MeyerBros

We’ve all heard plenty about the federal government’s “incompetent” response to Katrina. Bush finally even (belatedly) apologized for it. But I never had a real clear sense of what “incompetent” meant. Now I do. Apparently it means “shameless cronyism.” (Ok, honestly I did already know that Mike Brown, Bush’s appointee to run FEMA, had previously held a job as the Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. But this is even more reckless.)

Greg Palast reporting for Democracy Now! a couple weeks ago around the Katrina one-year anniversary. (mp3 and transcripts for the two segments here and here):

What kind of evacuation plan would leave 127,000 to sink or swim? It turns out that the Bush administration had contracted out evacuation planning to a corporation, IEM, Innovative Emergency Management. I couldn’t locate their qualifications, but I did locate their list of donations to the Republican Party. We went to Baton Rouge to talk to them.

Palast goes on to report about how the evacuation plan, which IEM was paid a half-million dollars for, is mysteriously missing. And about how the real emergency management experts at LSU had never heard of these guys until they got their fat contract. And the kicker? After people drowned in New Orleans because these guys never came up with an actual evacuation plan (very innovative, I have to admit), guess who Bush contracted with to study what went wrong? That’s right - another fat consulting contract for IEM.

More info on IEM from SourceWatch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 10:25 pm by carl and is filed under bush, corporate criminals, political, katrina, cronyism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.