As I write this, 10 days after the disaster, I'm listening to the TV newsman tell us that there are perhaps thousands of dead from the flooding in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
President Bush and his aloof friends in Congress are satisfied that the head of FEMA, or "Brownie" as the president likes to refer to him, has done "a great job."
But I'm certain that many of the deaths could have been avoided if disaster relief was headed by someone who actually knew something about the job.
It appears that the current director of FEMA, Michael Brown, was appointed by President Bush simply because he was a friend of the first Bush appointee. In other words, he got the job because he was a political crony.
When I'm elected congressman in November 2006, I will introduce a bill to make such blatant and dangerous political patronage illegal. With the passing of this "Anti-Cronyism Act," the safety of America will never be so blithely dismissed gain by our professional political elite again.
Any person appointed to any federal position, by any politician, must have at least minimal qualifications, including some real-world experience in the position for which he or she is appointed.
This may sound fairly basic, since even a cook applying for a job at a fast-food joint is expected to know how to flip burgers; it apparently is not even a consideration in Washington D.C. This absurd condition is just another reason we need to elect working Americans to positions all over our nation.