Maybe the problem was privatization..........
Daily Kos: Political Analysis and other daily rants on the state of the nation.: "The second one is here:
http://www.altweeklies.com/gyrobase/AltWeeklies/Story?oid=oid%3A150167
A paragraph lifted from the article states
'A push to privatize some of the agency's key functions. William Waugh, a disaster expert at Georgia State University who has written training programs for FEMA, warned that outsourcing had not served natural disaster programs well. 'It's part of a widespread problem of government contracting out capabilities,' he says. 'Pretty soon, governments can't do things because they've given up those capabilities to the private sector. And private corporations don't necessarily maintain those capabilities.'
Now it is making more sense to me. The disasterous lack of response could be for a couple of reasons if we follow this tack. 1) Brown couldn't get all the corporate profiteers together fast enough to make a difference. Was this why there was no command and control center and other shortcomings. 2) The Administration wants to sour the publics' opinion on the Gov't agency and therefore manufacture a willingness on the part of the public to accept the notion of privatized disaster relief.
In either scenario, it explains why FEMA refused to allow food, water, first responders brought in. It may be because those companies or people that were responding were not the ones that already hold the contracts.