To whom this may concern;
It has become perfectly clear to the American citizens that George W Bush has been appointing
black citizens to important official government posts with out properly evaluating their experience and abilities.
He does it only to appeal to the black coalition of voters and that is the only reason he even kisses them in public. To gain their acceptance as president. Even when he appoints non blacks, he does it arbitrarily with out any intelligent evaluation. Bush is a dictatorial/autocratic president.
America has never had such an incompetent bunch of irresponsible unqualified government officials as are now in “The Bush Administration.”
We cannot remove and replace George W Bush soon enough to save face and begin to cure the National disgrace that has befallen The United States of America.
John M Sandoval
185 Kona dr.
Bastrop Texas 78602

I can’t speak for other appointments, but Clinton appointed James Lee Witt to head FEMA just three months after entering office.  Witt is to date the only FEMA director to have had previous experience directing Emergency Services.  Witt received wide bi-partisan praise throughout his term and is credited with totally revamping the inept and crony-ridden FEMA of the Reagan/Bush years.  Witt is credited with building a model government organization and his success was acknowledged when he was elevated to Cabinet post.

Typically, since Bush’s, Chertoff’s, and Brown’s Brobdingnagian FEMA failures, the rightwing “alternative” netmedia, led by nutcase Christopher Ruddy at Newsmax, are trying desperately to smear and swiftboat Witt ex post facto.

When he came into office, Bush immediately demoted FEMA’s status and turned it over to his chief political fixer and operative, Joe Allbaugh, who dismantled much of the efficient and effective organization that Witt had assembled - as part of the Bush “federal government is not the answer” philosophy. When Allbaugh had finished his hatchet job and moved on to exploit his “emergency management” experience in the private sector, he handpicked his old college roommate, “Brownie,” a political protege of Tommy Thompson, to replace him.  So, just a couple of years after getting fired from his job managing horse show judges, Brown was put in charge of deomestic emergency management for both natural and terrorist incidents for the entire nation.

An interesting comparison on Republican vs Democratic philosophies of governance, Whot?

It seems that the last administration (Clinton’s) put a whole host of cronies in charge of major government departments.  These cronies had varying degrees of qualifications to run those departments.  The current administration appears to appears to have put a whole new host of cronies in charge of major government departments who have absolutely no relevant experience or qualifications.  Furthermore, these new cronies appear keen to shrink their departments (Federal Government needs to be small enough to drown in a bathtub) without any intention of addressing the needs the department was created to address.

Chertoff is just one of many ... pity his department was exposed so tragically.  More pity that it is likely to happen again.