Cronyism and Rewarding the Incompetent

One of the most striking aspects of the Halliburton Republican Party under Bush is the way completely incompetent people are rewarded if they are cronies of Bush or another high ranking Republican. The most blatant and tragic example of this was Mike Brown who was in charge of FEMA during the Katrina disaster and whose incompetence led to the deaths of thousands of Americans. Brown (whose incompetence during Katrina was praised with a "Good job Brownie," by Bush) already had a history of failure when Bush appointed him head of FEMA. Brown had been forced to resign as Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association due to incompetence. Wonderful qualifications for running FEMA, right? But Brown was part of the crony network surrounding Bush, so he got a cushy job...and thousands of Americans paid the ultimate price.

Well, it seems those thousands of American lives didn't teach the Bush administration any lessons at all. Incompetence is still being rewarded. And it sometimes seems that the grosser the incompetence the bigger the reward. Chris Oynes was regional director of Minerals Management Service’s Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Region for the past 13 years. During that time he messed up enforcing the law and thus allowed oil companies to escape an estimated $10-60 BILLION in taxes. How much body armor for our troops would that buy? How many levees in New Orleans could have been repaired with that amount? How many schools could be repaired? I don't know. Why did he fail to charge oil companies the proper taxes? He claims, I kid you not, he "forgot."

Now, what if you cost your employer let's say a mere $10-60 thousand dollars due to a simple lapse in memory. Would you be promoted? Probably not.

Under the Bush Administration, Chris Oynes, despite these memory problems that are costing our country $10-60 billion, got a big fat promotion this month. Minerals Management Service Director, Johnnie Burton, chose Chris "I Forgot" Oynes as the new associate director of the agency’s Offshore Minerals Management Program.

You can read more about it here.

This is the exact kind of mismanagement that has defined the Bush Administration and which led to the tragedy of Katrina. Write the media and your Congress Critters to complain about the rewarding of incompetence in the Bush administration. Tell them you don't want any more Katrinas and you don't want any more corruption.