security Secretary (shudder) Michael Chertoff and the "long line of faceless men who preceded him...." That was an error. Chertoff is the second HSS (shudder), following Tom Ridge. Chertoff is a cum laude Harvard lawyer who clerked for Justice Brennan. His principal claim to fame is his service as counsel to the Whitewater Senate Committee.
scoville (anonymous) says…
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?...
quinn (Patrick Quinn) says…
I don't think you can call that over the top. I am already on record w/ respect the large quantities of heads that must roll, and as the above points out, not all of them are in the service of the President.
As a rationalist, I am far less surprised that some popularly elected politician is an incompetent dunce than I am to learn that a supposed professional like the head of FEMA is an incompetent dunce. There is no evidence at all that the mayors of New Orleans and the governors of Louisiana have not been dunces from the beginning of time, but 10 years ago FEMA knew how to handle things like this.
That said, the mayor in particular, I think, must be dissuaded from any further apocalyptic announcements about the future of the city being nothing but ashes and despair and graveyards. The man has clearly come undone.
But arguments about how "X isn't guilty; Y is guilty" are spurious arguments--they're _all_ guilty, and the the fact that the mayor of New Orleans is a moron does not in any way relieve Michael Brown or Michael Chertoff of their culpability in this matter. The suggestion being spun hard now by the Right--that the federal government has no primary responsibility in response to a natural disaster and Brownie's job is to sit around writing press releases--is a goddam lie.
If anything like justice is to be served, we will have _all_ their heads.
The Stalinist in me imagines all of them in hoods before a People's Tribunal, but that would do little to further the international image of American jurisprudence.