It was with great relief that New Orleanians awoke this morning to find their city largely spared by Hurricane Gustav, but many residents are still struggling to rebuild their lives three years after Hurricane Katrina… a rebuilding effort that has been as hampered by government incompetence and cronyism as the disastrously botched relief effort in the storm’s immediate wake.

As it so happens, today is the third anniversary of my post highlighting former FEMA director Mike Brown’s vast emergency management experience as the Commissioner of Judges and Stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association—a post that Brown himself ultimately blamed for his firing—and it is depressing to note that there is little reason to believe that FEMA is any better prepared to deal with a similar disaster.  But then, that’s the sort of government we get when we elect leaders who don’t actually believe in government.

Lebanon

The Saudi Arabian embassy in Beirut has called on its nationals to leave Lebanon a day after a US warship was positioned off the country’s coast.

The embassy on Saturday sent SMS messages to Saudis living in Lebanon urging them to leave the country as soon as possible, Al Jazeera’s correspondent said.

Gaza

Israel vowed to press its campaign against militants in the Gaza Strip on Sunday despite an international outcry over the deadly onslaught that prompted even the moderate Palestinian leadership to cut off all peace talks.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to continue the ground and air operation that has killed 71 Palestinians since Saturday following the death of one Israeli civilian last week and earned the Jewish state international condemnation for disproportionate use of force.

Iraq

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said in Baghdad on Sunday that the “Iranian and Iraqi nations will always stand by each other.”

In a news conference with his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani, Ahmadinejad called his landmark visit to Iraq “a new page in the history of the relations between the two countries and cooperation in the region.”

The Iranian president arrived in Baghdad on Sunday morning and was received by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and national security adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.

Talabani, who grinned broadly and eagerly shook Ahmadinejad’s hand, called the visit “historic”, AFP reported.

Throughout this decade, we’ve been led to believe that the first two stories are examples of freedom being on the march, while the third example is a setback. In reality, they’re all setbacks, with the third story being the indication of the failure of the approach used in the first two.

Goldy (Founder/Blogger-in-Chief) –
David Goldstein is an accidental activist who stumbled into politics in 2003 with a satirical statewide initiative to officially proclaim WA’s serial anti-tax initiative sponsor, Tim Eyman, “a horse’s ass.” A conscientious political press corp, weary of Eyman’s outrageous antics, turned its coverage to Goldstein’s outrageous antics, sparking a spontaneous grassroots movement to gather nearly 50,000 signatures before a humorless Attorney General managed to get an equally humorless judge to issue an injunction shutting down the campaign.

A year later Goldstein transformed his campaign website into a local, political blog. A mix of snark, satire, muckraking, and surprisingly thoughtful analysis, HorsesAss.org quickly became the most influential blog in WA state, and one of the most widely read local political blogs in the nation. Goldstein also blogs at Huffington Post and Daily Kos, and is best known nationally for breaking the story about former FEMA Director Mike Brown and his disastrous tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association, and for his relentless coverage of adulterated Chinese food imports.

Goldstein was born and educated in Philadelphia, and now lives in Seattle with his daughter, dog, cat, and everybody else who lives in Seattle. In addition to blogging, he is the creator of the world’s most widely pirated rhyming dictionary software, and the co-author of an Off-Broadway musical flop. Goldstein has been published in The Nation and The Stranger, and can be heard pontificating about politics on “The David Goldstein Show“, News/Talk 710-KIRO, Saturdays and Sundays from 7 to 10 PM.

Geov –
Geov Parrish began writing regular political commentary when, in 1996, he founded the community newspaper and web site Eat the State!, which he continues to co-edit. The same week, he began a long-running stint as a commentator on KEXP-90.3 Seattle’s “Mind Over Matters,” airing each Saturday at 8:30 AM.

ETS! led almost immediately to an unlikely new career as professional columnist, with a decade put in at The Stranger and Seattle Weekly. Beginning in 1998 Geov also wrote regularly at various times for Mother Jones, In These Times, WorkingforChange.com, and for several years in national syndication in both print and radio. But now he’s given all that up to write for HorsesAss.org. He also posts nationally from time to time at Booman Tribune.

Prior to writing for a living, Geov also spent time as a: radio DJ and programmer, punk rock singer, community activist, East Asia scholar, convenience store clerk, zine publisher, strawberry picker, factory worker, bicycle messenger, public health and medical school instructor, and successful small business owner. None of which even remotely qualified him to have paid political opinions. Deal with it.

Darryl –
Darryl Holman brings to Horse’s Ass the sensibility of a good Midwestern upbringing (albeit in a single-parent household), an East Coast education (albeit at a State university), and West Coast angst. More importantly, everything he does is deeply rooted in the blues. In real life, he is an anthropologist and a demographer at the University of Washington specializing in biological anthropology, human reproductive ecology, and scientific and statistical modeling. Besides contributing to Horse’s Ass, he also writes for Hominid Views and, occasionally contributes to Jesus’ General.

Other than blogging, Darryl likes to play chess, fly airplanes, fix automobiles, tinker in his small machine shop, do things with computers, and play the guitar. Like almost everyone else in the greater Seattle metropolitan area, he is also building an airplane in his garage.

Darryl was born in Santa Maria, California, but was raised in Madison, Wisconsin where, at a young age, he was exposed to dangerous liberal ideas, Vietnam war protests, the radical environmental movement, and severe winter weather.

He has a BS and an MS in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin (with diplomas signed by Chancellor Donna Shalala), and a PhD in Anthropology and Demography from Penn State University. Bill Clinton spoke at his PhD graduation ceremony in 1996, but he was too busy in New Orleans that day to attend. He spent a few more years at Penn State as a Postdoctoral fellow before moving to Redmond, Washington in the fall of 1999.

