Sunday School 9/16/18

FEMA administrator Brock Long made the rounds today, hitting three of our classrooms: Face the Nation, Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday  We'll look at each of those appearances in reverse order.

Before we get into the interviews, here's a quick refresher on the current investigation into Long's potential abuse of official cars.

The IG is investigating whether Long misused government resources and personnel on trips back home to Hickory, NC, on the weekends, said two of the officials. The IG's interest was drawn after one of the vehicles - a black Suburban - was involved in an accident, according to one of the officials. 

There's also noise that Kirstjen Nielsen was concerned about Long's frequent trips home and extensive time out of the office, and that she had talked to him about that - and about resigning.

Chris Wallace didn't mention the investigation, and instead spent the bulk of the interview focused on Hurricane Florence, with only a little bit of time on Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria. On the former, Long expressed confidence that FEMA was well positioned and cooperating effectively with state and local officials in the Carolinas. On the latter, Wallace asked a "simple factual question" whether Long disputed the 3,000 hurricane-related deaths. The response was, well, less than simple. Here's part of it:

Well, there are several different studies that are all over the place when it comes to death; in the official stance of FEMA is we don't count deaths. You know, the only thing that would come remotely close to data that we would have is the funeral benefits that we push forward... And there is a difference between direct deaths and indirect deaths. One study could have studied the entire year that's gone by about a number of indirect deaths over time or whatever, versus a six-month study in George Washington. 

So, that's -- you know, there's a lot of issues with numbers being all over the place. It's hard to tell what's accurate and what's not, but we have got to come together as a country to focus on the rebuilding of Puerto Rico and building a resilient infrastructure... 

Frustrated, indeed - by the numbers that were made up to make him look bad.

Let's look at Long's answer to Chuck Todd's question about that 'make president look bad' thing:

Well I mean there's, I don't think the studies, I don't know why the studies were done. I mean, I think what we're trying to do, in my opinion, what we've got to do is figure out why people die, from direct deaths, which is the wind, the water and the waves, you know, building collapsing, which is probably where the 65 number came from. And then there's indirect deaths. So, the George Washington study looked at what happened six months after the fact.

And you know, what happens is -- and even in this event, you might see more deaths indirectly occur as time goes on because people have heart attacks due to stress. They fall off their house trying to fix their roof. They die in car crashes because they, they went through an intersection where stoplights weren't working/ You know the other thing that goes on, there's all kinds of studies on this that we take a look at. Spousal abuse goes through the roof. You can't blame spousal abuse, you know, after a disaster on anybody.

Stop right there and re-read that italicized sentence again, maybe a couple of times. Because I'm pretty darn sure that you can always blame spousal abuse on the spouse, hurricane or no.  That's a shocking comment for Long - or anyone - to have made. I can't wait for the president to retweet this one.

On CBS, John Dickerson talked about interrupted medical care, which accounted for a large percentage of  Katrina deaths, and Maria deaths as well; he also specifically asked who at FEMA contributed to the George Washington University report. This answer, too, is shocking, but for a different reason.

Yeah, I don't know who they interviewed within the agency. They may have looked at funeral benefits to help, you know, calculate whatever number. And that's a number, you know, that's the only number we would really be able to contribute to any study going forward...

So, multiple times today, Long had the chance to clarify what FEMA knows about the death toll from Hurricane Maria, by simply offering up the funeral benefits figure he cited as facts FEMA could provide. And he didn't do it.  That none of the interviewers asked for death figures shows a lack of curiosity on their part as well.

Long also has zero curiosity about his own agency, to the point that since the GW study came out at the end of August, he hasn't even found out who at FEMA provided information or what information was provided.  How is that even possible? If he knows there was no 'interview' per se but just a data capture, he should have said that, too.

See you around campus.