On the ropes:

[TuxThePenguin]

Interview with Michael Brown. Makes interesting listening.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/ontheropes.ram

 

[Billnew]

Brown was incompetent, but this was the
worst case scenerio.
We had 3 states needing assistance.

New Orleans survived the hurricane, and then the levies
failed. State officials waited for federal help, federal help was stretced thin.

Both the Governor and Brown are to blame for people's suffering.
Bush appointed Brown, so he is to blame too.
But Fema tells all States, don't count of Federal assistance for 72hours after the disaster.

Budget cuts are set backs, and we need to review decisions, but politicians had gambled on the levies holding for 15 years.

 

[HumbleMan]

FEMA should never have been placed under DHS in the first place. That was nothing but a political move, and it backfired.

As far as Brown, he was just another in a long line of patronage appointments that knew nothing about his job.

Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin share the blame for fiasco in New Orleans, but it was this Administration's policies in place after Katrina hit that did more damage.

There were semi's full of donated food and clothes that were turned back, there are still thousands of people living in FEMA trailer parks, which are little better than gang controlled ghettos at this point, the government's ambivalence towards the insurance companies that allowed them to deny thousands of valid claims (they even changed engineering reports), and a myriad of other mistakes and outright corruption.