BUSINESS: Poised to Profit from Katrina: Halliburton, Houston Head the List, page 1
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Topic started on 7-9-2005 @ 08:49 PM by soficrow
As predicted, Halliburton got a big chunk of the Katrina clean up contract, starting with a $500 million U.S. Navy contract for emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and marine facilities. In July 2005, Halliburton subsidiary KBR won the contract to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters. Clean up in New Orleans will proceed "when it's safe to do so." The trend of businesses moving from New Orleans to Houston "abruptly accelerated," and business is booming in everything from real estate to hardware. Texas got a major labor grant from the federal government to "help Katrina evacuees." And it turns out that FEMA outsourced hurricane recovery planning to a consulting firm called Innovative Emergency Management (IEM).




houston.bizjournals.com
Halliburton Co.'s Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary has begun work on a $500 million U.S. Navy contract for emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and marine facilities that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina, according to an Associated Press report. KBR has been under fire for receiving a five-year, no-bid contract to restore Iraqi oil fields shortly before the U.S. went to war against Iraq in 2003.

(Halliburton) subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root Services Inc. of Arlington, Va., won the competitive-bid contract last July to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters.

AP added that Houston-based Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) has reported being paid $10.7 billion for Iraq-related government work during 2003 and 2004. Pentagon auditors have questioned tens of millions of dollars of Halliburton charges for its operations there.

***

Poised to profit from Katrina

The displacement of companies to Houston from New Orleans is an abrupt acceleration of a trend that has been going on for decades. Many large companies, particularly those in the energy business, have made that move over the years... Perhaps no city in the United States is in a better spot than Houston to turn Katrina’s tragedy into opportunity. ...And certainly no one would accuse this city of being timid in the scramble to profit from the hurricane’s aftermath.

Rising oil and natural gas prices in the last two years have strengthened the finances of Houston’s largest energy companies. They have, however, done little to improve employment prospects in the city, where the unemployment rate was 5.5 percent in July, compared with 5 percent nationally.

Houston officials were quick to point out that they were making a convention center downtown available to evacuees from the disaster zone, potentially forcing some events to be canceled.

***

Texas gets labor grant to help Katrina evacuees

***

FEMA Privatized Hurricane Disaster Recovery Planning for New Orleans and Southeastern Louisiana

Adding to the controversy regarding the Army Corps of Engineers diverting $250 million from the SELA (Southeast Louisiana) Urban Flood Control Program to Iraq and Halliburton reconstruction projects, is the revelation that FEMA outsourced hurricane recovery planning to the Baton Rouge-based consulting firm Innovative Emergency Management (IEM), Inc. to develop a "Catastrophic Hurricane Disaster Plan for New Orleans & Southeast Louisiana." The award was announced on June 3, 2004 on the firm's web site but was taken down just as Hurricane Katrina's winds and waves first started pounding New Orleans.



Please visit the link provided for the complete story.


Just the tip of the iceberg, of course. The term 'incompetence' hardly covers the cronyism, graft, and corruption that plague the nation.

Corruption also prevented the poor and sick from evacuating New Orleans - they needed public transportation to escape, and emergency planners have known for years that the poverty and lack of transportation in New Orleans would be a significant problem. Which is why funds were set aside for the city's public transport system. But the money didn't go where it was supposed to go. Too late, former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial has been charged with embezzling $550,000 slated for the New Orleans Transit Authority. It might have made the difference between life and death for many.

Ineptitude Leads To Death

Federal investigators are probing corruption in the administration of former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial. A man named Glenn Haydel, who is Morial's uncle, is currently facing federal embezzlement charges for allegedly steering $550,000 from the New Orleans public transport system, the Regional Transit Authority, to his own management company - and putting $350,000 of that sum into a personal bank account.

Nagin, a political outsider elected as a reformer, has demonstrated significant limitations as a crisis manager. But he needed and deserved a smooth-running, fully funded public transport and it seems likely that chiselers and crooks in government denied it to him.



