Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm
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Originally Posted by New York Times
DENVER (AP) -- Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency's slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.
''If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses -- because that goes straight to the bottom line -- then I hope I can help the country in some way,'' Brown told the Rocky Mountain News for its Thursday editions.
Brown said officials need to ''take inventory'' of what's going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.
In the aftermath of the hurricane, critics complained about Brown's lack of formal emergency management experience and e-mails that later surfaced showed him as out of touch with the extent of the devastation.
The lawyer admits that while he was head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency mistakes were made in the response to Katrina. He also said he had been planning to quit before the hurricane hit.
''Hurricane Katrina showed how bad disasters can be, and there's an incredible need for individuals and businesses to understand how important preparedness is,'' he said.
Brown said companies already have expressed interested in his consulting business, Michael D. Brown LLC. He plans to run it from the Boulder area, where he lived before joining the Bush administration in 2001.
''I'm doing a lot of good work with some great clients,'' Brown said. ''My wife, children and my grandchild still love me. My parents are still proud of me.''
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I have to give Brownie credit for a staggering helping of optimism.
This mirrors something I've noticed several times in recent political history - the urge to play straight to one's own weaknesses, pretending they are strengths. This may work well in terms of putting your critics on the defensive, but stories like this make me want to shake our nation's leaders and remind them that their jobs aren't games.
The two most depressing elements of the NY Times article above:
1) "Brown said companies already have expressed interested in his consulting business" which I'm sure is true... WTF???!!? It's too bad Al Capone died before opening a rehab center - I'm sure he would have had clients in a line down the block. People can be so stupid.
2) ''My wife, children and my grandchild still love me. My parents are still proud of me.'' That this even appears in a NY Times article is sad. Last I heard, the Times was still making an effort to pretend to be a NEWS agency. That Brownie would say something like this (as if it has anything to do with his ability to run his new company) is only surpassed in lameness by the fact that the paper ran it. *Guess what, Brownie?? ubertuber thinks you didn't do a heck of a job. In fact, you SUCK!*
I'm starting to think that Chomsky is right in claiming that news organizations do their reporting by perusing PR releases.