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Brown: Politics Played Role in Katrina

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 19, 2007
Filed at 11:53 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- Party politics played a role in decisions over whether to take federal control of Louisiana and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, former FEMA director Michael Brown said Friday.

Some in the White House suggested only Louisiana should be federalized because it was run by a Democrat, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Brown told a group of graduate students at a lecture on politics and emergency management at Metropolitan College of New York.

Brown said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the hurricane be federalized, making the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster.

''Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,'' he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Katrina-Brown.htm...

Yeah, I'm sure it is old to the thousands of people still homeless. But you can expect a rich republican to give a d-mn.