Of the all stories coming out of the hurricane relief efforts, the ice saga is one of the most bizarre. For those following political cronyism, the ice and other stories would be hilarious if they were not so wasteful and misguided.

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According to Wikipedia, the definition of cronyism includes politicians who "form a kind of aristocratic social hierarchy, influenced by self-serving friendships and family ties, to the extent that it corrupts public-serving economic and political ideals."

The ice saga begins with Bush appointing a crony, 2000 campaign manager and Texas chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, to head FEMA.
Allbaugh brought a school chum, Michael Brown, along with him and recommended Brown to replace him when Allabaugh left to form his own consulting firm to "take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East" following the Iraq war. Brown's experience included a failed Congressional bid, where he drew 27 percent of the vote, and a stint at enforcing rules for the Arabian Horse Association.

During Hurricane Katrina, FEMA cronies ordered 182 million pounds of ice for relief efforts in New Orleans, to be delivered by some 4,000 drivers who drove the ice around the South for two weeks. As reported in The New York Times, a typical route involved moving ice from Wisconsin to Meridian, Miss., to Selma, Ala., to Memphis, Tenn.
Drivers received double pay but were frustrated after long waits before being redirected.

One trucker lamented that he billed the government $15,000 for less than $5,000 worth of ice. Eventually, 59 percent of the ice was stored in freezers 1600 miles away from New Orleans, to await the next disaster. FEMA promised to correct the problem with a new barcode global positioning system "so literally we will know exactly where every bag of ice is."

Another Bush crony and close personal friend, Karen Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, raised flaps in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt recently when she attempted to put a positive spin on the U.S. war in Iraq and Bush's policies. Although she lacked national experience, Hughes, a former journalist and PR consultant, helped Bush become governor in Texas and served as his communications director in the White House. Known for her personal loyalty and devotion, Hughes praised Bush as a strong and decisive boss, and defended him on TV. Perhaps that's why he appointed her to reach out to a hostile Muslim world.

In a meeting with Turkish women, the diplomatically inexperienced Hughes described herself as "a working mom." Steven Weisman of The New York Times observed that the meeting began congenially but "tough talk followed quickly, politely but firmly." Saudi women rejected her notion that they are oppressed and, in Egypt, Hughes brushed aside concerns about a civil war in Iraq and was met with skepticism and hostility. Weisman reported that traveling with Hughes "was at times like being trapped in a cable television infomercial with an emphasis on values like family and faith." Hughes promised to return to the region with more sound bite messages proclaiming the greatness of President Bush.

A third cronyism story involves President Bush naming one of his personal lawyers, Harriet Miers, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meirs lacks any judicial experience as a judge and is only the third non-judge nominated to the court in recent history: Richard Nixon nominated William H. Rehnquist and Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Abe Fortas.

Bush cited Meirs' qualification as her ability to tell "the difference between right and wrong." Meirs was once elected to a two-year term on the Dallas City Council. She worked as a lawyer for Bush when he was governor of Texas, as a staff secretary approving documents for Bush see in the White House, and recently, replaced Alberto Gonzales as Bush's deputy chief of staff. So much for judicial experience.

The Washington Post reports that Meirs is "particularly valued in a White House where discipline in publicly articulating policy and loyalty to the president are highly valued." Bush calls her "a trusted adviser," although he once called her "a pit bull in size six shoes." The closest she has gotten to the court is recommending federal appeals court candidates to Bush; ten out of 34 were rejected by the Senate for being extreme conservatives.

The American people deserve more than $2 billion in questionable hurricane housing replacement contracts written by FEMA; an air-headed smiley-faced propaganda effort to oppose Islam in the Middle East; and a Supreme Court nominee who knows nothing about the laws dealing with environmental protection, reproductive rights, corporate power, civil rights and church-state separation.
Considering the highly trained and talented work force we have in the U.S., the president could find qualified people to fill political vacancies without relying on cronyism, i.e. personal loyalty and devotion, as the sole criterion for higher office.
Copyright 2005

Don Monkerud Monkerud@Cruzio.com Aptos, CA

Submitter: Rob Kall

Submitters Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

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Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

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