Former FEMA director Michael Brown appears to have perjured himself when he testified at a Congressional hearing yesterday. Brown falsely claimed under oath that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco failed to include three New Orleans-area counties in her federal emergency declaration prior to Hurricane Katrina. From Think Progress:

REP. STEVE BUYER (R): So I’d like to know why did the president’s federal emergency assistance declaration of August 27th not include the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines?

BROWN: …[I]f a governor does not request a particular county or a particular parish, that’s not included in the request.

BUYER: All right. Orleans Parish is New Orleans. I was listening to my colleague, Mr. Jefferson’s, questions about when they talked about, you know, they asked for this assistance for three days and then [the] president responded the very next day, not the day that it was made — the request — but the governor of Louisiana actually excluded New Orleans from the president’s federal emergency assistance declaration?

BROWN: Again, Congressman, we looked at the request.The governors make the request by…

BUYER: Let me ask this. Since you went through the exercise in Pam, was that not shocking to you that the governor would [have] excluded New Orleans from the declaration?

BROWN: Yes.

BUYER: When that request came in excluding these three parishes, did you question it?

BROWN: We questioned it. But I made the decision that we were going to go ahead and move assets in regardless because we have the ability to add those parishes…

In fact, Gov. Blanco requested the President to declare a disaster in “all the southeastern parishes,” which includes Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines.

You can read Governor Blanco’s request here.

Just a day after President Bush encouraged Americans to conserve fuel by elminating unnecessary travel – and said he had directed federal employees, like himself, to curtail extraneous trips – he went on a very expensive jaunt to his home state of Texas for a series of politically oriented photo-ops:

[Yesterday, President Bush] boarded Air Force One for a trip to inspect hurricane damage that will burn up roughly 11,437 gallons of jet fuel, worth about $24,590 at today’s record high fuel prices.

In fact … using the best available numbers for Bush’s travel since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, for the performance of Air Force One and for jet fuel prices — estimates that Bush has spent $169,314 on jet fuel alone…

Some studies have placed the total cost of operating Air Force One at at least $56,800 an hour or more, meaning that Bush’s hurricane related travel has cost taxpayers somewhere in the range of $2 million or more — just for the air travel!

What do conservatives do when they are down and out – and clearly in the wrong? They do the only thing they do well: spin, spin, spin.

Faced with the gargantuan task of rebuilding New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast destroyed by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the leadership of the Grand Old Spending Party in Congress has no plan to offset or raise revenues to cover these huge expenditures – other than to borrow another $200 billion or so from Communist China.

Rather than deal with the substance of the problem, the Gops are launching a full PR assault, using the trusty Libruhl Media, to change the perception that they are mismanaging the government’s money.

Prodded by conservatives, President Bush and GOP leaders have said they are willing to offset those costs with spending cuts. But realistically, the political will does not exist to vote through the cuts that have been proposed, said House leadership aides and sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Nor have Republican leaders given serious thought to reversing course on tax cuts, lawmakers said yesterday.

“I don’t see any change in fiscal policy,” said Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), a former vice chairman of the Budget Committee…

“This leadership group is so out of touch, it’s unbelievable,” said one House lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid inflaming leaders further.

Wow! That didn’t take long:

CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate it’s response following Hurricane Katrina.

“George W. Bush is a big spender. He has never vetoed a spending bill. When Congress serves up a big slab of fat, crackling pork, Mr. Bush responds with one big question: Got any barbecue sauce? “

— Peggy Noon, Republican pundit

“I don’t think there’s any question that Katrina influenced the way [President Bush] responded to Rita and good for him (for) being on top of it. This weekend is not going to move the needle. He’s got a long, long way out of this.”

— David Gergen, Republican adviser to four presidents

“[The poor response to Katrina is] a wake-up call. It’s a warning and, unfortunately, we haven’t taken some of the measures that we should have after 9-11.”

— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

“It’s done damage to what is the stem and stern of the Bush presidency, which is his leadership. What you’re going to see here is people holding this president responsible for this event when the government did not intervene to help people at a time of great need.”

— Juan Williams, Fox News

Blowin in the wind: Despite what our learned president, our erudite Congress and the Republican Party’s science lackeys say, climate change is warming the oceans, providing the energy to generate more powerful hurricanes and cyclones, or “hypercanes.” This according to a new study published in the journal Science last week.

The study noted that the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years.

“Warmer sea surface temperatures have increased the amount of water vapour, which is the fuel for hurricanes,” said study co-author Peter Webster of Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

The largest increases in the number of intense hurricanes occurred in the North Pacific, Southwest Pacific and the North and South Indian Oceans, with slightly smaller increases in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Hurricane Katrina offers a good illustration of the role of warm water, Webster said in an interview with Inter-Press News Service.

