I’ve always been skeptical of the advice that comes from so many consultants and “experts,” those people who want to tell you how to fix a problem or better run your business, despite the fact that they have never really done it themselves.

Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of great consultants working for companies like Aon, or Mercer, or even IBM, all of whom have great experience and knowledge in their area of expertise. I’d hire them in an instant to give me some practical, focused business advice.

But there are a lot of other folks running around masquerading as “experts” and “consultants” who are just high-paid mouthpieces for the latest hot business trend. Like newly minted MBAs who jump directly into consulting without a single scrap of real-world experience, these people have no business telling you how to fix or run YOUR business.

Here’s a case in point: The Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog reports that former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is making himself “available for interviews” to discuss the Southern California wildfire crisis. “Brown, who became the face of government mismanagement following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and was ultimately forced out of the job following a national uproar, is now director of corporate strategy for Cotton Companies,” a provider of disaster recovery services, according to the Journal blog.

The blog adds: “Whether Brown is an expert on disaster preparedness is open for debate. … [He] never worked in disaster preparedness before he was chosen for the FEMA job by President Bush.”

And it goes on to note that “In a particularly nervy move, the [press] release [from the Cotton Cos.] also draws parallels between the California fires and the 2005 hurricane that devastated New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast—and tagged then-FEMA Director Brown as incompetent and unqualified.”

The Cotton Cos. press release goes on to say: “Currently, the brush fires are affecting hundreds of local businesses and have forced more than 500,000 people out of their homes. Of these 500,000 people, an estimated 10,000 of them have taken shelter at the local NFL stadium, Qualcomm, vaguely reminiscent of circumstances of Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years ago.”

If nothing else, you have to award chutzpah points to Michael Brown—“Brownie,” in Bush-speak—for trying to sell his “expertise” in disaster management, an area in which he had no real experience before he entered government service, and from which he was sprung after Hurricane Katrina for being “incompetent and unqualified,” as the Journal blog puts it.

Consulting is a big-money business, but like a lot of things in life, it should carry a “caveat emptor.” There are good consultants, there are bad consultants, and then there are the Michael Browns of the world: “experts” who seem to be in a class all by themselves.