This is the way we cluster fuck.

Todays Rant:

Does anyone else find it just a bit suspicious that duhbyah is going to "personally oversee" the investigation into why the government didn't do squat for almost four days after the hurricane hit in Louisiana? Isn't this a lot like O.J. searching for the real killer?

I see that they are also trying to pin it on the head of FEMA. I hate to be the one to bring this up, but FEMA (unlike most government entities) is not continually active. That is to say that (with the exception of the basic command and infrastructure) the majority of FEMA "members" are employees of other government agencies (D.O.D., D.O.T., C.D.C, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, etc.) and cannot abandon those posts without being ordered to do so (sort of like volunteer firefighters, they have regular jobs and do the rescue work on the side).

Now (leaving aside the fact that FEMA is involved primarily in rebuilding and restoration of infrastructure/ business, and not in emergency response/rescue operations), those few permanent FEMA employees are not in a position to act on their own. If they want to request an action they have to create a document, pass it to their immediate superiors who (in most cases) will pass it to their superiors and so on up the chain of command. If a response is generated it will be passed down the chain of command in a similar manner. The only people who are in a position to act unilaterally are the people at the top of the chain of command, and in the case of a major emergency, most folks are going to be expecting orders from above, and are therefore not going to waste time and resources requesting permission to act. (Gee, who was at the top of the chain of command in this instance?)

In this case, FEMA is an agency incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security, which is a department of the executive branch. Any request for FEMA activation would have had to go from the FEMA head (Michael Brown), through the head of the Department of Homeland Security (Michael Chertoff), to the head of the executive department (George W. Bush), and any response or unilateral request for activation would have to travel in the opposite direction.

These agencies are not allowed to activate themselves, anymore than the Department of Defense is allowed to activate itself...

Orders always come from above.

For more info check out these sites.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/news/fedgov.html

http://www.whitehouse.gov/

http://www.fema.gov/

http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/

http://www.defenselink.mil/