Michael Brown's official FEMA bio vs. the truth

[highplainsdem]

I couldn't resist checking FEMA's website for this twit's bio. It's at

http://www.fema.gov/about/bios/brown.shtm

There's no mention at all of the full-time job that was apparently his longest period of employment before he went to FEMA, which the Boston Herald (http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=100857 ) explains this way:

Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

``We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,'' explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner's office. ``This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years,'' she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

``He was asked to resign,'' Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.


Since this job was omitted completely from his official bio, it's obvious they knew how bad this background looked. Has anyone here heard a member of the administration, or Brown himself, questioned about how someone who showed that much incompetence, in a job he was obviously afraid to have mentioned, could have been appointed to such an important post? I'm sure this will come up in Congressional hearings later, but journalists should be asking direct questions about this now, and bringing it up again and again.

[walldude]

1. There was a post the other day

with a link to an article in the Ft Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, where a Fla. Rep tried to get Brown fired after he gave 500 million in relief money from Hurricane Frances to Miami, where the hurricane didn't hit. They were paying off claims of Ice and Snow Damage.. in Miami.

[highplainsdem]

2. Brown's separation agreement with IAHA is at

http://www.awhitehorse.com/editorials/brown_resignation.html

[LastDemocratInSC]

7. Now I get it - He got the FEMA job because of a non-compete clause

His employment contract included a non-compete clause. The resignation agreement draws attention to it. Now everything makes perfect sense. He couldn't go to work managing horse shows for a while so he became the chief counsel of FEMA, instead (and eventually the director).

Talk about falling upward. More proof of "Intelligent Falling"!

[A Brand New World]

3. Indeed, how does someone with this employment background become

the head of THE emergency management/disaster preparedness agency? My local fire chief has more experience and job credentials than this dude. Another example of Bush's cronyism but this one had a deadly outcome.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Can you say "political appointee"?

This is the spoils system at its worst. He must have given some mighty big bucks to the Bush campaign.

[highplainsdem]

5. OMG -- Brown applied a Martin Luther King quote to himself at IAHA

This was in an interview he did with Arabian Horse World magazine (July 2000 issue, if I'm reading the URL correctly), at http://www.ahwmagazine.com/07ahw00/issue/what_world.html :

The last few months have been difficult times for our association because of the onslaught of litigation against the organization and its membership. In my report to the board of directors, I quoted Martin Luther King, who once said that “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”


There's another MLK quote that fits Brown much better: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." (On second thought, the words "sincere" and "conscientious" wouldn't fit Brown...)

[Cocoa]

6. Cheney's official bio doesn't mention Halliburton

then again, he was only the CEO.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/