He became immersed in state and local politics when he observed that the quality of life was perfect in every way in Western Washington except for the dysfunctional transportation infrastructure, and simultaneously learned about Initiative 695 (the initiative that gutted funding for transportation infrastructure). There are unsubstantiated rumors that Darryl was the mysterious “Statistician X” (a.k.a. dj) during the gubernatorial election contest.

Will –
Will Kelley-Kamp is a young punk. At least that’s where it stands until he gets off his lazy ass and posts a bio.

Carl –
Carl Ballard is the pen name for Carl Balard, itself a pen name. Since unlike Goldy he tries to keep his personal life and blogging life separate, the rest of this entry will be entirely false:

Carl Ballard was born in a small Midwestern town. He doesn’t remember what town or even what state, but in fairness he was a baby at the time so remembering anything about it is pretty impressive. After earning a degree in Kickass from the University of Transylvania (minor in Rad!) Carl decided to travel the galaxy and will tell you that Neptune is nice. After returning to Earth, Carl earned a Masters in Making Fun of Righties where his thesis, “Fuck the Heck: Wingnuttia from Cesar to Sharkansky” was universally praised, and may be made into a movie. Carl puts his Making Fun of Righties degree to work on a regular basis at EFFin’ Unsound where he tracks local righties. He is getting sick of writing about himself in the third person.

Lee –
Lee Rosenberg is also a punk, although not quite as young as Will.

Thoughts from a wingnut (via Kos and Digby):

When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization, President Bush took the only action prudence demanded and the electorate allowed: he conquered Iraq with an army.

This dangerous and expensive act did destroy the Iraqi regime, but left an American army without any clear purpose in a hostile country and subject to attack. If the Army merely returns to its home, then the threat it ended would simply return.

The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life.

This is not some random crazy wingnut, as Kos mentions, “this is from the conservative group Family Security Matters, whose board includes mainstream conservatives Barbara Comstock, Monica Crowley, Frank Gaffney, Laura Ingraham and James Woolsey.” The particular author’s name is Philip Atkinson.

Here’s more:

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

He could then follow Caesar’s example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

The folks at FSM have been trying to scrub this (and evidently some other articles that are just as insane) from their site. Steve Clemons wrote about this group last summer.

There’s a wonkish yet curiously fascinating AP story in the Seattle Times today about an FCC ruling that limits local government authority and oversight in negotiating cable TV franchises. Critics complain that FCC chairman Kevin Martin deliberately misrepresented facts while pushing through the new rules, which the Republican dominated commission passed on a party-line vote.

Supporters of the policy change — giant phone companies like AT&T and Verizon — provided dozens of examples of local governments making unreasonable demands on new competitors. And Martin repeatedly cited these claims without making any effort at independent verification.

It was one of those claims that raised the ire of David L. Smith, the city attorney in Tampa, Fla. He said the FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, made a “blatantly inaccurate allegation” about Tampa’s conduct during franchise negotiations with Verizon Communications Inc.

Martin was quizzing an agency employee during a commission meeting before casting his vote when he asked: “Is Verizon still required to film the tutoring classes for the math classes in Tampa, Florida in order to get a franchise?”

Rosemary Harold, a deputy chief in the FCC’s Media Bureau, answered, “Yes, Mr. Chairman.”

In fact, Tampa never imposed such a requirement. Tampa gave Verizon a $13 million “needs assessment,” required by law to obtain contributions for equipment used in public access production. The assessment may have included video cameras for filming math classes, but nothing like this was ever mentioned in the franchise agreement. Tampa’s existing cable franchise had already committed $6.5 million towards the needs assessment, and under Florida law a competitor would have been required to match that amount to obtain a franchise.

So how did such a “blatantly inaccurate allegation” get read into the public record by the chairman of the FCC himself?

The Tampa allegation outlined by Martin first appeared in a Wall Street Journal story in October 2005 that painted a sympathetic portrait of Verizon’s travails in gaining franchises.

The account said Verizon, seeking permission to offer TV service in Tampa, was presented with “a $13 million wish list” of items it needed, including “video cameras to film a math-tutoring program for kids.”

The story stated that “Verizon lawyers saw it as a demand.”

Uh-huh. Martin read it in the Wall Street Journal — a respectable newspaper — and that was good enough for him.

I have friends in the newspaper biz, journalists who I truly respect, who I think it is fair to say look down a bit at what me and my fellow bloggers and advocacy journalists do. They insist that it is their job to objectively report the story, not become a part of it. But of course, that’s impossible.

Even if the WSJ reporter’s mischaracterization was an honest mistake (as opposed to being the result of intentional or unintentional bias,) the very act of reporting it influenced public policy. Despite a growing level of public cynicism, newspapers are still generally presumed to be credible sources of objective information, and thus not only shape public opinion, but routinely inform lawmakers as they shape public policy. This is just one of innumerable instances where getting the story wrong actually helped change the story.

Lacking the resources or journalistic training (or the desire for that matter) to do much original reporting myself, much of what I engage in as a blogger is media criticism. In the process I have come to know and like many of the journalists I cover, and so it bothers me more than a little bit to learn that they so often take personal offense at they way I critique their reporting and their publications. It wouldn’t surprise me if at this point in the post, some of my friends in the press angrily mutter something about how us bloggers have a track record that is certainly no better, if not considerably worse, than theirs. Hmm. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is entirely beside the point.

As a blogger, I’m not generally considered to be a credible source. As a newspaper reporter, you are.

When FCC Chair Martin wanted to authenticate the veracity of an anecdote, he cited the WSJ. On the other hand, when former FEMA director Mike Brown and his attorney wanted to discredit the Arabian Horse Association story, they cited the fact that it originated on (gasp) a blog.