Before it struck the U.S. Gulf Coast, Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Florida as a Category 1. However when it crossed over into the Gulf of Mexico, there was a huge, deep pool of very warm water that served as the storm’s high-octane fuel, he said.

Practically overnight, Katrina turned into a Category 5 super storm.
[…]

We heard on CNN that although emergency coordinators are encouraging Texans to evacuate with their pets, the shelters (Red Cross was specifically mentioned) won’t allow the animals in. Something needs to be done:

Federal disaster grants to state and local governments should be conditioned on how they accommodate pets in their evacuation plans, say lawmakers disturbed that some Hurricane Katrina victims refused to leave home because they couldn’t take their animals with them.

“I cannot help but wonder how many more people could have been saved had they been able to take their pets,” Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said Thursday.

Lantos and Reps. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Barney Frank, D-Mass., are sponsoring a bill that would require that state and local disaster preparedness plans required for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding include provisions for household pets and service animals.

More than 6,000 pets have been saved in Mississippi and Louisiana, said Michael Markarian, executive vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, but tens of thousands more could still be in New Orleans alone. Texas, he said, has been better at allowing people to take their pets with them ahead of Hurricane Rita but a formal policy is still needed.

Inflexible FEMA: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has rejected an appeal from Florida officials, determining for the second time that damage to the state from Hurricane Katrina was not bad enough to warrant individual disaster payments.

State officials said about 11,000 Floridians have applied for direct FEMA assistance as a result of Katrina — more than half of them with incomes below $20,000 a year. In addition to losses to agricultural damage, officials estimate Katrina will cost the industry 2,000 farm-related jobs in Miami-Dade County.

Daniel Craig, director of FEMA’s recovery division, said in a letter Wednesday to state officials that additional disaster surveys in Miami-Dade and Broward counties support FEMA’s previous conclusion that damage “is not of the severity and magnitude” necessary for individual assistance.

“The damage identified in the requested counties is not beyond the combined capabilities of the state and affected local governments,” Craig wrote to state emergency management chief Craig Fugate.

Florida, however, has no individual disaster assistance program, Fugate told FEMA officials in a Sept. 6 letter.

Granted, Katrina didn’t create anything like the devastation of the Gulf Coast when it swept across South Florida as a Category 1 storm on Aug. 25. Nonetheless, more than 350 homes were damaged or destroyed, and agriculture-related businesses suffered an estimated nearly $500 million in damage.
[…]

Freeing up the feds: The dialogue over how the federal government can respond more quickly and effectively in the event of a natural disaster on the scale of Katrina appears to be beginning. It’s a sensitive topic, involving that pesky Constitution and states’ rights. But the dialogue has begun over whether the feds should act to deploy assets even if state and local governments have not requested help or declared a state of emergency.

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, the federal official in charge of recovery efforts in New Orleans, said the federal government might need to establish new criteria for when and how agencies respond to disasters.

“I’m talking about something you could do whether the state requests anything or not. In other words, in the national interest you could say that if we think these conditions are going to be met, maybe we need to deploy assets in advance of the event,” he said. “That’s independent of any request by a governor or a disaster declaration. What you’re doing is prudently positioning units so you might be able to respond in the future.”

He added: “If you know in advance and you have a set of criteria by which you can pre-deploy to reduce the response time and the potential consequences, you probably should do that. If you can’t because of a series of events … then maybe you need to have a mechanism by which you can force a decision quicker on whether or not you need a federal response more than you would normally.”

[…]

Coctails in Kennebunkport? Are George and Barbara Bush getting ready to throw some sort of disaster celebration party at their second home on the coast of Maine?

Word comes from Portland, Maine, that FEMA has sent “hundreds of big rigs, loaded with tons of ice and water meant for hurricane Katrina victims” to Portland, which is the largest town near the Bush second home in Kennebunkport.

In the coming days, the city is expecting 200 to 300 trucks filled with ice and water. For now, the ice and water will be kept at a cold storage warehouse in Portland. Portland Transportation Director, Jeff Monroe says he believes storage facilities South of here are full. That’s why it came to Portland. It’s unclear if or when the supplies will make it to the gulf coast.

One of the truck drivers involved complained that moving the ice was a waste of time and money:

“The $9,000 they’re paying me to move this load should have gone to some family down there,” said Loren Reeves, who hauled his load of ice from Long Island, N.Y., to Alabama before being sent to Maine. “There is definitely millions being wasted that could go to people who need it.”

FEMA spokesperson Kathy Cable explained:

“It’s more economical to store them and be able to use them right away. When we need it, we need all of it and we need it now. It’s better to have it stored than to go out and buy it.”

This is questionable. Temperatures around New Orleans in September are generally in the 90’s, with humidity to match. Seems like somebody down there could use some ice at some point soon. You don’t have to be an efficiency expert to see that it won’t be too helpful to have the ice stored 1,500 miles away.

Hat tip to Marshall