Where Is Michael D. Brown's Book Deal?
By Michael J. Gaynor
MichNews.com
Nov 14, 2005
For America's sake, I hope that former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown and his wife Tamara have a book in them.
A book along these lines:
For more than two years, I was the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA). It was my responsibility to direct FEMA's important, but limited, actions in responding to hurricanes, among other things. Generally, FEMA and state and local officials in hurricane-hit states, especially Florida, responded well when I was in charge. Until horrible Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and Mississippi with devastating force, killing approximately 1,000 Americans, dislocating hundreds of thousands, doing many billions dollars worth of property damage, and leading to New Orleans' levees breaking and most of The Jewel of the Delta disappearing under water, like the legendary city of Atlantis. Ironically, I had leaned "far forward," and publicly said so, in an effort to mitigate the damage that Katrina would cause. At my request, President Bush took the unusual step of declaring a hurricane disaster even before Katrina made landfall. But Louisiana is not Florida, which is experienced and adept at responding to hurricanes and has a governor who is strong enough not to fret about appearing weak. Louisiana's Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had not prepared properly. Even though Hurricane Ivan had threatened New Orleans the year before. Although both are Democrats, their personal animosity meant that they did not work well together, even under the extraordinary circumstances that demanded cooperation, for the sakes of their vulnerable constituents. Governor Blanco said she needed 24 hours to decide whether or not to let the federal government take control. Mayor Nagin waited a day after President Bush personally urged him to implement a mandatory evacuation. Many individual first responders responded heroically but others deserted. When the state and city leaders do not have workable response plans, and fail to take the necessary actions to avoid and to reduce the harm, however, despite the heroic efforts of many good people, the result is predictably catastrophic. And the need for a scapegoat is great.
Especially when President Bush's rabidly partisan political enemies were doing anything and everything to persuade the American people that he was a disreputable, incompetent, uncaring scoundrel who had deliberately deceived them in order to invade Iraq, planned to destroy the environment by permitting some drilling in a tiny part of ANWAR, was determined to destroy the Social Security by offering people a choice of putting some of their Social Security tax payments in personal accounts that they would actually own, and planned to take away their constitutional rights by appointing strict constructionists to the Supreme Court (and lower federal courts) instead of Justices and Judges who would twist the Constitution like a pretzel to suit their "liberal" personal agendas, happily read the public purpose provision in the Constitution's eminent domain clause out of the Constitution, and brazenly ignore America's history and ban Ten Commandments displays in courthouses, Thanksgiving and Christmas as national holidays, "under God" from "The Pledge of Allegiance," voluntary nondenominational prayer from public schools, creches from winter holiday displays on public property, "In God We Trust" from America's currency and Congressional and military chaplains. If they could get a majority vote.
The Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans naturally were expected to continue in office at least until their current terms expired. And they necessarily would be key figures in the recovery and reconstruction, regardless of whether they were to blame for the extent of the disaster. Would the scapegoat be a white woman who had risen from schoolteacher to governor? Or a black mayor of an overwhelmingly black city who had been a Cox Communications executive and had opportunistically switched parties just before he ran for mayor (and then antagonized that white woman by supporting her Republican opponent in Louisiana's last gubernatorial race)? Or yours truly, a lawyer from Oklahoma who had been, among other things, president of the International Arabian Horse Association before being nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate to take charge of FEMA?
The Democrats and their media allies decided quickly. And I "won."
In this book I will tell the inside story of Hurricane Katrina and its horrendous aftermath. And my wife Tamara (yes, I have a wife and children too!) will tell readers how it all affected our family. Because people should know the whole truth, not just what they hear on television or radio or read in newspapers or magazines. And Tamara wants people to appreciate what scapegoating entails not only for the scapegoat, but also for the scapegoat's family.
Publishers should be lining up to present lucrative book deal proposals to former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, whom the secular extremist leftist media demonized (as part of their perpetual campaign to discredit President Bush) after a weak white female governor and a pathetic black male mayor turned Hurricane Katrina into a much bigger disaster than it needed to be.
Rather than put the blame on those two Democrats, the blame was misattributed to Mr. Brown and, of course, President Bush. The Democrat partyline was that Mr. Brown was an incompetent political hack whom President Bush never should have appointed to direct FEMA and President Bush was at fault for appointing him (even though he was duly confirmed by the Senate), failing to realize he was incompetent, and keeping him around too long.
This canard is much like the Democrats' history of the liberation of Iraq: a blatant lie repeated ad nauseum in the expectation that people who don't know better eventually will believe it and turn against President Bush and the Republicans.
These days Mary Mapes is making the rounds of the talk shows promoting her book on her bogus program about President Bush's National Guard service. Ms. Mapes is a former CBS producer, since the story, based on incompetent journalistic practices, phony documents and wishful thinking, and designed to put Senator John Kerry in the White House in January of 2005, was blown up by the bloggers and other major media. Leaving President Bush in the White House, Senator Kerry in the Senate, Dan Rather as a retired anchor and Ms. Mapes as a terminated producer promoting her book.
Of course, Ms. Mapes got a book deal and is making her case, such as it is, to those Americans who care to hear it. Appearing on Fox, because Fox is fair and balanced, and CNN, because CNN is not fair and balanced. As well as other major media outlets.
Like the late Communist Alger Hiss, Ms. Mapes claims to be a scapegoat. And ishe is still singing her same old song, hoping to hoodwink the gullible. (Note: When the Soviet Union collapsed and the formerly secret records were disclosed, Hiss was irrefutably exposed as a liar.)
Ironically, Mr. Brown IS a genuine scapecoat. And the evidence is there to prove it. Congressman Christopher Shays, the New York Times' favorite Republican, who meanly mocked Mr. Brown during a Congressional hearing looking into Hurricane Katrina, recently acknowledged on Fox that FEMA handled the hurricanes in Florida and Texas well, but not the one in Louisiana. It apparently did not dawn on him that the fault was with Louisiana officials (and Louisiana's long history of corruption, neglect and incompetence), not FEMA, a small federal agency, or its former director, one person who was not responsible for the planning, or, more to the point, lack of planning by Louisiana and New Orleans officials or their reluctance to get out of the way or to take advice when they had created the problem and only exacerbated it by failing to cooperate.
The question as to why FEMA had performed well under Mr. Brown during prior hurricanes, but supposedly not during Hurricane Katrina, was a question that Louisiana officials particularly and Democrats generally wanted to ignore. But, it is a question that must not be ignored, for the sakes of America, Louisiana, FEMA, President Bush and Mr. Brown and his family. (Yes, like former Judge and Independent Counsel Ken Starr, the decent public servant whom the Democrats chose to vilify for partisan political purposes, Mr. Brown has a wife and children, and they all deserve fair treatment.)
I have written repeatedly on Hurricane Katrina and the scapegoating of Mr. Brown:
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