So to my friends in the press who question who the hell I am to criticize them, I freely acknowledge that yeah, well, we all make mistakes. But the point is, yours matter more than mine.

(At least for now.)

Goldy (Founder/Blogger-in-Chief) –
David Goldstein is an accidental activist who stumbled into politics in 2003 with a satirical statewide initiative to officially proclaim WA’s serial anti-tax initiative sponsor, Tim Eyman, “a horse’s ass.” A conscientious political press corp, weary of Eyman’s outrageous antics, turned its coverage to Goldstein’s outrageous antics, sparking a spontaneous grassroots movement to gather nearly 50,000 signatures before a humorless Attorney General managed to get an equally humorless judge to issue an injunction shutting down the campaign.

A year later Goldstein transformed his campaign website into a local, political blog. A mix of snark, satire, muckraking, and surprisingly thoughtful analysis, HorsesAss.org quickly became the most influential blog in WA state, and one of the most widely read local political blogs in the nation. Goldstein also blogs at Huffington Post and Daily Kos, and is best known nationally for breaking the story about former FEMA Director Mike Brown and his disastrous tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association, and for his relentless coverage of adulterated Chinese food imports.

Goldstein was born and educated in Philadelphia, and now lives in Seattle with his daughter, dog, cat, and everybody else who lives in Seattle. In addition to blogging, he is the creator of the world’s most widely pirated rhyming dictionary software, and the co-author of an Off-Broadway musical flop. Goldstein has been published in The Nation and The Stranger, and can occasionally be heard pontificating about politics as a fill-in host on News/Talk 710-KIRO.

Geov –
Geov Parrish began writing regular political commentary when, in 1996, he founded the community newspaper and web site Eat the State!, which he continues to co-edit. The same week, he began a long-running stint as a commentator on KEXP-90.3 Seattle’s “Mind Over Matters,” airing each Saturday at 8:30 AM.

ETS! led almost immediately to an unlikely new career as professional columnist, with a decade put in at The Stranger and Seattle Weekly. Beginning in 1998 Geov also wrote regularly at various times for Mother Jones, In These Times, WorkingforChange.com, and for several years in national syndication in both print and radio. But now he’s given all that up to write for HorsesAss.org. He also posts nationally from time to time at Booman Tribune.

Prior to writing for a living, Geov also spent time as a: radio DJ and programmer, punk rock singer, community activist, East Asia scholar, convenience store clerk, zine publisher, strawberry picker, factory worker, bicycle messenger, public health and medical school instructor, and successful small business owner. None of which even remotely qualified him to have paid political opinions. Deal with it.

Darryl –
Darryl Holman brings to Horse’s Ass the sensibility of a good Midwestern upbringing (albeit in a single-parent household), an East Coast education (albeit at a State university), and West Coast angst. More importantly, everything he does is deeply rooted in the blues. In real life, he is an anthropologist and a demographer at the University of Washington specializing in biological anthropology, human reproductive ecology, and scientific and statistical modeling. Besides contributing to Horse’s Ass, he also writes for Hominid Views and, occasionally contributes to Jesus’ General.

Other than blogging, Darryl likes to play chess, fly airplanes, fix automobiles, tinker in his small machine shop, do things with computers, and play the guitar. Like almost everyone else in the greater Seattle metropolitan area, he is also building an airplane in his garage.

Darryl was born in Santa Maria, California, but was raised in Madison, Wisconsin where, at a young age, he was exposed to dangerous liberal ideas, Vietnam war protests, the radical environmental movement, and severe winter weather.

He has a BS and an MS in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin (with diplomas signed by Chancellor Donna Shalala), and a PhD in Anthropology and Demography from Penn State University. Bill Clinton spoke at his PhD graduation ceremony in 1996, but he was too busy in New Orleans that day to attend. He spent a few more years at Penn State as a Postdoctoral fellow before moving to Redmond, Washington in the fall of 1999.

He became immersed in state and local politics when he observed that the quality of life was perfect in every way in Western Washington except for the dysfunctional transportation infrastructure, and simultaneously learned about Initiative 695 (the initiative that gutted funding for transportation infrastructure). There are unsubstantiated rumors that Darryl was the mysterious “Statistician X” (a.k.a. dj) during the gubernatorial election contest.

Will –
Will Kelley-Kamp writes about escalators, basketball hoops, Democrats, Republicans, and light rail. He lives in Seattle.

Carl –
Carl Ballard is the pen name for Carl Balard, itself a pen name. Since unlike Goldy he tries to keep his personal life and blogging life separate, the rest of this entry will be entirely false:

Carl Ballard was born in a small Midwestern town. He doesn’t remember what town or even what state, but in fairness he was a baby at the time so remembering anything about it is pretty impressive. After earning a degree in Kickass from the University of Transylvania (minor in Rad!) Carl decided to travel the galaxy and will tell you that Neptune is nice. After returning to Earth, Carl earned a Masters in Making Fun of Righties where his thesis, “Fuck the Heck: Wingnuttia from Cesar to Sharkansky” was universally praised, and may be made into a movie. Carl puts his Making Fun of Righties degree to work on a regular basis at EFFin’ Unsound where he tracks local righties. He is getting sick of writing about himself in the third person.

Lee –
Lee Rosenberg is a software developer who became motivated by the War in Iraq to start speaking out about politics and the direction the country is going in. Originally from the Philadelphia suburbs, he went to school at the University of Michigan before coming out to Seattle in 1997 with a degree in Aerospace Engineering and a job at Boeing. After leaving Boeing in 2000, he spent 5 years at Microsoft, and now works for a local dot-com.