In the meantime, destitute refugees are being detained forcibly, unable in many cases to leave their camps without forfeiting their food and shelter. Officials are calling for forcible evacuation of all survivors left in New Orleans, for no legitimate reason or legal rationale.

Refugees are being offered $2,000 per family to cover relocation and start-over costs, with the proviso that no other assistance will be made available.

Oh yeah. And how about Halliburton 'winning' the contract in July 2005 "to provide debris removal and other emergency work associated with natural disasters." Kinda makes ya wonder about that Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005, don't it?


For more information on the Weather Modification Research and Technology Transfer Authorization Act of 2005, go here and Enter: S 517.



See:

I Just Got Back from a FEMA Detainment Camp

Michael Brown? This is your life!

All the puzzle pieces in one place

New Orleans: Incompetence or Population Control?

Also see:

Houston Finds Business Boon After Katrina

We watch FOX so you don't have to.

Haunted by Hesitation


reply posted on 7-9-2005 @ 09:46 PM by FredT
You guys throw out haliburton like a four letter word cause of the Cheney connection but its subsidiary KBR is a legitamet big time construction group.

From thier page:


Infrastructure includes a wide range of facilities and services; including roads, airports, railroads and buildings, and coordinating and planning major events.
www.halliburton.com...


Some of the things it builds:

Airports

Special-purpose residential facilities
Recreational facilities
Retail developments
Hotels
Multi-story parking structures
High and low-rise buildings
Seismic-sensitive buildings
Speculative and owner-occupied commercial developments
Educational establishments at all levels

infrastructure development: engineering, project management and construction management in the areas of transport, water and wastewater, urban development and environmental management.
governance and institutional development: training, systems and other resources for infrastructure management.
capacity building: efficiency improvements and maximising of existing resources.
community consultation: surveys, information programs, learning from traditional skills and practices.

Ports and harbors from the outright construction to services

Road construction
Water and wastewater treatment




Some have used the Cheney connection to vilify this company which is one of the big time heavy weights in this type of business. Bechtel is another. There are only so many companies than can do this on a huge scale and haliburton is one of them. Several people on this thread (not you) have this knee jerk reaction when they see the name that it puts bliners on the big picture.



reply posted on 7-9-2005 @ 11:09 PM by soficrow
Originally posted by GradyPhilpott


In the meantime, destitute refugees are being detained forcibly, unable in many cases to leave their camps without forfeiting their food and shelter. Officials are calling for forcible evacuation of all survivors left in New Orleans, for no legitimate reason or legal rationale.


This is an outrageous lie, soficrow! There is no evidence that any of this is true.




Eye Witness Report: FEMA Detainment Camp


Nagin says Get out, or be forced out
NEW ORLEANS - As flood waters receded inch by inch Tuesday, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin authorized law enforcement officers and the U.S. military to force the evacuation of all residents who refuse to heed orders to leave the dark, dangerous city.

Nagin's emergency declaration released late Tuesday targets those still in the city unless they have been designated by government officials as helping with the relief effort.

The move comes after some citizens bluntly told authorities who had come to deliver them from the flooded metropolis that they would not leave their homes and property. An estimated 10,000 residents are believed to still be in New Orleans, and some have been holed up in their homes for more than a week.




GradyPhilkpott
You are taking the good that people do for one another and twisting it for your own cheap, nefarious, political purposes. Do you ever post the truth or is lying just a way of life for you? Do you ever think about what happens in Canada or is writing about things that you know nothing about more challenging. Whatever it is, you need brush up on your ethics and a few other basic civilized attributes.



A. I am not twisting anything(?) - and have NO cheap, nefarious, political purposes - just an honest horror about what's going on - and a desire to come to terms with it.

B. Is lying a way of life for me? No. I don't lie. Nor do I make charges without documentation.


Grady - I know you are not well. But you are way out of line here. ...I obviously pressed some button - and I wonder what the real issue is for you with what I have said.
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