Brown manages to land on his feet

September 27, 2005

The last we heard from former FEMA Director Mike Brown, he was sending around his resume, looking for work. It didn’t seem to be going very well — one exec called him “radioactive.”

And yet, as C&L discovered, Brown needn’t worry about finding a new employer; his old one will do just fine.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown is continuing to work at the Federal Emergency Management Agency at full pay, with his Sept. 12 resignation not taking effect for two more weeks, said Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke.

CBS News Correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Knocke told her that technically Brown remains at FEMA as a “contractor” and he is “transitioning out of his job.” The reason he will remain at FEMA about a month after his resignation, said the spokesman, is that the agency wants to get the “proper download of his experience.”

During that time, Brown will advise the department on “some of his views on his experience with Katrina,” as he transitions out of his job, Knocke told the Associated Press.

So, if I’m understanding this properly, FEMA is paying the guy who helped screw up the agency’s response to Katrina in order to get his insight into how the agency screwed up the response to Katrina. Your tax dollars at work.

As for Brown getting his full salary as he “transitions” his way out, I’m inclined to agree with Think Progress and hold him to the wording of his resignation letter:

“Today I resigned as Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As I told the President, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA.” (emphasis added)

Nothing in there about two more weeks at full salary.

Here’s a thought: how about a move to force Brown to give all his post-resignation FEMA salary to relief charities. He certainly hasn’t earned that money. Victims of hurricanes have.

  • Perhaps you should expand your list of public officials who should give money to the victims to include the hundreds of levee board members, legislators, mayors, senators, ward organizers and general rats who have used the people and the environs of New Orleans and Louisiana to gain holdings, sell programs and generally create feifdoms through the years. Include in that list any Army Corps of Engineer consultant who approved disasterous conditions through the decades and didn’t yell at the top of their lungs. Not all slaves are shackled…or black. Some holds maskerade as religions and yes even democratic parties…spouting about how they are for the common man while gilding their own altars. Before you continue to spout about Brown, Bush and the rest of the republican problems that you are so loudly criticizing, perhaps you should look at why they managed to be elected and selected in the first place. There is an underlying reason that elections do not always result in the best candidate winning and it has a lot less to do with organized corruption than with personal corruption. A state which will re-elect a governor such as Edwin Edwards, ideolize a corrupt demigogue as they did Huey Long, and choose an inept individual such as Gov. Blanco cannot blame Brown for everything. True his leadership did not rise to the challenge, but neither did the leadership of a number of others. I for one believe his salary is peanuts in comparison to the windfall Landrieu has proposed for herself and others in power who so bungled their watch. Alligator research an emergency need…I don’t think so. LA is looking to repay itself for indiscriminate ravaging of the tax base by corrupt politicians and their faceless cronies in the name of public outrage…when they should be the one’s pausing to say what is this really all about. I am a native of Louisiana, considered a hippie thinking commie by many of my associatesand relatives because I believe in personal responsibility and sharing of resources on a base level. I don’t love Bush, but I don’t demonize him any more than I do Blanco, Landrieu, Tauzin all those who had a hand in the felling of the levies through the years. It’s just not so easy as you fellas keep trying to blame it.

  • Jane at firedoglake published a rumor last Saturday, a little something about the story of the President’s fall off the wagon getting leaked to the National Enquireror by a certain former head of a certain agency that felt cheated by his dismissal.

    This couldn’t have anything to do with this, could it?

  • Before you continue to spout about Brown, Bush and the rest of the republican problems that you are so loudly criticizing, perhaps you should look at why they managed to be elected and selected in the first place.

    Election fraud, a intellectually bankrupt Supreme Court decision, and more enablers in the MSM than they could dream of.

  • So Brown wants to give the agency the benefit of “the download of
    his experience” huh? This is akin to the “download” a horse gives
    the ground when it deposits its fertilizer there. We are all swimming in the gracious “download” of Brown’s horseshit ideas and amateur theatrics.
    But then again what is one to expect from a shameless horse’s ass like Brown?

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