Corruption, Cronyism & Incompetence
Posting over at Crooks and Liars, Barbara O’Brien reports in Next: Bread and Circuses, that as much as $2 billion may have been wasted in the response to hurricane Katrina.
Scout of First Draft has been following this story since the hurricane struck and she reports on one of the problems with debris removal.
FEMA signed a contract for debris removal that pays $23/cubic yard, but by the time it went through multiple layers of subcontractors, the people who are actually removing the debris are making $3/cubic yard. That is absurd. How can someone who has no experience with debris removal win a major government contract for the service? Why is a company from New Jersey doing the actually removal, when there are companies along the Gulf Coast who do this all the time, and they needed work after the hurricane?
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“Corruption, Cronyism & Incompetence” … I thought that was the Republican equivalent of Canada’s “Peace, Order and Good Government”; i.e., words to live by.
As I just noted on a thread at CultureGhost’s site, in Houston, there are Katrina refugees whose FEMA housing funding has been cut off, restored and just now cut off again, as cases work their way through the courts. Homelessness is the perfect Christmas gift, right? And FEMA is the gift that keeps on not giving.
You will note that Halliburton doesn’t have to go to court, only victims of disasters.