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At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President 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.

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President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Wow. Now THAT was trite! Go watch TV Geezer. We already know you don't give a shit.

Please don't think they give a shit.

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But in the last couple days things have gotten pretty messed up. When I read the title of this thread yesterday morning, I was not looking forward to the content. I'd assumed that this would be the inevitable "If we don't minimize the reality of our losses to Katrina, the terrorists are winning" post. But it wasn't. I'm very relieved that the admin. and it's apologists have yet to use Katrina to market their favorite show, The War on Terror. It gives me hope that the unavoidable reality of Katrina will bring their 4 year old house of canards (couldn't resist ) tumbling down about their heads.

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Originally posted by R1Z:
I take heart that he's taking (rhetorically, anyway)responsibility for the shortcomings of his administration. I suppose it'd be too much to ask for him to resign over it though . . .

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
If he denied responsibility at this point, he'd be making a mistake- he'd look like a jerk.

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Originally posted by HKCavalier:
This is a major, major blow to this administration's image. And that's all they have!

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
And PRAY for a Democratic Presidential candidate with intact lumbar, thorasic and cervical regions.

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The Navy hired it (Halliburton} to restore electric power, repair roofs, and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi. The company will also do damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans. Joe Allbaugh, former head of FEMA (and Bush's campaign manager before that) is registered to lobby for Halliburton's Brown Root subsidiary, and he hurried down to New Orleans to get things rolling.

Halliburton made the news recently when Bunnatine Greenhouse, a civilian manager at the Pentagon who oversaw the Corps of Engineers contracts, lambasted a multibillion contract between the Corps and Halliburton as an example of ”the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed.” She was demoted for “poor performance.” (after years of exemplary performance ratings)

The Project on Government Oversight, a Washington nonprofit, reports the government is opening up the contracting spigots by authorizing rules that permit government procurement officials to forget bidding procedures and authorize deals on their own say-so of up to $250,000. Normally they can only go as high as $2,500....
And on Thursday, Bush signed an executive order permitting federal contractors working on hurricane related deals to pay wages at below the prevailing rate due to the “national emergency.”

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Congress probes hurricane clean-up contracts
...Companies winning work include US contracting giants Bechtel and Halliburton. Halliburton, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, is facing questions for allegedly overcharging on work done in Iraq. The Department of Defense was criticised for awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts to these two companies without competition.

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"... {Brown} helped deliver Florida to President Bush by efficiently responding to the Florida hurricanes." A FEMA spokeswoman denied the report at the time. Floridians had good reason to be grateful. In the summer of 2004, FEMA handed out... nearly $30 million to residents of Miami-Dade County to replace TVs, computers and microwaves, even though that county suffered little or no hurricane damage.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
"... {Brown} helped deliver Florida to President Bush by efficiently responding to the Florida hurricanes." A FEMA spokeswoman denied the report at the time. Floridians had good reason to be grateful. In the summer of 2004, FEMA handed out... nearly $30 million to residents of Miami-Dade County to replace TVs, computers and microwaves, even though that county suffered little or no hurricane damage.

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