Lee considers himself both a liberal and a libertarian who believes that we need to return to the values of personal liberty and free will that shaped the founding of this country, while also recognizing that technology is creating a world where certain complex problems can only be addressed by government and only through multinational cooperation. He believes very strongly that the war on terror is simply an extension of the war on drugs, where fear has been exploited to strip away our rights, and that we need to reject the war mindset when dealing with irrational behaviors like terrorism and drug addiction, as they only make those problems worse. He still believes that the Eagles will win the Super Bowl one day, even though he has no rational basis for that belief.

After starting Blog Reload in 2004 with some friends, Lee now blogs at HorsesAss and EFFin’ Unsound.

A year ago yesterday, based on a tip from a regular reader, I posted a little biographical tidbit about former FEMA Director Mike Brown, revealing that during the decade prior to joining the agency, the man disastrously responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina had sharpened his emergency management skills as the “Judges and Stewards Commissioner” of the International Arabian Horse Association… a position from which he was forced to resign.

Up until that point my impact as a blogger, activist and political crackpot had largely been local, but the Arabian Horse story quickly spread through the national blogs, moved national headlines, and served to frame cronyism as a central theme in the national debate over the Bush administration’s failed response. The story also drove national attention to HA, both through hundreds of links to the original post, and through Brownie’s own Congressional testimony in which he directly blamed “HorseAss.org” by name for both his own downfall, and oddly, FEMA’s inability to respond to the crisis.

As a result of this flurry of attention, HA’s site traffic more than doubled from about 35,000 unique visits during the doldrums of August to over 75,000 visits in September of 2005, largely due to several large spikes in traffic, as many as 8000 visits in a single day. It occurred to me at the time that I could be witnessing the peak of my notoriety, and that HA might never see such traffic levels again.

Well… it’s been a pretty interesting year, a year in which I’m pleased and surprised to report that HA’s traffic has more than doubled from August to August — just shy of matching the level of last year’s extraordinary September, only this time without any one-time bumps or spikes. Sometime over the past few weeks HA recorded it’s 1 millionth visitor since joining Site Meter a little less than two years ago, and earlier this Summer HA served its 2 millionth page view.

Not bad considering I thought my original goal of eventually attracting a couple hundred regular readers was overly ambitious.

I devote an enormous amount of time and energy to HA, with virtually no financial remuneration, but the active participation of my readers makes it the most personally gratifying “job” I have ever had. It is also my steadily growing audience — the HA community — that helps make me relevant in the eyes of the traditional press, enabling me to have what impact I have on shaping local political coverage.

So while I am of course thankful to have characters like Tim Eyman, Mike Brown, David Irons and Mike?™ McGavick around to help make blogging easier, it is you, my readers, to whom I owe the biggest debt of gratitude. It’s always fun to see a big spike in traffic, but it’s much more satisfying to see readers come back for more.

So… thanks.

Human Events, a “national conservative weekly,” wants to set the record straight about former FEMA Director Michael Brown. So who did they choose to write their “exclusive” expose “Media Maelstrom Over Michael Brown“…? None other than Brownie’s longtime attorney and personal friend, Andy Lester.

In a section entitled “Distorting the Truth” Lester once again accuses me of lying:

The sharks smelled blood. It was time to dig up dirt. The blogosphere came to the rescue.

Suddenly, a swirl of stories appeared that Brown had been forced out of his last job. Who broke the story? Not the major media. It was a website, aptly named HorsesAss.org. The story was false. But the media picked it up, ran with it, and kept repeating it.

Hmm. Only problem is, the story was true. Invective aside, let’s take a look at what I wrote in that original post:

Yes, that’s right… the man responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his emergency management skills as the “Judges and Stewards Commissioner” for the International Arabian Horses Association… a position from which he was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray.

Both Brown and Lester apparently believe that my post played a significant role in his downfall, but they entirely miss the significance of what I wrote. Forget for a moment the question of whether Brown resigned under pressure in the face of mounting and costly litigation… although this was well documented in industry newsletters at the time, and corroborated by reporters following up on my post.

The story I broke — the story that turned Brown into the butt of jokes about Bush administration cronyism — was simply that Brown’s work experience immediately prior to joining FEMA was a decade serving as Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the IAHA… an indisputable fact. In the context of FEMA’s disastrous performance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Brown’s utter lack of emergency management experience became a big story.

Lester argues that his friend Brown was the victim of an unscrupulous blogger and an irresponsible press corps, a critique as familiar as it is disingenuous. Indeed, even the title of his expose includes a calculated lie, in the claim that it is an “exclusive.” In fact, most of the piece was lifted word for word from a guest column Lester wrote back in September, 2005 for the ironically named Accuracy in Media.

Whatever the extenuating circumstances of the federal government’s failed response to Katrina (and there is plenty of blame to go around) there remains little doubt that Brownie brought to FEMA a resume with absolutely no qualifications to recommend him for the job. Lester can offhandedly malign HA all he wants, but it doesn’t change the facts.

Thanks to Horse Whisperer for pointing me towards an article in today’s Washington Post, chronicling the disintegration of FEMA under Michael Brown’s watch: “Brown’s Turf Wars Sapped FEMA’s Strength.”

Katrina exposed FEMA as a dysfunctional organization, paralyzed in a crisis four years after the supposedly galvanizing attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And it turned Brown — a former executive of the International Arabian Horse Association who had no emergency management experience before joining the Bush administration — into a symbol of government ineptitude. But Brown’s well-chronicled gaffes in Louisiana had less impact on FEMA than his little-known power struggles in Washington. Brown lost almost all of them — partly because he was widely despised at DHS for his relentless infighting — and FEMA paid a price in money, manpower, missions and prestige.

