Donald Powell's reading list

Like his boss, at least he can say he has relevant books on his bookshelf.

"I've got lots to learn," he said. He mentioned receiving two books, John M. Barry's "Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America" and Michael J. Hogan's "The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952."

That's Donald Powell, former FDIC Chairman, and now the czar overseeing federal hurricane recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast.

Does anybody know who this guy is? Or what he represents? Or anything at all he's done since his appointment by President Bush?

I think it was Your Right Hand Thief who suggested that it might not be appropriate to appoint someone whose principal experience is watching pennies.

It's going to be hard to get behind a guy who (my emphasis):

contradicted an assertion by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) that he had committed the Bush administration to local leaders' $20 billion priority, strengthening the New Orleans levee system to withstand a Category 5 hurricane instead of the current Category 3.

"He was pretty clear about it," Blanco said.

But Powell, 64, a tall, low-key Texan who wears a cattleman's belt with a lone star under his suit, demurred. "The commitment is to build the levees back to a three ... and then to study the five."

It offers no comfort whatsoever to know that President Bush's lead guy to get the Gulf Coast back in shape before another hurricane kills thousands more people, and wipes out another couple hundred billion dollars in property, is so completely out of touch with reality.

Instead of going to Barnes and Noble to educate himself about Hurricane Katrina, I suggest he go down to the lower Ninth Ward and tell a grandma there whose home is a crumpled pile of splinters and mud that he has to study the issue of building Category 5 protection. Or go down to St. Bernard parish where people had water in their attics that we just don't know yet if Category 5 protection is necessary. Or go anywhere in New Orleans where people are gutting their homes to the bones, and breathe in a dizzying dose of mold spores, while telling those people that they can go ahead and rebuild, but that they might have to do it all over again when the next hurricane hits the Gulf Coast. Or tell any of the tens of thousands of business owners who may not make it to January that they have to wait a couple more years to see if it's worth the effort and debt they're incurring to sustain their businesses.

They can all thank the president for appointing another of his cronies.