Donald E. Powell, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a major Texas backer of President Bush, was named federal coordinator of long-term hurricane recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced yesterday.The headline of this story in the Post said, "Powell to Oversee Storm Recovery". I thought for a second that Bush had actually made an appointment based on ability, rather than cronyism or campaign cash and had appointed Colin Powell. I won't make that mistake again. Bush is simply ineducable.
Wary of empowering a potential critic, administration officials from Vice President Cheney down have previously rejected calls by Republican senators and House members to name a federal recovery "czar" since Hurricane Katrina hit the region on Aug. 29.
But the administration's handling of the disaster has drawn increasingly broad complaints. Last week, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donahue criticized a lack of federal coordination and warned that failure to speed repairs to roads, levees, infrastructure and housing would prevent employers from returning.
Powell is well known to the president and raised more than $100,000 for Bush's 2000 presidential campaign. He was chief executive of First National Bank of Amarillo, Tex., and head of the city's Chamber of Commerce. He was named chairman of Texas A&M University's board of regents in 1995 by then-Gov. Bush.
November 2, 2005
Bush oblivious of crony charges, appoints crony to oversee hurricane recovery
1 comment:
Don't be stupid. Really, don't be stupid.
Stop. Reread your comment. Does it make sense?
Are you making something up out of thin air in order to attack me with it? Reading something into a post that's clearly not there or even implied?
Then don't bother posting. For that matter, if that's the case, don't bother coming back.
Dissenter, you make a good point. Powell truly squandered his reputation and honor by going into the tank for his neo-con handlers.
ReplyDeleteBut there's a lot of evidence that Powell at least attempted to keep them on the straight and narrow, and that they started to point their knives at him in response.
Though I'd never excuse his role in promoting the invasion of Iraq, I also feel he's a somewhat tragic figure, in that he was simply doing what any good soldier does, which is follow his commander's orders.
And the Bushies didn't hesitate to push him out there to lie and destroy his own reputation.
But the fact remains that Powell could have simply resigned rather than participate, so in that respect, he bears the blame.
Whether that qualifies him for crony status is open for debate.
I consider crony, in this application, to mean someone inherantly unqualified for a position who gets their position only due to personal connections, having done political dirty work, or donated huges sums to Bush.