Or – how to build a fortune on a national tragedy.
The Bush-administration has by many been considered a total failure in dealing with the consequences of the hurricane. How wrong they are!
The two last weeks have been exceedingly successful in terms of continuing the implementation of preferred policy. Let’s see;
– Already on 1 September it was reported that Halliburton had received its first contracts in connection with the Katrina fall-out.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 HalliburtonWatch The US Navy asked Halliburton to repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary under the Navy’s $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Difficult to argue, though, since the work is under a pre-existing contract award.
– Pollution standards reduced; more emissions of greenhouse gases is just what we need to reduce the likelihood off future hurricanes – or, higher profits for the polluters?
The United States announced yesterday that it would relax fuel pollution standards and release strategic oil reserves as it scrambles to head off shortages after Katrina hobbled the country’s capacity to produce, refine and import crude.
– But now, its official;
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration’s first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
(snip)
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.
Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel’s CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
– And let’s not forget that profits can be increased even further – for example by suspending the prevailing wage rule:
President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.
– How it works – the buddy system in its prime. Let’s not forget the neo-FEMA set-up:
Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (my emphasis)
At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush’s former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
Corruption and cronyism is rampant and exercised with impunity. The corporate media is obviously complicit in the scheme, otherwise all the dots would have been connected in an MSM-outlet. What does it take – are such blatant corrupt practices simply the expectation, no one cares?
