09-06-2005, 06:38 AM
<a href='http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/343814p-293491c.html' target='_blank'>http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/343...4p-293491c.html</a>
Ineptitude leads to death
All across America, viewers choked up Sunday - you had to - watching Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, go on "Meet the Press" to tell the agonizing story of one of his top aides, the county's emergency management director. "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you,'" Broussard recounted.
The manager's mother called every day from Tuesday through Friday, but no help came. "And she drowned on Friday night," Broussard concluded, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the Greater New Orleans area," is how Broussard put it. The riveting scene was reminiscent of the way New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin broke down and wept during a radio interview a few days earlier, begging federal and state officials to "get off your asses and let's do something."
Behind the tears, you could hear that Nagin and Broussard know full well what outsiders are only beginning to understand: They are part of a system of government that is broken at all levels, rife with cronyism and corruption and their inevitable consequence, incompetence.
Federal investigators are probing corruption in the administration of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial. A man named Glenn Haydel, who is Morial's uncle, is currently facing federal embezzlement charges for allegedly steering $550,000 from the New Orleans public transport system, the Regional Transit Authority, to his own management company - and putting $350,000 of that sum into a personal bank account.
Nagin, a political outsider elected as a reformer, has demonstrated significant limitations as a crisis manager. But he needed and deserved a smooth-running, fully funded public transport and it seems likely that chiselers and crooks in government denied it to him.
The rot extends to the federal level, where much of the nationally televised incompetence and confusion in the gulf region can be traced to the disastrous patronage hire of Michael Brown as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown, utterly unqualified for the job, spent the last decade running a trade association of horse breeders.
Brown's sole qualification appears to be his friendship with Joe Allbaugh, who managed President Bush's 2000 campaign. After Bush won, Allbaugh was appointed FEMA director and brought Brown to the agency.
The administration later gave control of the agency to Brown - passing over countless thousands of emergency management professionals - when Allbaugh left FEMA to become a top lobbyist for Halliburton, the construction company. Halliburton, according to the Houston Chronicle, will be repairing Navy facilities in Mississippi and performing damage assessments in the New Orleans area under a preexisting federal contract.
"Corruption, and our willingness sometimes to smile and wink at it, has cost us dearly," says U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, who is leading the New Orleans corruption inquiry.
It also contributed to the failures on the ground that have cost so many lives.
Originally published on September 6, 2005
Ineptitude leads to death
All across America, viewers choked up Sunday - you had to - watching Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, go on "Meet the Press" to tell the agonizing story of one of his top aides, the county's emergency management director. "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, 'Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, 'Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you,'" Broussard recounted.
The manager's mother called every day from Tuesday through Friday, but no help came. "And she drowned on Friday night," Broussard concluded, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the Greater New Orleans area," is how Broussard put it. The riveting scene was reminiscent of the way New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin broke down and wept during a radio interview a few days earlier, begging federal and state officials to "get off your asses and let's do something."
Behind the tears, you could hear that Nagin and Broussard know full well what outsiders are only beginning to understand: They are part of a system of government that is broken at all levels, rife with cronyism and corruption and their inevitable consequence, incompetence.
Federal investigators are probing corruption in the administration of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial. A man named Glenn Haydel, who is Morial's uncle, is currently facing federal embezzlement charges for allegedly steering $550,000 from the New Orleans public transport system, the Regional Transit Authority, to his own management company - and putting $350,000 of that sum into a personal bank account.
Nagin, a political outsider elected as a reformer, has demonstrated significant limitations as a crisis manager. But he needed and deserved a smooth-running, fully funded public transport and it seems likely that chiselers and crooks in government denied it to him.
The rot extends to the federal level, where much of the nationally televised incompetence and confusion in the gulf region can be traced to the disastrous patronage hire of Michael Brown as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown, utterly unqualified for the job, spent the last decade running a trade association of horse breeders.
Brown's sole qualification appears to be his friendship with Joe Allbaugh, who managed President Bush's 2000 campaign. After Bush won, Allbaugh was appointed FEMA director and brought Brown to the agency.
The administration later gave control of the agency to Brown - passing over countless thousands of emergency management professionals - when Allbaugh left FEMA to become a top lobbyist for Halliburton, the construction company. Halliburton, according to the Houston Chronicle, will be repairing Navy facilities in Mississippi and performing damage assessments in the New Orleans area under a preexisting federal contract.
"Corruption, and our willingness sometimes to smile and wink at it, has cost us dearly," says U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, who is leading the New Orleans corruption inquiry.
It also contributed to the failures on the ground that have cost so many lives.
Originally published on September 6, 2005