And of course, a big thanks to Horse Whisperer for tipping me off to Brown’s tumultuous tenure at the IAHA — a story that first broke here on HA — that came to symbolize the cronyism endemic in the Bush administration, and hastened Brown’s removal from office. (I say that with all modesty, as Brown blamed HA himself.)

While the article makes it clear that Brown is not the only incompetent Bush appointee to blame for FEMA’s decline, it certainly shows what inevitably happens when you put a man who fell victim to the inside politics of a horse association in charge of a major federal agency.

Yesterday I mentioned an Arizona Republic article that documents former FEMA chief Mike Brown’s rocky, litigation strewn tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association, and the “sham” legal defense fund that eventually led to his resignation. In an open letter to Brownie’s attorney, Andy Lester, Darryl at Hominid Views focuses on a part of the story I’ve pretty much ignored thus far: what exactly happened to the money in the fund? Darryl writes:

You and I know that Brownie was more than happy to add the following clause to section III paragraph I of the separation agreement between Brown and the IAHA, “[b]y October 1, 2000, Mr. Brown will cause to be contributed from the Michael D. Brown Legal Defense Fund Trust to the IAHA Legal Defense Fund the sum of $25,000.”

The only thing that puzzles me, Mr. Lester, is that it appears you took the money instead. It is probably just malicious misreporting by the liberal media when The Arizona Republic reports that:

Brown’s resignation agreement called for him to turn over the balance of the defense fund, which then totaled $25,000. Although a public accounting has not been given, Lester said the balance went to him in payment for legal services.

Don’t worry, Andy, even if you did take the money and run, I don’t think anyone will really notice. I mean, who would really connect the dots that the person who wrote an impassioned and indignant defense of Brownie, citing that he is “good, honest, compassionate, [and a] competent leader” could possibly be the same person who screwed the IAHA out of $25,000?

I’m not exactly sure what “the balance” refers to, but despite the fact that he was indemnified by the IAHA, Brown raised much more than $25,000 for his private legal defense, including a single $50,000 donation from one of the wealthy breeders who had a stake in his actions as commissioner. I have received emails from several IAHA members who have questioned whether Brown actually pocketed much of this money, though nobody has evidence one way or the other, as there has been no public accounting.

But as Darryl points out, the only person we know for sure to have profited from this “sham” fund was Brown’s attorney, Andy Lester. Which I guess made him the perfect, objective observer to defend Brown (and impugn my reporting) on the pages of Accuracy in Media. Uh-huh.

That’s me! At least, as described by Danny Westneat in his column today in the Seattle Times: “This story starts at the rear.” Danny writes about my “power-of-the-Internet moment”, in which “the horse’s ass guy could influence national politics” by breaking the story former FEMA director Mike Brown blames for his downfall (as well as incalculable suffering in the Gulf.)

Yes… I’m “an aggressively liberal, smart, foul-mouthed irritant”… but what I’m not, is a liar. And that’s essentially what Brown’s attorney Andy Lester called me in a guest column on Accuracy in Media (AIM), echoing his client’s congressional testimony that I made false and defamatory statements.

I suppose both Brown and Lester thought they were being clever — in a lawyerly sort of way — by dismissively referencing my irreverently named blog and simply saying the story was false, without further explanation. In fact, the heart of the story the MSM picked up from my original post on HorsesAss.org (and in my diary on Daily Kos), is undisputed… that Brown’s emergency management experience prior to joining FEMA consisted almost entirely of a decade serving as the Commissioner of Judges and Stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association.

I further alleged that Brown resigned from the IAHA under pressure, in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray, an assertion that was not only corroborated by contemporaneous accounts in horse breeding trade journals and newsletters, but which has been repeatedly substantiated through investigations and interviews conducted by the MSM, most recently in a very thorough background piece in the Arizona Republic:

Brown’s actions led to a flurry of lawsuits, a five-year suspension from the group for Boggs and Brown’s resignation in 2000 from the Colorado-based association.

In a four-year span, Brown, a lawyer, amassed association legal fees exceeding $1.5 million and initiated a controversial legal defense fund for himself, which ultimately led to his resignation. The 45,000-member horse group, now called the Arabian Horse Association, was involved in at least seven lawsuits during Brown’s tenure.

But of course, the circumstances surrounding Brown’s resignation from the IAHA are immaterial to the fact that his was a patronage appointment that put an unqualified crony in charge of coordinating the federal government’s disaster relief operations… and with disastrous results. Mike Brown simply was not qualified to run FEMA — an opinion not simply drawn from his razor thin resume or his incompetent job performance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but from his stunningly inept effort to shift the blame during his congressional testimony.

Brown claimed that it was “ironic” that the story started with a blog named “HorsesAss.org”, and it certainly was. For who’d have thought that the “horse’s ass guy” would have more credibility than the director of a top federal agency?

[Cross-posted to Daily Kos]

I logged on this morning to find a huge spike in traffic, and apparently the thanks goes to former International Arabian Horse Association Commissioner of Judges and Stewards FEMA director Mike Brown. He’s currently giving live testimony before a congressional committee (synopsis: “It’s not my fault”), and I’m told he actually gave HorsesAss.org credit for breaking the story about his inadequate resume.

Thanks for the on-air plug, Mike!

I suppose he thought that the domain name would discredit the information, but the facts are basically as I originally presented them: his immediate job experience prior to joining FEMA was a decade of regulating horse show judges for the IAHA, and subsequent investigation by both me and the MSM makes it pretty damn clear that he did indeed resign under pressure.

Further investigation by the MSM also revealed that his already thin resume was intentionally padded, and that he was just as unqualified to serve as FEMA’s general counsel (his first job at the agency) as he was to serve as its director. The guy simply was not qualified for the job.

