Katrina, Picking Up the Pieces and Drying Them Out. 0

In the aftermath, it just gets more disgusting.

Emily Messner, of the Washington Post, has compiled a list of facts and rumors regarding federal powers in times of emergency. It should be required reading for anyone who wishes to straighten out the spin.

You can find it here:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/thedebate/2005/09/facts_and_rumor.html#more

One of the interesting entries is this:

Fact: Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a State of Emergency for her state on Friday, Aug. 26. Full disclosure: The Post reported last week — erroneously, it turned out — that Louisiana had not issued such a declaration. A correction was published on Sept. 5.

Fact: President Bush declared a State of Emergency the next day Saturday before Hurricane Katrina hit.

And a comment posted to this site pointed out that

REGARDING Fact: Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco declared a State of Emergency for her state on Friday, Aug. 26. Full disclosure: The Post reported last week — erroneously, it turned out — that Louisiana had not issued such a declaration. A correction was published on Sept. 5. The original artcile stated that the WaPost report was based on information provided by a Senior White House Official. If so, this seems quite worthy of a headline rather than a little snippet in Corrections.

In other news, NPR’s All Things Considered today had a several retrospectives trying to piece together what happened in the approach of Katrina.

Here’s one: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4839666

Here’s another: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4839669

And here’s an analysis from E. J. Dionne: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4839690

In good news, it appears that Mr. Brown can go back to taking care of horses, the job he came from. Yeah, he’s still on the Federal payroll, but I suspect he’s not going to have much to do from now on.

And remember, he was a political appointee, not a professional bureaucrat. Professional bureaucrats get a lot of bad press, especially from politicians who want to make appointees, but I have known a lot of professional civil servants in my career (I lived and worked in Washington, DC, for nine years), and, by and large, they take their jobs seriously and try to do them well.

It’s when the political appointees at the head of their departments don’t know what to do and provide no leadership and no work assignments that the professional civil servants get frustrated and bored and spend their days surfing the Net.

Oh, and here’s a take on what it takes to provide leadership to a government agency.