I will agree that there’s nothing new to see here. The porcine synergy of government and business is a long standing rot, a venereal disease in the body politic. But it didn’t happen last week, nor last month.
That said, fuck it. The vision of those corporate Mammonites rubbing their greedly little mitts together is spasms of gleeful greed…yeah, that sucks. Money will be wasted in the endeavor, tons of it, bet on it, count on it, swallow it: puke and get over it.
A huge job will require huge resources, the big dogs. Yep, we’re about to get good and screwed, you betcha. But if we have to, we have to. With any luck, they might be just a bit more punctilious, knowing that they ain’t in Baghdad and the next administration might not be as forgiving and warmly compassionate as this one.
What is your justification for claiming that we’ll get screwed? Have you ever calculated jobs of this scope, such that you may knowingly allege the taxpayer is being taken advantage of? I haven’t, so I won’t make that allegation.
Nobody rubs their hands together with glee any more than the guys at the firehouse high five one another when a tactical box assignment comes in. It’s a job. It has to be done. Only a few companies have the structure to manage a project of great magnitude, and it doesn’t make a fiddler’s dick if they’re Democans or Republocrats, so please shut the fuck up.
Precisely my point. We pretty much have to hire them. Probably would have anyway. A fact that cannot have escaped their attention. You may, if you wish, believe that the boardrooms of America are entirely populated by civic-minded patriots with a deep longing to sacrifice for the greater good.
If you do, in fact, believe that I must urge you to see your local Cognitive Dissonance specialist, this is definitely third-stage stuff, full blown CD.
*
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.* "
Then it’s not an act of cognitive dissonance, or whatever spin term the left has come up with to use for pissing on the right. Democrat or Republican, it would work out as it is, so why are you bitching? Spare me your quotes, they can be applied to the evil perpetrated by either party upon the other. Please just shut up.
Well, there is a copious history of millions, if not billions of taxpayer dollars vanishing into thin air in the midst of contracting orgies. It’s no surprise, given that Bush’s former head of FEMA, who had to quit because all the private juicy money was just too tempting, was on the ground lobbying for rebuilding contracts before the CURRENT head of FEMA got the bulk of his people there to deal with the disaster. That’s the sort of revolving door system we have, and it’s hardly surprising that taxpayers get stiffed.
The Shaw Group was mentioned above, I guess as proof of nefarious Republican doings.
The Shaw group was founded by Jim Bernhard, who is its current chairman and CEO. He is a close confidant of Louisiana Governor Blanco, and worked on her transition. He is also currently chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party.
Yup. The barracks-type housing is still in place, and looks pretty much indistinguishable from other neighbourhoods, although the houses are rather small and similar in appearance. It’s a nice LMC neighbourhood, very low crime rate when I was around there in the early 90’s, average residential age about 40 or so. I think they held naval classes in rented/shared space from the School for the Deaf, and a large school building of some sort that still stands to the East of the OPL.
Sadly, it’s gone a bit downhill suddenly since the mid-1990s. It’s now the sort of place where you don’t make eye contact with the people driving their cars through the place slowly with car stereo thumping, or standing on the street corner with their underwear showing. :rolleyes:
Whatever Kenyon Worldwide is getting on that contract, it’s certainly more than what DMORT would have charged ($0). Your taxpayer dollars needlessly at work…
And again, there is some precedent for this. President George H.W. Bush did the same thing during his administration, to help with rebuilding after Hurricanes Andrew and Iniki.
There is considerable evidence that the Act disproportionately harms firms that are owned by African-Americans and Hispanics, and also laborers from these minority groups.
Too much wiggle room, **Moto[/b[. Are you suggesting that such deep compassion for the well-being of minority laborers is the primary motivation for this action? Or that it is a happy, though largely unintentional, side effect?
Too much wiggle room, Moto. Are you suggesting that such deep compassion for the well-being of minority laborers is the primary motivation for this action? Or that it is a happy, though largely unintentional, side effect?
The scope of the rebuilding is huge, and the Davis-Bacon requirements limit the number of firms that can participate in federal rebuilding. Larger contractors can easily meet these requirements, which in many areas are far above rates for the same job done for a private client.
Smaller ones cannot, and far more African-American and Latino owned firms are of this smaller variety.