That said, listening to Brown’s testimony, I think he’s saying something very important… something that speaks to the broader ideology of the Bush administration. He’s not just blaming the state and local authorities for the chaos in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina… he keeps repeating that various rescue and relief operations are not and should not be the responsibility of the federal government.

Uh-huh.

In response, I would just like to point out that the whole purpose of having a Federal Emergency Management Agency is to deal with regional events that are so catastrophic that state and local agencies are unable to respond. If we can’t expect that from our federal government, I wonder what purpose the Union serves?

[Cross-posted to Daily Kos]

UPDATE:
Think Progress has the transcript of Brown’s kind words:

Ironically, it started with an organization called horsesass.org, that on some blog published a false, and, frankly, in my opinion, defamatory statement that the media just continued to repeat over and over.

What a putz.

FEMA director Mike Brown was originally brought into the agency as its general counsel, under the auspices of his old college roommate (and Bush fixer) Joe Allbaugh. By now we all know that Brown is an emergency manager who knows nothing about managing emergencies, and a former horse association commissioner who knew nothing about horses… but apparently, he was also a general counsel who was hardly even a real lawyer.

In a devastating expose published today in The New Republic, University of Colorodo-Boulder law professor Paul Campos determines to answer the question “of exactly what, given Brown’s real biography, he is qualified to do.” The answer, not surprisingly, is very little.

To understand the Mike Brown saga, one has to know something about the intricacies of the legal profession, beginning with the status of the law school he attended. Brown’s biography on FEMA’s website reports that he’s a graduate of the Oklahoma City University School of Law. This is not, to put it charitably, a well-known institution. For example, I’ve been a law professor for the past 15 years and have never heard of it. Of more relevance is the fact that, until 2003, the school was not even a member of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS)–the organization that, along with the American Bar Association, accredits the nation’s law schools. Most prospective law students won’t even consider applying to a non-AALS law school unless they have no other option, because many employers have a policy of not considering graduates of non-AALS institutions. So it’s fair to say that Brown embarked on his prospective legal career from the bottom of the profession’s hierarchy.

According to Campos, Brown received his J.D. in 1981, and spent the next couple years representing the interests of a “prominent local family” in Enid, Oklahoma, followed by an 18-month stint at a local law firm (that no longer exists.) But it appears that by 1987 he had already more or less abandoned his legal career. From 1991 to 2001 he served as commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a full-time position from which he resigned under pressure.

What, then, are we to make of the claim in Brown’s FEMA biography that, prior to joining the Agency, he had spent most of his professional career practicing law in Colorado? Normally, an attorney practicing law in a state for ten years would have left a record of his experience in public documents. But just about the only evidence of Brown’s Colorado legal career is the Web page he submitted to Findlaw.com, an Internet site for people seeking legal representation. There, he lists himself as a member of the “International Arabian Horse Association Legal Dept.” and claims to be competent to practice law across a dizzying spectrum of specialties–estate planning, family law, employment law for both plaintiffs and defendants, real-estate law, sports law, labor law, and legislative practice. With all this expertise, it’s all the more striking that one can’t find any other evidence of Brown’s legal career in Colorado.

Campos further deconstructs Brown’s FEMA bio, in which he impressively claims to have served as “a bar examiner on ethics and professional responsibility for the Oklahoma Supreme Court and as a hearing examiner for the Colorado Supreme Court.” Campos’ translation?

In Oklahoma, he graded answers to bar exam questions, and, in Colorado, he volunteered to serve on the local attorney disciplinary board.

Ouch.

Campos’ summation is equally devastating, and a pointed critique of the Bush administration.

When Brown left the iaha four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer–a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn’t attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA , he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA .

It’s bad enough when attorneys are named to government jobs for which their careers, no matter how distinguished, don’t qualify them. But Brown wasn’t a distinguished lawyer: He was hardly a lawyer at all. When he left the IAHA , he was a 47-year-old with a very thin resum

From a horse fancier forum, on the subject of former International Arabian Horse Association Judges & Stewards Commissioner — and current FEMA director — Mike Brown:

He’s not even a horseman. He was hired by IAHA because, as a non-horseperson, he had no dog in the fight, so to speak

So Brown went from a horse show commissioner who knew nothing about horses to a Federal Emergency Management Agency director who knew nothing about managing emergencies. At least he’s consistent.

So, what the hell am I doing reading horse fancier forums? Well, after breaking the story on our stunningly unqualified FEMA chief, I suddenly found myself in the middle of row between angry horse breeders, emailing me comments, links and press releases, from both sides of the Brown debate. For example I just received a copy of a press release from the IAHA’s successor, the Arabian Horse Association, attempting to rehabilitate Brown’s reputation:

Barbara Burck, executive vice president and chief administrator of the association added that “Mr. Brown had a long and successful career with IAHA and was regarded as upholding the highest standards of integrity and demanding excellence in all areas under his jurisdiction. His legal background and management skills enabled him to accomplish the rigors of the job with professionalism.”

“He dealt with issues related to enforcement of rules and regulations that often generated passionate dispute by advocates on both sides of his decisions,” she added. “Several of those enforcement issues resulted in litigation. Due to the nature of Mr. Brown’s duties as commissioner, he set up his own Legal Defense Fund Trust to supplement the IAHA Legal Defense Fund. Following his departure from the IAHA, the entire sum in the Michael D. Brown Legal Defense Fund Trust was transferred to the IAHA Legal Defense Fund.”

President Myron Krause stated, “Brown’s contract was not terminated by IAHA, he resigned. Furthermore, there was no due cause to terminate his contract.

