A Small Outhouse

The worm, as Calvin Trillin might point out, has turned.

Michael Brown—the former and extremely disgraced director of FEMA whose fate was sealed by recent history’s most egregious verbal pat on the back—is back in the news, once again alleging that Michael Chertoff is an incontinent incompetent, craven boot-licking butt monkey, that he (Brown) is being used as a scapegoat and that both FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security are still more full of shit than substance. [Ed. note: He’s, um, paraphrasing.]

No worm there.

But, in a coincidence too wonderful for words, within days of Brown’s latest outburst, the AP reported that the Department of Homeland Security (which is headed by Chertoff): (A) Let some guy with a forged ID into the building; and (B) Has held up about 10,000 marriages, so far, because they haven’t figured out how to add (really) two questions to an already existing form.

Ohmigod, could Mike Brown be right?

Yes, that’s the worm starting to stir. Yawning itself awake.

What makes the forged ID story especially fun is that the ID used was (to quote from the CNN article): “a forged version of identification that Mexican consulates in the United States issue to their nationals living here illegally.” The man who used the ID is a retired New York City police officer who thinks it’s pretty damn sad that he got into the DHS building the way he did. Even worse—except from the worm’s perspective, of course—is the fact that he used a fake ID (with, incidentally, a birth date that didn’t match the one he’d provided in other paperwork) to get into the headquarters of the very agency charged with creating secure IDs. The worm, it loves irony. (It also knows a good set up for any number of immigration jokes when it sees one but has the taste not to mention them here.)

That Homeland Security has trouble, evidently, recognizing fake IDs—to say nothing of creating a “secure” form of identification—is not especially comforting, but neither should it be surprising, in light of the marriage visa story; apparently the Department (they are not, alas, alone) suffers from some odd form of bureaucratic illiteracy.

Turns out that DHS was required by a law—signed by the President in January 2006—meant to protect mail-order brides (women brought into the United States to marry and be abused by losers because they, the women, are desperate and, sadly, less expensive than latex love dollies) to add two questions to an immigration form, a change that they had three full months to effect.

Count with me now: ONE form; TWO questions; THREE months. Simple. So it should go without saying that the deadline for that form change has done been and gone, as my Uncle Bob used to say, the only reaction at DHS being someone asking what that peculiar whooshing sound was….

Wait; it gets better. Because the forms weren’t ready in time (and still aren’t, for that matter), DHS has been shelving marriage-visa applications written on the “old” forms because, in the words of sycophantic lackey Chris Bentley, “[t]hey did not have all of the information needed to determine whether someone qualified or not.” He adds: “It’s certainly an inconvenience brought about by the new requirements of the law.”

The worm just turned. Right there, during that last sentence. Did you see it?

Mr. Bentley blamed the “inconvenience” on the new law, not the fact that DHS—with three months’ lead time—could not manage to change one simple form in accordance with that law. In other words, people are being penalized for not using forms that don’t exist yet--and quite possibly, given DHS’ stellar performance record to date, never will. Washington SOP: Sure, we messed up--again,--but consequences are what the public is there for.

Maybe we need to listen a little better to Michael Brown. Yes, he’s a whiner and a weasel and a political lackey, no better suited to run FEMA than, say, a mud shark might be suited for a career as a pastry chef—his point, though, is valid. DHS, as an agency, couldn’t find its own ass in a small outhouse. Worse, they’re apparently proud of it, or at least not terribly ashamed of it; perhaps there is some quantification of tragically comic ineptitude, arrogance and legal flatulence that now forms the basis for performance reviews.

These may seem like picayune issues in the wake of all the post-Katrina revelations, to say nothing of those embarrassing moments that lately seem to surround the Bush Administration like Pigpen’s dirt cloud in “Peanuts.” The worm realizes, however, that they are telling symptoms of a larger problem.

As for Michael Brown (who, after his stunning success there at FEMA, set up a consulting concern that helps public officials put a smiley face on screwing up), I can’t help but think of my Uncle Bob again, in those days when, shortly before passing out, he would misquote the Ricky Nelson song “Garden Party”: “You can’t please everyone, so might as well just help your damn self.”

The worm, it’s awake now. Fear the worm.

LINKS:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/09/katrina.email/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/06/13/homeland.wedding.delays.ap/index.html