Bush Personnel Policy

Laura Rozen writes:

War and Piece: Campaign Vets for FEMA Damage Control: The guy who callled me back yesterday who was supposedly a spokesman for FEMA? It turns out the WaPo reported as recently as March 2005 that he had been hired as one of three staffers to run a Bush administration Social Security "war room", modeled on the "Coalition Information Centers that promoted the administration message around the world during the war in Afghanistan":

The Treasury Department yesterday announced the formation of a Social Security "war room" and the hiring of three full-time employees to help coordinate and refine the administration's message on the issue. The war room, which the administration is calling the Social Security Information Center, will track lawmakers' remarks to their local news outlets, to help the White House detect signs of Republican concern or Democratic compromise.

The office, modeled after the Coalition Information Centers that promoted the administration message around the world during the war in Afghanistan, will also help target speaking trips by top administration officials...

The center is to be headed by Mark Pfeifle, an administration veteran who has been a spokesman for the Interior Department and last summer's Republican National Convention. Working with him will be Shannon Burkhart and Jill Willis, both of whom worked on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. The three were hired about two weeks ago.

What's he doing at FEMA now? Is FEMA's only purpose under the Bush administration to do damage control and photo opportunities for the Bush administration? What was it doing 10 days ago? Where were all these folks who should have been applying their skills doing emergency management? When did their contracts start? Were they hired on the plane back from the Devenish-Wallace wedding party?

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach him now.

Comments

[wcw]

My favorite stage-management datum was the wire
article (Knight Ridder, I think) that said..
hold on.. here: http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050906/NEWS08/509060361/1025/NEWS

"But after days of televised suffering by African Americans in the city, White House officials ensured that the television pictures of Bush's trip would include shots of the president with African-American survivors."

Hagiography is this administration's main skill.

[kharris]

If you follow Rozen's links, you come to this gem:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/05/national/nationalspecial/05bush.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1126188435-JHDJaNN80kRikQ0i6KLPSw

[ken melvin]

At SJSU, after Ronnie's election as govenor in 67, I saw political hacks come in and take over the administration of the library, etc. It's not a pretty sight.

[pi]

I met someone last night who works in the area of "biodefense." This entails freqent dealings with the new DHS. He says the thing is staffed nearly completely with yes men. Many are newly hired friends of friends of friends ... of friends of Bush. And the career people, who might know something, are all afraid to say anything even slightly off of the party line because of the threat of being fired. It seems the legislation creating the department removed all restraints on dismissing employees.

[christo]

Great opportunities ahead as not only does Bush get to pick two Justices now, soon he'll pick a yes man to the Fed.

Boy, the economy is going to be rolling big time around about 2007.

So much so that I'm gonna get a jumbo mortgage now so I'll have a comfortable enough house to sit in and enjoy the Disney economy in that year.