Yeah… well… sure… that’s somewhat how some of my sources remember it, but certainly not the majority, and it’s contrary to how it was reported at the time. In a November 2000 newsletter, the president of the New Hampshire Arabian Horse Association specifically reported back from the national convention that Brown was “requested to resign.” And several IAHA board members, including its former president, have confirmed this account in the MSM. (Here and here.)

And according to an interview with IAHA Secretary Gary Dearth in the Nov. 2000 issue of Arabian Horse World magazine, it was apparently Brown himself who originally complained that the Executive Committee was forcing him out.

Q: Why do you feel that prior to his resignation, Mr. Brown repeatedly stated that he does “not have the support of the Executive Committee”?

A: This talk of lack of support for Mike Brown has become rather tiresome. The Executive Committee, approximately a year and a half ago, gave Mike Brown a three-year contract rather than annual contract extensions which had been the tradition in the past. When you look at concrete support and not just talk, there is no stronger support than a three-year contract. However, information that came to light at the August Board meeting

Last week I broke the story about FEMA director Mike Brown, whose ten-year tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association left him stunningly unqualified to lead national relief efforts. It has been a pleasant surprise to watch the story take flight, first on the national blogosphere, and now in the MSM. But none of the news coverage has been quite as gratifying as seeing a reference creep into a column by the New York Times’ Paul Krugman.

Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh’s college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency’s director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.

That contempt, as I’ve said, reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility.

The administration has always tried to treat 9/11 purely as a lesson about good versus evil. But disasters must be coped with, even if they aren’t caused by evildoers. Now we have another deadly lesson in why we need an effective government, and why dedicated public servants deserve our respect. Will we listen?

I have received emails or comments from more than a dozen IAHA members, and while a handful have taken issue with my reporting of the circumstances surrounding Brown’s resignation, it doesn’t really matter if he was forced to resign or his departure was mutual. It doesn’t even matter if his tenure was indeed “an unmitigated, total fucking disaster” as my original source contended. What matters is that his job experience left him totally unprepared to manage our nation’s disaster relief operations… a lack of preparation clearly evidenced by FEMA’s criminally inadequate response in New Orleans.

The issue here, as Krugman and others point out, is cronyism… cronyism that in this instance, may have turned out to have fatal consequences.

The story of Brown, the horse show commissioner cum FEMA chief, adds much needed color and context to accounts of the Bush administration’s disastrous disaster relief efforts, and its haphazard approach to political appointments in general. And the story of the story — how an angry email from a longtime HA reader moved international headlines — is a vivid example of how the blogosphere can amplify the voice of the people, so that any one citizen can speak as loud or louder than the most obstreperous talking head.

Truth is, I didn’t really even know what I had. I rarely cross-post to Daily Kos, but since this was a national issue, and I was angry, I thought, what the hell. My original headline was a profane rant, and the first few comments insisted that this was too important a diary to be lost due to a non-descriptive headline. I followed their advice, changed the headline, went to bed… and awoke the next morning to find the story featured on Kos, and the traffic flooding in. Then the calls and emails from the MSM started coming, and I knew we were going to move headlines.

So if any of you out there believe that you cannot make a difference, let this be lesson to the contrary. A single email from a horse breeder to the proprietor of an oddly named local blog provided the angle the MSM needed to expose the Bush administration cronyism that doomed thousands of Katrina’s victims to a week of unimaginable — and unnecessary — suffering, and which may have condemned thousands of others to an untimely death.

This is democracy in action.

After dismally failing to adequately respond to Hurricane Katrina, FEMA Director Mike Brown must now prepare to weather the full fury of the MSM. The Boston Herald struck first, corroborating my post that reported Brown was forced to resign from his job at the International Arabian Horse Association. And now Knight-Ridder further exposes the stunningly unqualified Brown with a scathing bio that is sure to hit sunday papers across the US.

From failed Republican congressional candidate to ousted “czar” of an Arabian horse association, there was little in Michael D. Brown’s background to prepare him for the fury of Hurricane Katrina.

“He’s done a hell of a job, because I’m not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm,” said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief. “The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience.”

As Josh Marshall explains in his coverage on Talking Points Memo, Brown’s main qualification for the post — perhaps his only — is the fact that he was a college roommate of former FEMA head and Bush political fixer Joe Allbaugh. And as Knight-Ridder points out, Brown’s prior experience with disaster was a disastrous run for Congress.

Brown ran for Congress in 1988 and won 27 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Glenn English. He spent the 1990s as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating.

“I wouldn’t have regarded his position in the horse industry as a platform to where he is now,” said Tom Connelly, a former association president.
…
“He just wouldn’t follow instruction,” said Bill Pennington, another former association president. “Mike was bullheaded and he was gonna do it his way. Period.”

It was Pennington who confirmed to the Herald that Brown was indeed asked to resign, and even Connelly, who speaks positively about him, calls Brown “abrasive.” This is consistent with emails I’ve received from a number of horse breeders — even those who respect him — who call Brown a “tough bastard” with a quick temper.

No doubt Brown had many enemies at the IAHA, and while there are conflicting stories as to the direct circumstances surrounding his resignation, he clearly fell victim to inside politics. Some say Brown was forced out by breeders angry at strict rules and enforcement, others say it was the burden of costly litigation. But the most convincing explanation I received was this inside report:

To help pay our mounting legal bills, there were people raising money for the IAHA Legal Defense Fund. Mike was suppose to be helping to raise some of the money. Mike it seems was trying to raise money for his own legal defense fund as well as IAHA’s and some people were willing to donate to him. There were two major problems with this. First, ALL of Mike’s legal bills including any personal ones were to be paid by IAHA. So he had NO legal bills so there was no reason for him to need this money to pay legal bills. Second, Mike was in a position that he needed to be seen as never playing favorites or having any loyalty to any individual. Many felt that taking this money would look very bad.

