{"id":5598,"date":"2005-10-21T11:02:16","date_gmt":"2005-10-21T15:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5598"},"modified":"2005-10-21T11:02:16","modified_gmt":"2005-10-21T15:02:16","slug":"brownie-is-still-on-the-payroll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/brownie-is-still-on-the-payroll\/","title":{"rendered":"Brownie is still on the payroll"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s tempting to say that former FEMA Director Mike “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”<\/a> Brown has been humiliated enough. But that temptation is easily whisked away when we learn that taxpayers are still paying his salary<\/i>. <\/p>\n

Before we get into that, consider what we’ve learned about Brown’s “leadership” of FEMA this week. A few days ago, emails and memos emerged<\/a> showing that FEMA was chaotic and confused when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, things went from tragic to heartbreaking when Marty Bahamonde, the only agency worker in New Orleans during the storm, told Congress that Brownie ignored warnings<\/a>. While Brown told lawmakers he hadn’t been notified about conditions in New Orleans until it was too late, Bahamonde explained that this wasn’t the case at all.<\/p>\n

Bahamonde contradicted accounts by Brown that FEMA had positioned 12 staffers in the Superdome before the storm, that Bahamonde’s reports Monday were “routine” and that FEMA medical personnel were on hand before Tuesday.<\/p>\n

At 11:20 a.m. Aug. 31, Bahamonde e-mailed Brown, “Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical . . . thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water . . . estimates are many will die within hours.”<\/p>\n

At 2:27 p.m., however, Brown press secretary Sharon Worthy wrote colleagues to schedule an interview for Brown on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Country” and to give him more time to eat dinner because Baton Rouge restaurants were getting busy: “He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

OK, so Brownie was practically criminally negligent for his handling of the crisis. It’s a point you should keep in mind when you consider the fact that FEMA is still paying his salary<\/b><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brown is still on FEMA’s payroll as a consultant, [FEMA spokeswoman Nicol] Andrews confirmed. He works from home, where he is “pulling all the documentation together” for the investigations into Katrina response, she said, and his original 30-day contract was recently extended for another 30 days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You’ve got to be kidding me.
\n
\nLet me get this straight — Brown bungled Katrina to a wretched degree, he may have lied to Congress about his efforts, universal disgust led his resignation, and FEMA has given him a contract extension<\/i>?<\/p>\n

On Sept. 12, in his resignation letter<\/a>, Brown wrote that “is it important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA.” Sounds great, except he’s still on the payroll, apparently at full salary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We shouldn’t be giving this clown more money; we should be demanding he give back the money he accepted before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s tempting to say that former FEMA Director Mike “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” Brown has been humiliated enough. But that temptation is easily whisked away when we learn that taxpayers are still paying his salary. Before we get into that, consider what we’ve learned about Brown’s “leadership” of FEMA this week. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}