Disaster Capitalism in New Orleans

The government's week-long non-response to the disaster in New Orleans was more than suspicious. When you put the pieces of the puzzle together though, one can only come to the conclusion that the fat cats are slobbering all over themselves to get into New Orleans to rebuild it... Especially now that the "undesirables" have been removed.

As it turns out, New Orleans is only one place on a list of places these vultures are hovering over....

Disaster Capitalism
In New Orleans
By Xymphora
9-13-5

"The implications of FEMA's 'incompetence' and Bush's inexplicable failure to do anything about the plight of New Orleans until it was too late become rather obvious. Competence just leads to fewer chances to make money. ... At the same time, 'undesirable' populations ... can be cleaned up."


The cost (or here) of cleaning up the results of Bush's negligence in failing to deal with global warming and spending money needed for New Orleans levees on his war in Iraq may be as much as the $300 billion spent in four years to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, what most people would regard as a cost, the entrepreneurial politicians in the Bush White House see as yet another opportunity to transfer money from taxpayers to their personal friends. The scheme is blatantly obvious:

Bush has started to issue Iraq-style no-bid contracts, with cost-plus provisions that guarantee contractors a certain profit regardless of how much they spend.
www.rense.com...

ECK,

You are blasting away with the big guns, man! Good to see you back contributing to the board, if you ever left at all. I can see the harriers from opposing viewpoints are coming in to try and shut you down.

Enfilade fire! Commence! You are right on the money, my friend, and I fear subsequent events will unfortunately validate the truth of your statements.

Hey there! Don't worry - I havn't gone anywhere! That would make some folks around here WAY too happy.

San Francisco is another place (here in the U.S.) on that list. They're waiting for the big earthquake. L.A. and NYC (terrorist targets).

It's hard to believe that there are people who are so unscrupulously opportunistic.

Let's get into the minds of these disaster capitalists.....

Maureen Dowd quotes one of them from a Wall Street article...

The Wall Street Journal reported that Representative Richard Baker of Baton Rouge was overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
www.iht.com.../protected/articles/2005/09/11/opinion/eddowd.php

And here's one from the Cheney-Halliburton watch:

Hurricane Halliburton
By John Nichols
The Nation

Sunday 11 September 2005

In fact, Cheney arrived just in time to, as he put it, "make certain that we're doing everything that needs to be done."

The former CEO of Halliburton needn't have worried. As has been the case since the Bush-Cheney administration took office: When trouble hits, Halliburton hits it big.

The firm that has collected more than $10 billion in Iraq-war related revenues is just one of the first corporations to be awarded a reconstruction assignment after the hurricane hit was Halliburton's KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) subsidiary, which has been tapped to repair damaged naval facilities in Louisiana and Mississippi.

KBR, which according to the able watchdogs at HalliburtonWatch.org has an ongoing $500 million contract with the Navy, will be in thick of the reconstruction process. And don't doubt that there may be more work coming KBR's way.
www.truthout.org...

....And folks thot it was good to be a friend of Bill...

More buddy contracts.. with a cronie company/subsidiary that might as well be staffed by vampires.

Note the comments at the end of the article.

FEMA, La. outsource Katrina body count to firm implicated in body-dumping scandals
Miriam Raftery

Miriam Raftery


The Federal Emergency Management Agency has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue for handling bodies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina, RAW STORY has learned.

Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), a scandal-ridden Texas-based company operated by a friend of the Bush family. Recently, SCI subsidiaries have been implicated in illegally discarding and desecrating corpses.
rawstory.com...