I was not personally at the IAHA Board of Directors Meeting when this occurred however I have been told about it by several people that were there and they all give the exact same story. There are many other things that people did not like about Mike’s job performance at IAHA but this is why he resigned.

Essentially, Brown was raising money from the very breeders he was charged with regulating, and that was the straw that broke the horse’s back.

But I don’t think the reason behind his resignation really matters. The point is, nothing in his IAHA tenure prepared him for running FEMA. Indeed, the fact that he fell victim to the inside politics of a horse breeders association, calls into question his ability to function amidst the high stakes political gamesmanship of the nation’s capitol.

The other issue that has become abundantly clear is that the misleading reference to the Olympics that was in the White House press release announcing Brown’s nomination was no accident. The transcript of Brown’s confirmation hearing shows virtually the identical wording used in the opening statement from Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.

Prior to his current job, from 1991 to 2000, Mr. Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the National Governing Organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Yet a number of IAHA/AHA members have made it abundantly clear that the organization is not in any way associated with the Olympics. Indeed, Arabians are not part of any Olympic competition. This was clearly an attempt by the White House to gussy up the resume of a man lacking the experience necessary to lead a major disaster relief effort… a lack of experience Brown has shown in his mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina.

More to come. The Denver Post is preparing a piece for Sunday, and the NY Times is working the story as well.

[Cross-posted to Daily Kos]

Update:
The NY Times article is online… third paragraph:

Mr. Brown has come under fire from critics of the federal government’s hurricane response, who describe him as a political appointee who had no disaster experience before joining FEMA.

Though he once worked as a municipal official in Edmond, Okla., Mr. Brown’s major previous job was as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, from which he resigned under pressure in 2001 after a controversial 10 years.

Not much, but it makes the point that Brown was a political appointee who had no disaster experience.

The LA Times has a nice lead:

The leader of the U.S. government’s much-criticized handling of hurricane relief efforts in the Gulf Coast came to Washington in 2001 with scant background in dealing with natural disasters. But he had an important connection: His new boss was an old friend who had managed George W. Bush’s successful campaign for the White House.

Michael D. Brown left his job in Colorado supervising horse-show judges to work for Bush’s longtime political aide, Joe Allbaugh, who was heading the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the new administration.

Brown had been a lawyer active in Republican politics whose most relevant emergency response experience was a stint supervising police and fire departments as assistant city manager in an Oklahoma City suburb.

But within two years, he rose from FEMA’s general counsel to deputy director and, when Allbaugh left, he moved to the agency’s top spot.

That’s the MSM’s take on this story: cronyism. And it’s a pretty good take.

The Denver Post weighs in, and with new information!

Former association board member Karl V. Hart of Florida alleges that in 2000 Brown improperly accepted a check for nearly $50,000 from a prominent breeder and put it toward his own legal defense for his work as commissioner. Board members thought this was improper because Brown already had protection, from the association’s legal team, Hart said.

Because of the money dispute, Brown was asked to resign, Hart said.

One of my sources had hinted at this, but was not a board member and only had hearsay, so I couldn’t use it. Nice reporting by Jeremy Meyer to follow this up.

And finally, my favorite take on this story comes from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

So let me see if I understand this. Brown’s a Republican from the southwest. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress when he was thirty-three. Then he bounced from job to job, finally getting into the sports business in mid-life, before getting canned. And then he used connections to land himself a high-powered position in the federal government for which he had no apparent experience at all.

How could such a fellow possibly be in the Bush administration?

Hmmm.

Yesterday was a busy day, as Daily Kos and a number of other national blogs picked up my story on FEMA director Mike Brown, whose prior disaster experience was being one. Slight bump in traffic.

Today, the story is starting to make it into the MSM, and the real journalists are both corroborating and expanding on what I reported. First to the virtual newsstand is the Boston Herald:

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.
…
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.

So how do you get a job like this with absolutely no qualifications? The Herald reports that soon after his resignation, Brown was brought into the administration by his old college roommate, Joseph Allbaugh, who was heading up FEMA at the time. When Allbaugh quit in 2003 to work for the president’s reelection campaign, Bush appointed Brown to replace him.

And how did his job at the IAHA qualify Brown to coordinate disaster relief? Well, I asked several former IAHA members, and this was the typical response:

“I personally can not think of any way that being the IAHA Judges and Stewards Commissioner prepared him to be the FEMA Director.”

There you have it, straight from the horse’s… um… mouth.

“An unmitigated, total fucking disaster.” That’s not a quote from Mike Brown, but rather, a quote describing him. And most disturbingly, it’s not even a reference to his dismal performance as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This blunt critique was emailed to me from a regular reader who was apparently attracted to HorsesAss.org by her passion for politics and her love of Arabian horses.

I think I’ve told you that I’m into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago. He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.

I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people.

Yes, that’s right… the man responsible for directing federal relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sharpened his emergency management skills as the “Judges and Stewards Commissioner” for the International Arabian Horses Association… a position from which he was forced to resign in the face of mounting litigation and financial disarray.

And what of that misleading White House press release?

From 1991 to 2001, Brown was the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, an international subsidiary of the national governing organization of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

I can’t even begin to fact check the dates or IAHA’s alleged relationship to the US Olympic Committee, because of course, the IAHA doesn’t exist anymore, so there’s nothing to Google. But it begs the question… how the hell did his prior job experience prepare Brown to head FEMA?

Well, judging by his agency’s performance over the past few days… it didn’t.

[Cross-posted at Daily Kos]

UPDATE:
Kos himself just picked up the story, and it’s sitting on his home page for his half million plus readers to see. This is a great example of how a comment or email from a single reader on a local blog can work its way up the blogosphere and eventually move headlines. Power to the people!